"Comeliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... male acquaintances did not at this time appear. Leonard Everard, who had some time ago finished his course at college, was living partly in London and partly on the Continent. His very absence made him of added interest to his old play-fellow. The image of his grace and comeliness, of his dominance and masculine force, early impressed on her mind, began to compare favourably with the actualities of her other friends; those of them at least who were within the circle of her personal interest. 'Absence makes ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... and melancholy. The snaky paths to each observed law Did Policy in her broad bosom draw. 130 One hand a mathematic crystal sways, Which, gathering in one line a thousand rays From her bright eyes, Confusion burns to death, And all estates of men distinguisheth: By it Morality and Comeliness Themselves in all their sightly figures dress. Her other hand a laurel rod applies, To beat back Barbarism and Avarice, That follow'd, eating earth and excrement And human limbs; and would make proud ascent 140 To seats of gods, were Ceremony slain. The Hours and Graces bore ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... arguments of this public nature pressed on the mind of Isabella, she was not insensible to those which most powerfully affect the female heart. Ferdinand was then in the bloom of life, and distinguished for the comeliness of his person. In the busy scenes, in which he had been engaged from his boyhood, he had displayed a chivalrous valor, combined with maturity of judgment far above his years. Indeed, he was decidedly superior to his rivals in personal merit and attractions. [45] But, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... somewhat ruffled. She was a homely little woman with nothing of the ordinary Musgrave comeliness. Candor even compels the statement that in her pudgy swarthy face there was a droll suggestion of ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... comeliness of the daughters of Israel, nor their shekels, nor their brains, nor their ancient and most valuable blood. It knows the secret virtue of that mechanical transfusion of fluids familiar to science under the name of "endosmoses" and "exosmoses" (I hope I have spelled them rightly), ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... a figure awkward, as yet, but fast shaping to comeliness. Long, light hair covered the tops of his ears and fell to his collar. His ruddy cheeks were a bit paler that morning; the curve in his lips a little drawn; his blue eyes had begun to fill and the dimple in his chin to quiver, slightly, ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground; he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him there is no beauty that ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... work, unstinted, unrecompensed; of unabated lofty hopes for the great interests of the Church and the University; of deep unpretending matter-of-course godliness and goodness—without "form or comeliness" to attract any but those who cared for them, for themselves alone. It is almost a sacred duty to those who remember one who cared nothing for his own name or fame to recall what is the truth—that no one did more to persuade those round him of the solid underground religious reality of the movement. ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... she would coax Lord Ernle's big blood-hound "Valor" to come and lie beside her, she would sit more quiet, almost as though she were asleep. And she would ask me ever and again, "Nurse, wherefore are women at any time born with dark hair, to mar ev'n such small comeliness ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... in the doorway shook her head. She was thin and narrow-chested. Her hair was already gray, though she could not have been more than thirty-five, and youth and comeliness had been long since battered from her face, partly by misery of mind, partly by direct ill usage of which there were evident traces. She looked ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... can see any Virtue or Comeliness in a Charles Stuart," says Father, "can hardly be expected to acknowledge the rugged Merits of a ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... largest islands hereabout; and also, collectively, upon several wooded isles engulfing it, which together were known as the dominions of one monarch. That monarch was Donjalolo. Just turned of twenty-five, he was accounted not only the handsomest man in his dominions, but throughout the lagoon. His comeliness, however, was so feminine, that he was sometimes called "Fonoo," or ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... said Susan, dropping her quizzing manner, "I am a long way behind the marigold or any flower in comeliness and innocence, but at least I wish ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself! A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these things are graceful in a friend's ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... his face; and he was a much more jolly personage than his sister; younger than she, too, and still vigorous. Unlike her, also, he was a handsome man; had been very handsome in his young days; and, as Mrs. Barclay's eye roved over the table, she thought few could show a better assemblage of comeliness than was gathered round this one. Madge was strikingly handsome in her well-fitting black dress; Lois made a very plain brown stuff seem resplendent; she had a little fleecy white woollen shawl wound about her shoulders, and Mrs. Barclay could hardly keep ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... can for her," said Storms. "With the material which I have on hand we can construct garments that will keep her clad with comeliness, though she may not be in the fashion; and yet I don't know but what she will," he added, with a smile, "for we may strike some of the vagaries without knowing it. Then, too, she must ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... and