"Beholder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breach, And write thee into light and speech? The Power, that made the Tongue, restrain'd Thy lips from lies, and speeches feign'd; Who made the Hearing, without wrong Did rescue thine from Siren's song. He let thee see the ways of men, Which thou with pencil, not with pen, Careful Beholder, down did'st note, And all their motley actions quote, Thyself unstain'd the while. From look Or gesture reading, more than book, In letter'd pride thou took'st no part, Contented with the Silent Art, Thyself as silent. Might I be As speechless, deaf, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... made and, I believe, sent home to the Geographical Society. It is in the long corridor beyond this that the "stuck-vats" live—puncheons which hold easily some thousand gallons or so, and are of a solemn rotundity calculated to strike awe into the beholder's heart. Here is white constantia, red constantia, young constantia, middle-aged constantia, and constantia so old as to be a liqueur almost beyond price. When it has been kept all these years, the sweetness by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Greece a tale of Athos would make out, Cut from the continent and sailed about; Seas bid with navies, chariots passing o'er The channel on a bridge from shore to shore; Rivers, whose depths no sharp beholder sees, Drunk, at an army's dinner, to the lees; With a long legend of romantic things, Which, in his cups, the browsy poet sings. —Tenth Satire. Trans. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... were brought to such a state that, on examining them, the beholder was not conscious of utensils, but of his own face in a condition of hideous elasticity. The broken clock-line was mended, the kettles rocked, the creeper nailed up, and a new handle put to the warming-pan. The large household lantern was cleaned out, after three years of uninterrupted accumulation, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... no more, but she walked up from the field holding tightly to her father's poor, worn hand, and her heart was in a tumult. To behold any convulsion of nature is no light experience, and when it is a storm of the spirit in one beloved the beholder is swept along with it in greater or less measure. Ellen trembled as she walked. Her father kept looking at her anxiously and remorsefully. Once he reached around his other hand and chucked her playfully under ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... made, when we went in;— They cried, "Yo're catched!" An then thi mother sed i'th' midst o'th' din "They're fairly matched, An beauty's in th' beholder's e'e they say, An they've ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... with impatience the rising of the sun, which would display to our gaze two of the mightiest powers in Europe. Luckily, the day was fine and clear, and the two kingdoms lay before us, in such magnificence and proximity, that the beholder was almost inclined to believe that a ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... much greater. Facts and dates are to history what color and proportion are to the painting. Employed by genius, color and form combine in a language that speaks to the soul, giving pleasure and instruction to the beholder; so the facts and dates occurring along the pathway of a people, when gathered and arranged by labor and care, assume a voice and a power which they have not otherwise. As these facts express the thoughts and feelings, and the growth, of a people, they become the ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... home. Add to this, the half-dirty attire—the unshaven beard of the men, and the unkempt locks of the women—produce further revolting sensations. It is not till past mid-day that the noise of labour ceases, and that the toilette is put into a complete state for the captivation of the beholder. By four or five o'clock the streets become half thinned. On a Sunday, every body rushes into the country. The tradesman has his little villa, and the gentleman and man of fortune his more capacious rural domain; and those, who aspire neither to the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... things," said John, "derive their beauty from the eye of the beholder, the beauty of other things is determined by the presence or absence of the person you long to share all beautiful visions with. The sky, the clouds, the whole air and earth, this evening, seem to me beauty ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... which is the abstract of beauty absolute, gives to the beholder a shock of astonishment and delight,—not unmixed with melancholy. Very few works of art give this, because very few approach perfection. But there are marbles and gems which give it, and certain fine studies of them, such as the engravings ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... in time changes through his new gift of reason, inventing tools and weapons and language, harnessing the physical forces to his own ends, and putting all things under his feet,—man the wonder-worker, the beholder of the stars, the critic and spectator of creation itself, the thinker of the thoughts of God, the worshiper, the devotee, the hero, spreading rapidly over the earth, and developing with prodigious strides when once fairly launched upon his career. ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... that he could. It chanced that there was but one of them on duty in the wood that morning—a certain short, stalky little fellow whose name was Walter Skinner, and who was fond of speaking of himself as a king's man. Formed by nature to make very little impression on the beholder, it was his practice to eke out what he lacked in importance by boasting, by taking on mysterious airs, and by dropping hints as to his connection with great personages and his knowledge of their plans. He was about the age of Humphrey, and though he was ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... foul lines. Over one arm he carried jacket and trousers; in the other hand he bore a pair of shoes and of socks. That the clothing was patched and the shoes looked fit only for a tramp's use did not disguise the meaning of the scene from any beholder, for the news of that Saturday afternoon had traveled through ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... marvellous dress of Alencon point lace, clasped with a diamond and sapphire girdle made for the Empress Marie Louise, and she looked, said a beholder, "the imperial beauty of a poet's vision." The emperor was in a general's uniform. He wore the collar of the Legion of Honor which his uncle the Great Emperor used to wear. He wore also the collar of ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... windows on either side, the contest of the most distinguished knights, and applauded their feats of daring and skill. A few paces farther, and just inside the moat, stood a frowning pile, whose sombre and repulsive front might have struck a beholder as being as much out of place as the skeleton at the feast—the ill-omened Bastile.[713] Five prisoners, immured for their conscientious boldness in its gloomy dungeons, and awaiting a terrible fate, distinctly heard, day after day, as the tourney continued, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... hideous a monster, that whoever looks on it can no longer live, but melts away. It is also said that the Basilisk inhabits wells, and that it is dangerous to look down a well, as to encounter the gaze of a Basilisk would be to turn the beholder to stone. There is also another variation of the legend. The egg when laid by the cock must be hatched by a toad; but when the Basilisk is hatched, if it be first seen by a human being, it at once dies, but if ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... country, and the peculiar associations of ideas, or idiosyncracy of mind, of individuals. For instance, if an artist should represent the death of an officer in battle, by shewing a little blood on the bosom of his shirt, as if a bullet had there penetrated, the dying figure would affect the beholder with pity; and if fortitude was at the same time expressed in his countenance, admiration would be added to our pity. On the contrary, if the artist should chuse to represent his thigh as shot away by a cannon ball, and should exhibit ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... with his wound, the features are at the same time very terrible and languishing; and