comeliness of the young wife! Gone her health and allurement! Perished all her loveliness! Her garments were the garments of a scarecrow. Despite all these things the girl was innocent. But she realized her husband's horror and mistook it for disgust. She pitched ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... housed in Eaten Place by Mr. Whitbread, the head of the renowned firm. After my recovery I had the good fortune to meet there Lady Morgan, the once famous authoress of the 'Wild Irish Girl.' She still bore traces of her former comeliness, and had probably lost little of her sparkling vivacity. She was known to like the company of young people, as she said they made her feel young; so, being the youngest of the party, I had the honour of sitting next her at dinner. When I recall her conversation and her pleasing manners, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... an abiding loneliness (as with Pope and Ufford and Sire Raimbaut)—and wherein one very often is allured into unsavory alleys (as with Herrick and Alessandro de Medici)—in search of that raw material which loving labor will transshape into comeliness. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... when first their father was vexed in his heart with Obriareus and Cottus and Gyes, he bound them in cruel bonds, because he was jealous of their exceeding manhood and comeliness and great size: and he made them live beneath the wide-pathed earth, where they were afflicted, being set to dwell under the ground, at the end of the earth, at its great borders, in bitter anguish for a long time and with great grief at heart. But the son of Cronos and the other ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... grow out of this power of imagination; and the reason why the souls of whom I am going to speak were so content to dwell where they were, was simply that they had no imagination beyond, but dwelt happily among the delights which upon earth are represented by sound and colour and scent and comeliness and comfort. This was a perpetual surprise to me, because I saw in these fine creatures such a faculty of delicate perception, that I could not help believing again and again that their emotions were as deep and ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... excuse for self-complacency. He was very pleasant to look upon, with an air of having always been popular with his fellows, and the favourite of women; this, too, was borne out by his history. Not a beautiful man, by any means, but the best type of English comeliness: ruddy-coloured, straight, and healthy; muscular, but without a suggestion of brutality. His yellow moustache, a shade lighter than his hair—which, although he wore it cropped, showed a tendency to be curling—concealed a mouth that was his only questionable feature. It was not the sensitive mouth ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... bend, and were ready to lick the dust of his feet. They also wished a thousand times over that he would become their Prince and Captain, and would become their protection. They would also one to another talk of the comeliness of his person, and how much for glory and valour he outstripped the great ones of the world. But, poor hearts, as to themselves, their thoughts would chance, and go upon all manner of extremes. Yea, through the working of them backward ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... of the censers, candle-sticks, chalices, and albs took some time, and John was a little aggressive in his explanation of Catholic ceremonial, and its grace and comeliness compared with the stiffness and materialism of the Protestant service. Handsome lads of sixteen were chosen for acolytes; the torch-bearers were selected from the smallest boys, the office of censer was filled by himself, and he was also the chief sacristan, and had charge ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... therefore, however much Justice may be identical with doing your own business, and leaving your neighbour free to do his, yet this relation obtaining among the various parts of the soul cannot properly be called Justice. What Plato defines is the beauty, good order, and moral comeliness of the soul, but not Justice in any sense, inasmuch as it is not referred to any being human or divine, collective or individual, outside ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... I shall not disoblige my Reader, if I here enlarge into a further character of his person and temper. As first, that he was moderately tall: his behaviour had in it much of a plain comeliness, and very little, yet enough, of ceremony or courtship; his looks and motion manifested affability and mildness, and yet he had with these a calm, but so matchless a fortitude, as secured him from complying with any ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... with so much of anguish in his martyred features as may serve to heighten his daemonic fascination. On the richer panels of the Venetian masters he glows with a flame of earthly passion aspiring heavenward. Under Guido's hand he is a model of mere carnal comeliness. And so forth through the whole range of the Italian painters. We know Sebastian only by his arrows. The case is very different with Antinous. Depicted under diverse attributes—as Hermes of the wrestling-ground, as Aristaeus or Vertumnus, as Dionysus, as Ganymede, as Herakles, or as a god of ancient ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... girl in Fidelis whose comeliness so nearly drew the hero from his old allegiance, has 'a strong and good, rather than a pretty, face,' with a 'large and substantial figure.' Adam Drewe concluded on first sight of her that she was a nice woman. Later on he finds her 'looking the very incarnation of home, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... the world, the propaganda of Tea met with opposition. Heretics like Henry Saville (1678) denounced drinking it as a filthy custom. Jonas Hanway (Essay on Tea, 1756) said that men seemed to lose their stature and comeliness, women their beauty through the use of tea. Its cost at the start (about fifteen or sixteen shillings a pound) forbade popular consumption, and made it "regalia for high treatments and entertainments, presents being made thereof to princes and grandees." Yet ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... overarching canopy of living boughs, on the edge of a natural lawn of verdure starred with flowers, through which a swift transparent rivulet ran sparkling in the sun. The board was covered with abundance of choice food and excellent liquor, not without the comeliness of snow-white linen and the splendour of costly plate, which the sheriff of Nottingham had unwillingly contributed to supply, at the same time with an excellent cook, whom Little John's art had spirited away to the forest ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... 13th of his reign, and in some traits of character reminded men of his grandfather, the devout Nial "of the Showers." The Bards have celebrated the justice of his judgments, the goodness of his heart, and the comeliness of his "brunette-bright face." He left a son of age to succeed him, (and who ultimately did become Ard-Righ,) yet the present popularity of Melaghlin of Meath triumphed over every other interest, and he was raised to the monarchy—the first of his family who had ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... more wondrous and more awful than all else in the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphinx. Comely the creature is, but the comeliness is not of this world; the once worshiped beast is a deformity and a monster to this generation, and yet you can see that those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some ancient mold of beauty—some mold of beauty now forgotten—forgotten because that Greece drew forth Cytherea ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... either by Love or by Ambition, which are the Noblest of passions, and that they be imputed to the evil counsell of Flatterers; that so the respect, which is alwayes due unto Kings, may be preserved. You shall see there, Reader, if I be not deceived, the comeliness of things and conditions exactly enough observed; neither have I put any thing into my Book, which the Ladies may not read without blushing. And if you see not my Hero persecuted with Love by Women, it is not because he was not amiable, and that he could not be loved, ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... would not allow, by any means, that this should be called Pride, {130c} but rather neatness, handsomness, comeliness, cleanliness, &c. neither would he allow that following of fashions was any thing else, but because he would not be proud, singular, and ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... and hot at midnight; the springs at San Filippo, Italy, that have built up a calcareous wall over a mile long and several hundred feet thick; the renowned springs of Cashmere, that are believed by the people to be the source of the comeliness of their women,—if I were to follow up my subject in this direction, I say, it would lead me into deeper and more troubled waters than I am in ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... period elapsed at the time when our story begins; and though earnestly desiring male issue, that his name and race might be perpetuated, yet was the sole fruit of their union hitherto a daughter, named Isabel, then just entering on her tenth year. Her winning and surpassing comeliness proved no solace to his disappointment. He grew moodish and melancholy in the midst of his vast wealth; apprehending the utter extinction of his name, and the intrusion of a stranger on his birthright. Hopeless of other issue by his own lady, he had recourse ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure. And so he will see even the real gaping jaws of wild beasts with no less pleasure than those which painters and sculptors show by imitation; and in an old woman and an old man he will be able to see a certain maturity and comeliness; and the attractive loveliness of young persons he will be able to look on with chaste eyes; and many such things will present themselves, not pleasing to every man, but to him only who has become truly familiar with ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... mean—thank you for coming to see me!" It was the second time old Maisie had said "my dear" to this acquaintance of an hour. But then, her face, that youth's comeliness ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... left his. All the time they seemed to be fiercely questioning, seeking for something in his features which eluded them. It was terrible to see the change which the last few minutes had wrought in her. Her smooth, girlish face had lost its comeliness. Her eyes, always a little narrow, seemed to have receded. It was such a change, this, as comes to a brave man who, in the prime of life, feels ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reconcile, to arbitrate between the two voices of God,—but a sense of the utter nothingness of worms such as we are; of our plain and absolute incapacity to contemplate things as they really are; a perception of our emptiness before the great Vision of God; of our "comeliness being turned into corruption, and our retaining no strength"; a conviction that what is put before us, whether in nature or in grace, is but an intimation, useful for particular purposes, useful for practice, useful in its ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; this will lead him on to consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend it, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until his beloved is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and understand that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... who inherited the personal comeliness and ability of his father, little is recorded except the following story. Having fallen into the water and been nearly drowned when he was about twelve years old, he was afterwards accused of having been afraid: "I was so little ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... influences of that century, is still a noticeable phenomenon in it, and the reaction in favour of naturalism in poetry begins in that century, early. There are, thus, the born romanticists and the born classicists. There are the born classicists who start with form, to whose minds the comeliness of the old, immemorial, well-recognised types in art and literature, have revealed themselves impressively; who will entertain no matter which will not go easily and flexibly into them; whose work aspires only to be a variation upon, or study from, the older masters. ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... fair, my bride, to me, "I will behold no spot in thee." What mighty wonders love performs, And puts a comeliness on worms! ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... you will pardon me if I also remembered that I was a favourable-looking young man. When we grow elderly, how the room brightens, and begins to look as it ought to look, on the entrance of youth, grace, health, and comeliness! You do not want them for yourself, perhaps not even for your son, but you look on smiling; and when you recall their images—again, it is with a smile. I defy you to see or think of them and not smile with an infinite and intimate, but quite impersonal, pleasure. Well, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... uncouth colours, *during ay,* *lasting forever* That never be none seen in May, With many a small turret high; But man alive I could not sigh,* *see Nor creatures, save ladies play,* *disporting themselves Which were such of their array, That, as me thought, *of goodlihead* *for comeliness* They passed all, and womanhead. For to behold them dance and sing, It seemed like none ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... on any of the world's thoroughfares. I remembered afterward, with shame, that I myself had smiled at the first sight of its antiquated ugliness; but her face was one which it gave you a sense of rest to look upon—it was so earnest, tender, true, and strong. It had little comeliness of shape or color in it, it was thin, and pale; she was not young; she had worked hard; she had evidently been much ill; but I have seen few faces which gave me such pleasure. I think that she was the wife of a poor clergyman; ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... pectoral arteries with the gift of eloquence. Amongst the mass of these things we found some greatly meriting to be restored, which when skilfully cleansed and freed from the disfiguring rust of age, deserved to be renovated into comeliness of aspect. And applying in full measure the necessary means, as a type of the resurrection to come, we resuscitated them and restored them again ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... admire most, the man or his muscle. One doesn't often see such vigor, size and comeliness in these degenerate days," said Randal, mentally booking the fine figure in the ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... for their families as protection against the cold and storms. The quantity on hand, after the stress of the two years, would vary according to the supplies which each brought from Holland or England; in some families there were sheets and "pillow-beeres" with "clothes of substance and comeliness," but other households were scantily supplied. A somewhat crude but interesting ballad, called "Our Forefathers' Song," is given by tradition from the lips of an old lady aged ninety-four years, in 1767. If the suggestion is ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... wife in a higher grade of society and the sister agrees that their ways henceforth must be apart—that scene for truth and power is one of the master-strokes. The reader finds that Jeanie Deans somehow grows steadily in his belief and affection: quietly but surely, a sense of her comeliness, her truthful love, her quaint touch of Scotch canniness, her daughterly duteousness and her stanch principle intensifies until it is a pang to bid her farewell, and the mind harks back to her with a fond recollection. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... beautiful dog to be seen than the show Collie of the present period. Produced from the old working type, he is now practically a distinct breed. His qualities in the field are not often tested, but he is a much more handsome and attractive animal, and his comeliness will always win for him many admiring friends. The improvements in his style and appearance have been alleged to be due to an admixture with Gordon Setter blood. In the early years of exhibitions he showed the shorter head, heavy ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... an empty name—a burden merely on the senator's fortune; the commissioner of the public corn supply was once a personage—now what is more contemptible than this office? For, as we said just now, that which hath no true comeliness of its own now receives, now loses, lustre at the caprice of those who have to do with it. So, then, if dignities cannot win men reverence, if they are actually sullied by the contamination of the wicked, if they lose ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... regions once noted for leanness, angularity, and sallowness of complexion, but throughout the country the types of physical manhood are more numerous; and if women of rare and exceptional beauty are not more numerous, no doubt the average of comeliness and beauty has been raised. Thus far, the increase of beauty due to better development has not been at the expense of delicacy of complexion and of line, as it has been in some European countries. Physical well-being is almost entirely a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... over the earth, abhorred of all beholders; I thought of the music he managed to make with the remnant of his mutilated face; I thought also of the rigour of Destiny and the kindliness of Death. I remember the words running in