there is such a stern faintness diffused through his look, as is apt to move a kind of horror, as well as pity, in the beholder. This, I say, is an effect wrought by mere lights and shades; consider also a representation made by words only, as in an account given by a good writer: Catiline in Sallust makes just such a figure as Porus by Le Brun. It is said of him, 'Catilina ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... slip. It is constant with the eye of the beholder, and constant with the constant that is always—" Spears faltered, ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... edge, islands of all sizes and of all forms, gently rising out of the limpid rippling stream, or boldly standing forth from the deep blue water, presenting a rugged, rocky moss-clad front to the wonderstruck beholder. On the 20th of July, some cruisers from Sackett's Harbour, succeeded in surprising and capturing, at daybreak, a brigade of batteaux laden with provisions, under convoy of a gun-boat. They made off with their prize to Goose Creek, which ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... many centuries, the hoary monuments of Egypt—its temples, its obelisks, and its tombs—have presented to the eye of the beholder strange forms of sculpture and of language; the import of which none could tell. The wild valleys of Sinai, too, exhibited upon their rocky sides the unknown writings of a former people; whose name and existence none could trace. Among the ruined halls of ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... pupils. The general cast of her countenance was serious, to a degree bordering upon severity; but when she did unbend, the cheerfulness that beamed in her features, and the benevolent expression of her dark and pleasing eyes, invited confidence and regard from every beholder. She had been a widow several years, and was going to commence a school patronized by respectable friends. I shall not attempt to describe her daughters, for beauty is of so perishable a nature, and of so little value without good qualities, ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... it was placed, and it is the incongruity of this contrast which strikes the beholder and blinds him to the merits of the work. For Greenough has represented Washington seated in a massive armchair, naked except for a drapery over the legs and right shoulder, one hand pointing dramatically at the heavens, the other extended holding a reversed sword. It shows sincerity ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... on a moderately large, dust-smothered room. Dust, that is to say, was the first thing to strike the eye of the beholder. The windows were thick in dust, it lay on tables and chairs and on the two typewriters standing unused in a corner of the room. The room gave one the impression of being singularly uninhabited. Then the door opened and shut again, and Joan turned ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... circumvent each other. First one hops a few feet, then the other, each one standing erect in true military style while his fellow passes him and describes the segment of an ellipse about him, both uttering the while a fine complacent warble in a high but suppressed key. Are they lovers or enemies? the beholder wonders, until they make a spring and are beak to beak in the twinkling of an eye, and perhaps mount a few feet into the air, but rarely actually deliver blows upon each other. Every thrust is parried, every movement ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... incumbent floor or roof, For corbel is a figure sometimes seen, That crumples up its knees unto its breast, With the feign'd posture stirring ruth unfeign'd In the beholder's fancy; so I saw These fashion'd, when ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... were twisted into a ball about the size of an orange; the variety of shapes into which his countenance was twisted, defy description. He had a manner of screwing his head on one side when he spoke; and of looking out of the corners of his eyes at the same time: which irresistibly reminded the beholder of a parrot. In this attitude, he fixed himself, the moment he made his appearance; and, holding out a small piece of orange-peel at arm's length, exclaimed, in ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... to describe aright that rush of waters as it is to paint it well. But I doubt whether it is not quite as difficult to write a description that shall interest the reader as it is to paint a picture of them that shall be pleasant to the beholder. My friend the artist was at any rate not afraid to make the attempt, and I also ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... their men and women are such glorious creatures, with backgrounds of such stately architecture or such magnificent scenery, all displayed in a revel of color, that pleasure outruns comprehension in the beholder. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... from the Vatican to the Milvian bridge. The Goth cut off the fourteen aqueducts which supplied Rome with water. Those greatest monuments of imperial magnificence from that time have stretched their broken arches across the Campagna, the admiration and sorrow of every beholder in so many generations. What five hundred years of empire had done, the Goth, in his fury to recover the land which he had usurped, was able to ruin. The besiegers went on wasting the Campagna, ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... from forty, with a nervous mouth and anxious blue eyes. Possibly she had been quite pretty in youth, if ever peace and the quiet mind had been hers. But the unrest and worry of her look left rather a disturbed impression on the beholder. ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... became almost inspired in the use of their medium, and produced such works of their art as have never been equalled in any age. These are the tapestries that grip the heart, that cause a frisson of joy to the beholder. And these are the tapestries we buy, if kind chance allows. If they cannot be ours to live with, then away to the museum in all haste and often, to ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... that, after he had satisfied his curiosity, he suffered the sixth to remain unmolested. One of these specimens I procured, and found the length of the legs to be so extraordinary, that, at first sight, one might have supposed the shanks had been fastened on to impose on the credulity of the beholder: they were legs in caricatura, and had we seen such proportions on a Chinese or Japan screen, we should have made large allowances for the fancy of the draughtsman. These birds are of the plover family, and might with propriety be called the stilt plovers. Brisson, under that idea, gives them ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... justly made odious. To the arguments of abuse I will after answer; only thus much now is to be said, that the comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be; so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one. Now, as in geometry, the oblique must be known as well as the right, and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even; so in the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... with duckweed, and the absence of all living things, cows, horses, pigs, turkeys, geese, or chickens—and still more of those talking, as well as living things, women and children—all impressed on the beholder that strange sensation of melancholy which few can have failed to experience at the sight of an uninhabited human habitation. The one solitary inmate failed to relieve the pressing sense of solitude. Nothing but the ringing sound of female voices, the pleasant and familiar ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... found the party, consisting of his father, sister, and the supposed page, seated by the breakfast-table, at which he also took his place. He was a pensive and anxious beholder of what passed, while the page, who had already completely gained the heart of the good old cavalier, by mimicking the manner in which the Scottish divines preached in favour of Ma gude Lord Marquis of Argyle and the Solemn League and Covenant, was now endeavouring to interest ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... watch-towers—their rocky shelves consecrated by hermitages, and their unrivalled sheet dotted with sails, rigged, as it might be, expressly to produce effect in a picture, form a sort of world apart, that is replete with charms which not only fascinate the beholder, but which linger in the memories of the absent like ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... outside; here in the quiet, white-curtained room another dawn had come, not quiet, but with gleam of sun alternating with cloud and tempest, making the beholder wonder what ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... sunset beyond the western mountains was casting its soft glamour over the scene—happily not without one appreciative beholder—when Bob Matheny's wagon drew up in front of the Traveler's Rest, the principal hotel of Wilson's Bar. From the commotion which ensued immediately thereupon, it would appear that Matheny was a person ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... before, quoted, On Causes, each Cause infuses into its effect some of the goodness which it receives from its own Cause, which is "God." Wherefore, since in her are seen wonderful things, so much so on the part of the body that they make each beholder desirous to see those things, it is evident that her form, which is her Soul, guides it as its proper Cause and receives miraculously the gracious goodness ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... so gently shines to make romantic a lover's smile! But the reality of the Lunar night is cold beyond human belief. Cold and darkly silent. Grim desolation. Awesome. Majestic. A frowning majesty that even to the most intrepid human beholder is ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... breeze freshened, and brought us within ten miles of the island, by the close of day. St. Thomas is high, and possesses strong features. One landmark is so singular as to strike every beholder most forcibly. It is a rock, apparently not less than five hundred feet high, and shaped like a light-house, towering into the air, about a third of the distance from the southern extremity of the island. ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... a bonmot of contemporary studio life that Hawthorne rather than Story created the "Cleopatra," and one ingenious spirit suggests that as Mr. Story put nothing of expression or significance into his statues, the beholder could read into them anything he pleased; finding an empty mould, so to speak, into which to pour whatever image or embodiment he might conjure up from the infinite realm of imagination. One of the latest of these contemporary critics declares that ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... revenants, which is a good meaning enough. They must be a very aged or very stupid sort of revenants if their palingenetic substance does not thrill at the first nightly vision of Broadway, of that fairy flare of electric lights, advertising whiskeys and actresses and beers, and luring the beholder into a hundred hotels and theatres and restaurants. It is now past the hour of roof-gardens with their songs and dances, but the vaudeville is in full bloom, and the play-houses are blossoming in the bills of their new comedies and operas and burlesques. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... great visible manifestation of GOD. It is a sight, a picture, a representation, that constitutes the heavenly state, not mere thought and contemplation. The glorified saint of Scripture is especially a beholder; he gazes, he looks, he fixes his eyes upon something before him; he does not merely ruminate within, but his whole mind is carried out towards and upon a great representation. And thus Heaven specially appears in Scripture as the sphere of perfected ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... grace is to prepossess the beholder. First impressions are received through the eye. Before a word is spoken, the pose and carriage convey a significant announcement of character ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... inspecting the house, Lavretzky went out into the park, and was satisfied with it. It was all overgrown with tall grass, burdock, and gooseberry and raspberry bushes; but there was much shade in it: there were many old linden-trees, which surprised the beholder by their huge size and the strange arrangement of their branches; they had been too closely planted, and at some time or other—a hundred years before—had been pollarded. The park ended in a small, clear pond, with a rim of tall, reddish reeds. The traces of human life ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... man walking in the same direction as herself, and at the same pace. She casually noted that he looked like a distinguished foreigner, and that he had about him an indefinable suggestion of death clinging with an eager, haggard hope to life,—a suggestion which melted the heart of the beholder, as if it were the mute appeal of a drowning sailor. She was stirred to pity; and when he suddenly appeared to reel from weakness, she stepped out to him on an overwhelming impulse, laid a steadying hand on ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... much more than a sufficiency of charm to justify her friends in claiming her as a beauty, and the demand had been generally allowed by public opinion. Adelaide Palliser was always spoken of as a girl to be admired; but she was not one whose countenance would strike with special admiration any beholder who did not know her. Her eyes were pleasant and bright, and, being in truth green, might, perhaps with propriety, be described as grey. Her nose was well formed. Her mouth was, perhaps, too small. Her teeth were perfect. Her chin ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... front and faced the urn, upon their fretted pedestals and spattered with gold rose the figures of Grammar and Rhetoric with their emblems—so excellent in their workmanship and lifelike in attitude that, although mute, the excellence of their sculpture and make-up instructed [the beholder]. I do not describe the grace of their shapes, the beauty of their features, the easy flow of the hair, the undulations of the drapery, spangled with bits of glass, and the other accompaniments of beautiful ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... stands to examine it more curiously, I discovered that there were two projections from the top, resembling eye-pieces, as though inviting the beholder to gaze into the inside of the stand. Then I thought I heard a faint metallic click above my head. Raising my eyes swiftly, I read a few words written, as it were, against the dark velvet of the heavy ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... had been burnished up, and red, white, and blue streamers had been attached to the bridles, so that the whole outfit presented a very gorgeous appearance, and one intended to impress the beholder with the ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... of ornament being introduced, and only the due. Genuine sculptors, genuine painters, artists have been busy; and in fact all the suitable fine arts, and all the necessary solid ones, have worked together, with a noticeable fidelity, comfortable to the very beholder to this day. General height is about forty feet; two stories of ample proportions: the Towers overlooking them are sixty feet in height. Extent of outer frontage, if you go all round, and omit the Colonnade, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... admiration: they seem'd almost, with staring on one another, to teare the Cases of their Eyes. There was speech in their dumbnesse, Language in their very gesture: they look'd as they had heard of a World ransom'd, or one destroyed: a notable passion of Wonder appeared in them: but the wisest beholder, that knew no more but seeing, could not say, if th' importance were Ioy, or Sorrow; but in the extremitie of the one, it must needs be. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... variegated with furrows, and intersected with roads running in all directions; the whole reduced to a scale of almost graphic minuteness, and from the fleecy vapour that still partially obscured it, impressing the beholder with the idea of a vision of enchantment, which some kindly genius had, for an instant, consented to disclose. Scarcely had we time to snatch a hasty glance, ere we had passed over the spot, and the clouds uniting gradually concealed it ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... mystic meaning no doubt, although I did not understand it; but what I did understand was that the whole arrangement was designed to produce a sort of mesmerism in the beholder. ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... lovers—not lovers like Francie's, a peculiar breed, but simply lovers—trembling, blushing, silent, sought each other by flying glances, sought to meet and touch in the mazes of the dance, and now and again dancing together, struck some beholder by the light ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... day, when the young wanderer had started off to visit his friend, the farmer. But this cap very vividly and very pathetically suggested its owner. The holes in it were of every shape and size. The buttons besought the beholder to vote for suffrage, to buy liberty bonds, to join the Red Cross, to eat at Jim's Lunch Room, to use only Tyler's fresh cocoanut bars, to give a thought to Ireland. There was a Camp-fire Girls' badge, a Harding pin, a Cox pin, a Debs pin ... Hervey had been non-partisan ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... decorated with a conspicuous mirror and with Parma violets gently disengaging a delicate perfume, fell in right behind the king's household if possible, and toured the park in stately measure, being numbered, no doubt, by the open-mouthed beholder on the sidewalk, among the social ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... implanted in her life, had kindled a flame which warmed and animated the beholder. To some, I am persuaded, her example and conversation were made a blessing. Memory reflects with gratitude, whilst I write, on the profit and consolation which I individually derived from her society. Nor I alone. The last day will, if I err not, disclose ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... character—which unremitting dissipation has imparted to the inhaling apparatus of his unclassical features,—by the filthy splendor of his linen, which a low-buttoning waistcoat, gorgeous and dirty likewise, unbosoms disadvantageously to the gaze of the beholder,—by the invariable "diamond" pin, of gift-book style, with which the juncture of the first-mentioned integument is effected, if not adorned,—and, above all, by the massive guards and guy-chains with which his watch ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... mixture of stone with brick shows results in flaring contrasts, producing harsh dissonance in the effect. The facades of such buildings show that this is brick, this is stone, or this is cast iron; but they always fail to impress the beholder with the idea of harmonious design. The use of finer varieties of clay in terra cotta figures laid among the brickwork furnishes a field of architectural design hardly appreciated. The heavy mass of brick, divided by regular lines of demarkation, serves as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... 12 feet asunder, and in eleven rows, to contain sweet water. Infinite cost in channels and cisterns, from Nilus to Alexandria, hath been formerly bestowed, to the admiration of these times; [2913]their cisterns so curiously cemented and composed, that a beholder would take them to be all of one stone: when the foundation is laid, and cistern made, their house is half built. That Segovian aqueduct in Spain, is much wondered at in these days, [2914]upon three rows of pillars, one above another, conveying sweet water ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... were stopped with rombyes of cleare glasse in forme of a tryangle, and the pypes beautified all ouer with an Encaustick painting, verie gratious to the sight of the beholder. ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... her own devices, the average female has a tendency to "put on her things," and to contrive the same, in a manner that is not conducive to patience in the male beholder. Her besetting iniquity in this particular is a fondness for angles, and she is unwavering in her determination to achieve them at ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... Nature provide a more convenient resting-place for twin-glasses, than the ridge of Miss Thusa's nose, which rose with a sudden, majestic elevation, suggesting the idea of unexpectedness in the mind of the beholder. Every thing was harsh about her face, except the eyes, which had a soft, solemn, misty look, a look of prophecy, mingled with kindness and compassion, as if she pitied the evils her far-reaching vision beheld, but which she had not the power ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the whole fortune of Tomlinson vanish in a night, even as the golden palace seen in the mirage of a desert sunset may fade before the eyes of the beholder, ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... crevices grow a few cedars and vines. As the visitor approaches it by the road side its effect is grand and imposing; still more so, perhaps, when beheld from the top of the ridge, where its isolated position with its bold form, breaking the outline of the island, strikes the beholder with wonder and admiration. ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... reality apart from the knowing subject? This question has given rise to much debate. According to Hegel and Ed. Erdmann the attributes are something external to substance, something brought into it by the understanding, forms of knowledge present in the beholder alone; substance itself is neither extended nor cogitative, but merely appears to the understanding under these determinations, without which the latter would be unable to cognize it. This "formalistic" interpretation, which, relying on a passage ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... radicalness of these differences, which was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of D——, and so consistent of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document—these things, together with the hyperobtrusive situation of this document, full in the view of every visitor, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously arrived—these things, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... polluted and defiled in his own sight. He stands just before God in the justice of his Son, upon whom God looks, and for whose sake he accepts him. May not a scabbed, mangy man, a man all over-run with blains and blotches, be yet made beautiful to the view of a beholder, through the silken, silver, golden garment that may be put upon him, and may cover all his flesh? Why, the righteousness of Christ is not only unto but upon all them that believe (Rom 3:22). And whoso considers the parable ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... would be to close the play with a bang, and even a worthy one-act play does not close with a bang. The back of the lot is not the absolute end of the garden-play. Like the stage-play, the garden-play brings its beholder back at the very last, by a sweet reversion, to the point from which it started. The true garden-lover gardens not mainly for the passer-by, but rather for himself and the friends who come to see him. ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... darkening sky swept a rosy pencil of living light; that utterly strange, pure beam whose coming never fails to clutch the throat of the beholder with the hand of ecstasy, the ray which the Tibetans name the Ting-Pa. For a moment this rosy finger pointed to the east, then arched itself, divided slowly into six shining, rosy bands; began to creep downward toward the eastern horizon where a nebulous, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... recollection of long-departed years. Compare the loveliest of the Madonnas of Correggio and Raphael with the Venus of Cos, and we perceive the inferiority of mere physical perfection to that spiritual beauty that exalts the soul of the beholder, and awakens the slumber of his ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... though an undeniably good servant, and a cleanly one, striking the beholder as a creature born to unlimited caps and spotless aprons, is undoubtedly obtuse. She presents her back hair and heels—that would not have disgraced an elephant—to Miss Massereene's call, and goes on calmly with her occupation of shaking out and hanging ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... with glistening crystals from the mammoth cave of South Dakota. Emerging again to broad daylight, we bent our steps southward to that portion of the building, where the silver model of the Horticultural Hall and the miniature Capitol of the Country compelled the admiration of the beholder. ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... himselfe, and his honorable son L. William Howard that now is, aboord the Honor de la mer, and there remained in the fight till the battell was ended. The fight was very terrible, and most hideous to the beholder by the continuall discharging of those roaring thundering great peeces, on all sides, and so continued doubtful till about one or two of the clocke in the afternoone: about which time the Philip, whom in ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... beams most glorious are, rejecteth no beholder, And your sweet beauty past compare made my poor eyes the bolder, Where beauty moves, and wit delights and signs of kindness bind me There, O there! where'er I go I'll leave ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... radiant to look upon in palest green chiffon. She had an exquisite little head, with soft hair piled with wondrous lightness upon it, and her long little neck swayed like the stem of a flower. She was lovely enough to arouse in the beholder's mind the anticipation of her being silly, but she was not silly ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that the dispute was transferred to the newspapers, and narrowly escaped degenerating from a war of "cards" to a conflict with pistols. But the Speaker triumphed; the House and the country sustained him. On occasions of ceremony the Speaker enchanted every beholder by the superb dignity of his bearing, the fitness of his words, and the tranquil depth of his tones. What could be more eloquent, more appropriate, than the Speaker's address of welcome to Lafayette, when the guest ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... hale, with the zest of a juicy old apple, slightly withered but still sappy. It should be mentioned that he had a dimple in his cheek which flashed unexpectedly when he smiled. It gave him a roguish—almost boyish—effect most appealing to the beholder. Especially the feminine beholder. Much of his spoiling at the hands of Ma Minick had doubtless been due to this mere depression ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... swallow, and the affection of the brain was fast blocking up the senses, so that blindness and deafness came on, and passed into that insensibility in which the last struggles of life are, as they tell us, rather agonising to the beholder than to the sufferer. It was at sundown at last that the mightiest and gentlest spirit I ever knew was ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... am so anxious to do so. Look here, Clement. I stood there among the crowd this evening, gazing upon that bleeding and dying woman, until the sight of her ghastly form and face seemed to affect me as the Medusa's head was said to have affected the beholder, and turn me into stone. Clement, I was so petrified that I could not move or speak, even when she appealed to us all to know whether any among us could believe her to be capable of such an act. I could not speak; I could ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... when, in later years, I should visit the principal galleries of Europe, and see the masterpieces of each master, I still should return to the memory of Allston's works as to something most precious and unique in Art. I have also, since that time, come to believe, that, while every sensitive beholder must feel the charm of Allston's style, its intellectual ripeness can be fully appreciated only by the aid of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... clustering about King Arthur, Tennyson has patently purposed painting the figure of a perfect man. How well he has executed his design depends on himself much, on the beholder much. Onlookers differ in opinion. Painters have their clientage. Poets are not omniscient; neither are we, a thing we are prone to forget. For myself, I confess not to see with those who deride the king, nor yet ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... has many lingering traces of Eden yet remaining, which enrapture the eye of the beholder. But there is no sight in all the world so beautiful as that of a well-ordered, harmonious Christian home,—a home where love reigns; where each esteems the other better than himself; where the parents are careful to practise what they preach; where the daily lessons instilled ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... solitude, whence, if they truly love, an infinite prospect is unrolled before them. They know desire; but as their passion was hopeless in this world, their steps were mercifully set upon a new path, whereby the bodily semblance of the beloved became the symbol of spiritual comeliness, alluring the beholder into the peace of a serene and unworldly mood. A thin and rarefied ideal, you say, a mirage which no wayfarer can approach: experience rejects these subtleties, and to these creations of a dream human affection was never given. True, to hearts established and content in happy unions, to ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... these native missionaries. He had saved two lives at the risk of his own; like Nathan, he had bearded a tyrant in his hour of blood; when a whole white population fled, he alone stood to his duty; and his behaviour under domestic sorrow with which the public has no concern filled the beholder with sympathy and admiration. A poor little smiling laborious man he looked; and you would have thought he had nothing in him but that of which indeed he had ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... privilege he had once thought it. Yet, in reality, the towers of the college had never looked more formidable. Rising magnificently at the crest of a bleak expanse of snow, the embrasured battlements, silhouetted against the sunset sky, might well have suggested to a beholder grim thoughts of mediaeval strongholds and robber barons. The red orb of the sun, hovering just above the rim of the western hills, flashed successively through the windows of the long, low hall, like a running trail ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... shrub nor a root appears; and the bed of the brook Cedron is completely dry. This river only flows during the rainy season, at which period it runs through a deep ravine. Majestic rocky terraces, piled one above the other by nature with such exquisite symmetry that the beholder gazes in silent wonder, overhang both banks of the stream in the ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... farther advanced in the arts of civilization. The several Indian tribes in America have been compared to the fragments of a vast ruin. And though these vestiges of a remote period in the past may not awaken the same grand associations in the mind of the beholder as the majestic ruins of Greece and Rome, yet they cannot fail to excite feelings of veneration for the memory of a numerous people, whose lingering signs of greatness are widely visible from the western borders of North ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... eyes, and soft seraphic cheeks, Crimson as cleft pomegranates, their long tresses, The gesture which enchants, the eye that speaks, The innocence which happy childhood blesses, Made quite a picture of these little Greeks; So that the philosophical beholder Sigh'd for their sakes—that they should ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... hundred and fifty feet from the ground, is elaborately and allegorically groined. The work was done when the whole church was restored about half a century ago, and has not the claim of medieval whim upon the fancy. Not so much pleasure as he might wish mingles with the marvel of the beholder, who carries a crick in the neck away from the sight, and yet once, but not more, in a way, it is worth while to have had the sight. Certainly this treatment of the tower is unique; there is nothing to compare with it in Boston, Massachusetts, and cannot be even when the interior ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... is situated on a lofty range of thickly wooded hills, and commands an extensive view of the ocean, for fifty miles both north and south. A view from the top of it, at once convinces the beholder that it would be impossible to select a place more convenient for the haunt of a gang of pirates; as all vessels bound in and out of the harbors of Boston, Salem, and the adjacent ports, can be distinctly seen from its summit. Saugus river meanders among the hills a short ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... itself—not to mention the shadowy region beyond it—on which the body of the pirate had lain, he could not regard without a sense of the awfully gruesome: itself looked scared at its own consciousness of the fact, and of the feeling it caused in the beholder. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Such is the fate of criticism without knowledge! And now, to close our Masques, let me apply the forcible style of Ben Jonson himself: "The glory of all these solemnities had perished like a blaze, and gone out in the beholder's eyes; so short-lived are the bodies of all things in comparison ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... best of all is too spiritual to be given directly to the senses; it must be born in the imagination of the beholder, although begotten by ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... has given it rather the face of age, than that of ruins, for it still stands firm and upright; and though not quite perfect in every part, yet it preserves all its due proportions, and enough of its original and lesser beauties, to astonish and delight every beholder, and that too in a very particular manner. It is said, and I have felt the truth of it in part, that there does not exist, at this day, any building, ancient or modern, which conveys so secret a pleasure, not only to the ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... and bright in a firmament of that most brilliant and transparent blue, which I have witnessed in no other country than America, so pure, so cloudless, so immeasurably distant as it seems from the beholder's eye! There was not a speck of cloud from east to west, from zenith to horizon; not a fleece of vapor on the mountain sides; not a breath of air to ruffle the calm basin of ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... I rest so composedly, Now, in my bed, That any beholder Might fancy me dead— Might start at ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... rented the farm, but, finding this unsatisfactory, he, in a moment of disgust, advertised it for sale. Pretentious in its plan and in its appointments, its neglected and run down condition gave it an air of decayed gentility, depressing alike to the eye of the beholder and to the selling price of the owner. Haley bought it and bought it cheap. From the high road a magnificent avenue of maples led to a house of fine proportions, though sadly needing repair. The wide verandahs, the ample steps were unpainted and falling into ruin; the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... and was very sensitive to its associations with the toils and triumphs of mankind. Born beside the Thames, he grew up among boats and fraternized with sailors all his life. It was impossible for him to be the beholder of such a scene as the Temeraire's approach to her last moorings, save as a poet-painter; and stirred to the putting forth of all his powers, this Fighting ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... camels and wagons, richly laden with gold, jewels, and other spoils. He brought to the East the novelties of the West, hawks, mules, and Barbary horses, and the curious fruits of Africa and Spain, "treasures," we are told, "the like of which no hearer ever heard of before, and no beholder ever ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... Eton College suggests nothing to Gray which every beholder does not equally think and feel. His supplication to father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself[197] His epithet, "buxom health," is not elegant; he seems not to understand the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... life, to serve as a background for the English romance he hoped to write afterwards. "On the mantle-piece," he writes, "are two little glass vases, and over it a looking-glass (not flattering to the beholder), and above hangs a colored view of some lake or seashore, and on each side a cheap colored print of Prince Albert and one of Queen Victoria. And, really, I have seen no picture, bust, or statue of her Majesty ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... come all those things, over and above mere subsistence, which astonish the beholder, when he reflects that this colony has been planted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... become in wisdom wisest; In skill[28] most skilful, thou, obtaining all things. A bull in virile strength, thou, and in greatness; In splendor wast thou splendid, man-beholder. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... in large gilt letters. Happily this ostentation is out; you may therefore hope, when the evil day comes, fallere, to escape notice. I hope the painter will give you that bold audacious look which may stare the beholder in the face, and deny your own identity; no small advantage, for doubtless the "[Greek: semata lugra]" of Bellerophon was but his portrait, which, by a hang-look expression, intimatd death. Your painter may be ignorant of phrenology, and, without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... lesser current, 's lost; Thy nobler streams shall visit Jove's abodes, To shine among the stars,[5] and bathe the gods. Here Nature, whether more intent to please Us or herself with strange varieties, (For things of wonder give no less delight To the wise maker's, than beholder's sight; 200 Though these delights from sev'ral causes move; For so our children, thus our friends, we love), Wisely she knew the harmony of things, As well as that of sounds, from discord springs. Such was the discord, which did first disperse Form, order, beauty, through the universe; ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... de tie cxi! Beguile (deceive) trompi. Beguile amuzi. Behalf parto. Behave konduti. Behaviour konduto. Behead senkapigi. Behind (prep.) post. Behind (adv.) poste. Behold rigardi. Beholder rigardanto. Behoof profito. Being estajxo. Belabour bategi. Belch rukti. Belfry sonorilejo. Belgian Belgo. Belgium Belgujo. Belie kalumnii. Belief kredo. Believe kredi. Bell sonorilo. Bell (door, etc.) sonorileto. Bell (ornament) tintilo. Bell ringer sonorigisto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... it would be a good plan to give a ball. All the most distinguished people in Amsterdam were invited to it. The ball and supper were of the most splendid description, and Esther, who was a blaze of diamonds, danced all the quadrilles with me, and charmed every beholder ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... number. Egypt has a human history that is almost appalling to the thoughtful mind; this limitless stretch of time may, in part, explain the peculiar, indefinable charm that Cairo has upon the imagination of the beholder, thus winning for herself the appropriate name of the "Mysterious City ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... American, so there! I won't be a baroness!" Her great black eyes flashed lightnings at the girls, who looked at her in consternation. Veronica, in a passion, was something to strike awe into the breast of the beholder. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... and there upon the hillsides, the whole visible universe was then covered with deep snow, the nethermost layer of which had been deposited by an early December storm. It was a sight to make the beholder torpid, in the impossibility of imagining how this vast white napkin was to be removed from the face of the corpse-like world in less time than had been required to spread it there. But who can estimate the power of gentle influences, whether ...
— Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a scene to surprise more than to entertain the beholder. The avalanche promised disaster to the participants in it. Tons upon tons of sand, undulating and sinuous in appearance, traveled faster and yet faster behind the old gray mare and the gray old sea captain. The smoke of the slide hid all that lay behind them, and ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... male, both in size and plumage. The eye is less vivid. In the male it is of the most brilliant fiery orange, inclosed in a well-defined circle of red. The eye is in truth its finest feature, and never fails to strike the beholder with admiration. ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... her contemporaries, Daniel de Barrios, says that "she was an accomplished linguist, wrote delightful letters, composed exquisite verses, played the lute like a maestro, and sang like an angel. Her sparkling black eyes sent piercing darts into every beholder's heart, and she was famed for beauty as well as intellect." She made a noble Spanish translation of Pastor Fido, the most popular Italian drama of the day, and published a volume of poems, also in Spanish. Antonio dos Reys ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Forever from the fount whence comes his thought." [9] Thus Beatrice; and those enraptured spirits Made themselves spheres around their steadfast poles, Flaming intensely in the guise of comets. And as the wheels in works of horologes Revolve so that the first to the beholder Motionless seems, and the last one to fly, So in like manner did those carols, dancing [16] In different measure, by their affluence Make me esteem them either swift or slow. From that one which I noted of most beauty Beheld I issue forth a fire so happy That none it left there of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... distress, and sinks under the blows of fortune, at the end of a Tragedy, than when he is represented as happy and triumphant. Such an example corrects the insolence of human nature, softens the mind of the beholder with sentiments of pity and compassion, comforts him under his own private affliction, and teaches him not to judge of mens virtues by their successes[40]. I cannot think of one real hero in all antiquity so far raised above human infirmities, that he ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... it "like showers of steel," and at last, down upon the shore and by the surf among the turmoil of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, "the tremendous sea itself," that came rolling in with an awful noise absolutely confounding to the beholder! In all fiction there is no grander description than that of one of the sublimest spectacles in nature. The merest fragments of it conjured up the entire scene—aided as those fragments were by the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... arcades, and having flower-gardens; statues, and a splendid fountain in the centre. To see this extraordinary scene to the greatest advantage, the first visit should be by night, and the impulsive coup-d'oeil tempts the beholder to imagine that he has around him the realization of some gay dream of a fairy palace, the immense glare of light glittering on the falling waters, the brilliance of the illuminated shops; the magnificence and richness of the articles therein displayed, with reflecting ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... is seen to be allied to time, and architecture to space, because music is successive in its mode of manifestation, and in time alone everything would occur successively, one thing following another; while architecture, on the other hand, impresses itself upon the beholder all at once, and in space alone all things would exist simultaneously. Music, which is in time alone, without any relation to space; and architecture, which is in space alone, without any relation to time, are thus seen to stand at opposite ends of the art spectrum, and to be, in a sense, ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... 23d of June we arrived in Madras roads; from the deck the view of the land has a magnificent appearance; the different offices have, to the beholder, the appearance of stone, and they are formed along the beach in a beautiful manner; they are built with piazzas and verandahs, and they extend about one mile along a sandy beach, while the natives parading along the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... seems to bisect the town into equal parts. A small open space, (which however has been miserably encroached upon by petty shops) called the Flower-garden, is before this western front; so that it has some little breathing room in which to expand its beauties to the wondering eyes of the beholder. In my poor judgment, this western front has very few elevations comparable with it[37]—including even those of Lincoln and York. The ornaments, especially upon the three porches, between the two towers, are ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... peak of the Jungfrau, which seemed near him, though it rose afar off from the bosom of the Lauterbrunner Thal. There it stood, holy and high and pure, the bride of heaven, all veiled and clothed in white, and lifted the thoughts of the beholder heavenward. O, he little thought then, as he gazed at it with longing and delight, how soon a form was to arise in his own soul, as holy, and high, and pure as this, and like ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... lightning, and one hundred feet fell upon the south aisle. The approach from Redcliffe Street is very impressive. The highly-ornamented tower, the west front of the church, its unrivalled north porch, and the transept, with flying buttresses, pinnacles, and parapet, cannot fail to gratify every beholder. The building stands on a hill, and is approached by a magnificent flight of steps, guarded by a heavy balustrade. In length, the church and the Lady Chapel is two hundred and thirty-nine feet; from north to ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... blushed with a kind of cold passion through the clear yellow skin of the cheek, the fulness of the red, voluptuous lips and the roundness of her perfect neck, gave her, even at fourteen, a barbaric and magnetic beauty, that startled the beholder like an unexpected drawing out of a jewelled sword. Such a type could have sprung only from high Latin ancestry on the one side and—we might venture—Jaloff African on the other. To these charms of person she added mental acuteness, conversational adroitness, concealed ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... Pond, Pennsylvania, that is an alleged relic of the Silurian age. It was last seen in September, 1887, when it unrolled thirty feet of itself before the eyes of an alarmed spectator—again a fisherman. The beholder struck him with a pole, and in revenge the serpent capsized his boat; but he forbore to eat his enemy, and, diving to the bottom, disappeared. The creature had a black body, about six inches thick, ringed with dingy-yellow ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... and concealed, each of the tiny vermilion flames performing its part in the aerial mazy dance, the spectacle is singularly beautiful. In the marshy districts is seen the large elater, which displays both red and green lights; the red glare, like that of a lamp, alternately flashing on the beholder, then concealed as the insect turns his body in flight, but the ruddy reflection on the grass beneath being constantly visible as it leisurely pursues its course. Now and then a green light is displayed, and then the mingling of the two ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... into creases that robbed that part of the face of any semblance to humanity. The other side was whole, but the entire expression was so horrible that even familiarity did little to prevent repulsion in the senses of the beholder. ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... behind arches, fretted with gold, and touched with the rays of the morning sun. Around me, a wilderness of marble; with colors, as variegated and rich as our autumnal woods; columns, pillars, altars, tombs, statues, pictures set in ever-during stone; objects to strike the beholder with neverceasing wonder. And on this mighty pavement, stood a multitude of many thousands; and through bright lines of soldiery, stretching far down the majestic nave, slowly advanced a solemn and stately procession, clothed with purple, and crimson, and white, and blazing ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... The sisters, for such the resemblance between the younger females denoted them to be, were in all the pride of youth, and the roses, so eminently the property of the Westchester fair, glowed on their cheeks, and lighted their deep blue eyes with that luster which gives so much pleasure to the beholder, and which indicates so much internal innocence and peace. There was much of that feminine delicacy in the appearance of the three, which distinguishes the sex in this country; and, like the gentleman, their demeanor proved them to be women of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... both inspiring and chastening; with the scenic grandeurs to give the exalted uplift, and the still, gray-green face of the vast mountainous desert to shrink the beholder to microscopic littleness in the face of its stupendous heights and depths, its immeasurable bulks and