my head, "He hath no form nor comeliness. Yet he was wounded for our transgressions, and the chastisement of our peace ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... motion. The elder sister, Lactimel, was of a different form, but yet hardly more fit to shine in the mazes of the dance than her sister. She had her charms, nevertheless, which consisted of a somewhat stumpy dumpy comeliness. She was altogether short in stature, and very short below the knee. She had fair hair and a fair skin, small bones and copious soft flesh. She had a trick of sighing gently in the evolutions of the waltz, which young men attributed to her ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of sneer she could not understand; and he pillaged an infinity of Genoese and Venetian ships—which were notoriously the richest laden—of jewels, veils, silks, furs, embroideries and figured stuffs, wherewith to enhance the comeliness of Melicent. It seemed an all-engulfing madness with this despot daily to aggravate his fierce desire of her, to nurture his obsession, so that he might glory in the consciousness of treading down ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... russet defaced column, as it comes out against its vivid light, becomes luminous like a pillar of gold. Brick and marble are of equal aesthetic value in this magic city, in which the uncomely parts and materials have a more abundant comeliness by reason of the medium through which they are seen. Over all things lingers permanently the transfiguring glow that comes to northern lands only in the afternoon. In that land it is always afternoon; the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... of wit and soul as are of force To raise their beings to eternity, May be converted on works fitting men; And for the practice of a forced look, An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase, Study the native frame of a true heart, An inward comeliness of bounty, knowledge, And spirit that may conform them actually To God's high figures, which they ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... Fair Women? Nay, for work and want Mar maiden comeliness and matron grace. Let sober judgment, clear of gush and cant, The bitter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... time in vain. At length he fell asleep, but it was only to dream of his patron,—now, as he had last seen him, with the paleness of death upon his features, then again transformed into all the vigour and comeliness of youth, approaching to expel him from the mansion-house of his fathers. Then he dreamed, that after wandering long over a wild heath, he came at length to an inn, from which sounded the voice of revelry; and that when he entered, the first person he met was Frank Kennedy, all smashed ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... represents him in full armour with a tremendous dudgeon dagger and broadsword, most warlike guize for a clerk of the kitchen and editor of Chaucer. The dress of his wife is quite refreshing in its graceful comeliness in these days of revived "farthingales and hoops." These brasses were restored by the late Marquess of Bath. Would that the same good feeling for things old had prevented the owners of the "church property" from casing the old ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... towards the castle, and there he saw the chamber; and when he had entered the chamber, he beheld the maidens working at satin embroidery, in chains of gold. Their beauty and their comeliness seemed to Owain far greater than Kynon had represented to him. They arose to wait upon Owain, as they had done to Kynon, and the meal which they set before him gave even more satisfaction to Owain than it ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... a trifle handsomer, and somewhat softer of speech, that masque and banquet might have placed Richard Revel, Baron Fareham, in the front rank of royal favourites; but the Revels were always a black-visaged race, with more force than comeliness in their countenances, and more gall than ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... mild-eyed and soft as ever. Hers was a nature in which softness would ever prevail;—softness, and that tenderness of heart, always leaning, and sometimes almost crouching, of which a mild eye is the outward sign. But her comeliness and prettiness were gone. Female beauty of the sterner, grander sort may support the burden of sixteen children, all living,—and still survive. I have known it to do so, and to survive with much of its youthful glory. But that mild-eyed, soft, round, plumpy prettiness gives way beneath ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... then appeared to him in the most frightful of infernal figures; but he rolled a thick mist before the eyes of Faustus, in order that he might not blast his sight. The monk fell to the earth; and the Devil, resuming all his former comeliness, exclaimed: ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... prospering and many were soaring upward to heaven on wings of gold, as the saying is, there arose in that country a king named Abenner, mighty in riches and power, and in victory over his enemies, brave in warfare, vain of his splendid stature and comeliness of face, and boastful of all worldly honours, that pass so soon away. But his soul was utterly crushed by poverty, and choked with many vices, for he was of the Greek way, and sore distraught by ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... a greeting from my looking-glass. Of course the small-pox has not dared to disfigure the face of an empress; I feel secure against its sacrilegious touch. Is it not so, my little Marie Antoinette? Has it not respected your mother's comeliness?" ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... more ordinary illusion belonging to humanity than that which enables us to discover, in the fashions of the day, an elegance and comeliness of dress which a few years after we ourselves regard as odious caricatures of costume. Thousands of oddly-dressed English