interspaces. Miss Alicia said something like this to Ford, in broken exclamations, when she had taken her first quailing eye-plunge ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the most vital material of human subsistence. The corn-supply now came almost entirely from Africa and Egypt; the inner meaning of this old ritual could not be revived, and we must own that all this restoration of the old caerimonia must have appealed rather to the eye than the mind of the beholder. It was necessary to put some new element into it to give it life. Here we come upon a most important fact in the work of Augustus, which will become apparent if we take a rapid glance at the work and history of the Fratres, and then go on to ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... needs go as a Diana, and obliged all her ladies to be habited like nymphs: no idea of this goddess, inspired either by the painter or the poet's art, can in any degree come up to that which the fight of this amiable princess gave every beholder. Conformable to the character she assumed, she had a large crescent of diamonds on her head, which had no other covering than a great quantity of the finest hair in the world, partly braided with pearls and emeralds, and partly ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... was a glory to behold—a perfect panorama of rioting greens, yellows, browns, blues, reds, grays, crimsons, purples, in fact, every colour which an artist's palette could carry; and through it all was ever woven a mass of lace-like brilliant white that dazzled the eyes of the beholder. Only once in fifty years have I ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... mossy structure, with four pearl-white eggs, looking out upon some wild scene and overhung by beetling crags. After all has been said about the elaborate, high-hung structures, few nests, perhaps, awaken more pleasant emotions in the mind of the beholder than this of the pewee,—the gray, silent rocks, with caverns and dens where the fox and the wolf lurk, and just out of their reach, in a little niche, as if it ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... rich to afford. When she was ready to set forth, she had never looked so well in her life. Her toilet SEEMED a mere detail. In fact, it was some such subtlety as those arrangements of lines and colors in great pictures, whereby the glance of the beholder is unconsciously compelled toward the central figure, just as water in a funnel must go toward the aperture at the bottom. Jane felt, not without reason, that she had executed a stroke of genius. She was wearing nothing that could awaken Victor Dorn's prejudices about fine clothes, for he ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... marvellous charm. This fascination was something quite different from ordinary beauty. Its seat was in her eyes, which many thought not at all beautiful, for they were like those gems called aquamarine, of a puzzling tint varying from blue to green, lustrous and lapping the beholder with their gentle lambency, except when passion moved her, when I have seen them glow with a menacing light as though they might shoot forth green flames. But now she was all loveliness. The vicissitudes of her tragic life had left no trace ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... furiously against one of the paddle-boxes of the steamer that the destruction of all on board seemed inevitable. Through all these trying scenes the fragile, sylph-like duchess manifested intrepidity which excited the wonder and admiration of every beholder. The little skiff which was to convey her to the beach soon disappeared in the ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... couch of crimson velvet, sat a young lady of rare and dazzling beauty. Her face was a long but perfect oval, pure forehead, straight nose, with exquisite nostrils; coral lips, and ivory teeth. But what first struck the beholder were her glorious dark eyes, and magnificent eyebrows as black as jet. Her hair was really ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... he had a splendid edifice constructed-which to this day delights the beholder by the symmetry of its proportions in memory of the hour when he escaped death as by a miracle; on its pylon he caused the battle of Kadesh to be represented in beautiful pictures in relief, and there, as well as on the architrave of the great banqueting—hall, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... perseverance, such as making puns, making epigrams, making extempore verses, mimicking the company, mimicking a style, etc.... Accomplishments are certain external graces, which are to be learnt from others, and which are easily displayed to the admiration of the beholder, viz. dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on.... Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry, such as writing a criticism, making a speech, studying the law."[9] These innocent looking definitions are probably ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... but unequal results as to their respective origins. The bridge, built by human hands, is, indeed, a triumph of the perfection of skilful contrivance; the strength and beauty of the arch are among the most simple yet exquisite results of science, wonderful as they may appear to the untaught beholder: but how shall we explain the formation of stupendous rock-arches across deep ravines and rolling torrents, in countries where none but the wild and picturesque forms of nature rise to gladden the eye and heart of the inquiring traveller? Of the latter description ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... glorious winter day. Denver, standing on her high plateau under a thrilling green-blue sky, is masked in snow and glittering with sunlight. The Capitol building is actually in armor, and throws off the shafts of the sun until the beholder is dazzled and the outlines of the building are lost in a blaze of reflected light. The stone terrace is a white field over which fiery reflections dance, and the trees and bushes are faithfully repeated in snow—on every black twig a soft, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... facio, I make; and visio, a sight; all of which taken together make up and mean a happy-making sight. Therefore, in its very etymology, Beatific Vision means a sight which contains in itself the power of banishing all pain, all sorrow from the beholder, and of infusing, in their stead, joy and happiness. We shall now analyze it, and see wherein it consists; for it is only by doing so that we can arrive at the clear idea of it, ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... faith, as a grace in us, severed from the righteousness of Christ, is only a beholder of things, but not a justifier of persons; and that if it lay not hold of and applieth not that righteousness which is in Christ, it carries us no further than ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... on either side. It is pierced by two doors, which lead to the shrine of S. Cuthbert, immediately behind the screen. Though very light and graceful in appearance, the screen, as it is at present, can give the beholder little idea of what its appearance must have been when each of its canopied niches contained a figure aglow with gold and colour. There were originally 107 of these statues, the centre one representing Our Lady, supported ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... open windows and door, while inside, seated on a couch, was a beautiful girl of fifteen (whom Will had often imagined, but had not yet seen), whose auburn hair shone like gold in the sun, contrasting well with her lovely complexion, and enhancing the sweetness of a smile which conveyed to the beholder only one idea—love. Many other castles were built in the clouds at that time by Will, but the cottage made the most lasting impression on ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... commonplace, and some fantastical, and altogether, a medley of strange, undecipherable, yet impressive combination of devices, well calculated to excite a feeling of awe, and, with the timid, of terror, in the mind of the beholder. Into this singular assemblage Hurd was ushered, a wilderness of confused images before him. He was taken through a course introductory to the more serious parts of the formula of induction into the order, which were intended to increase the first bewildered impressions ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison |
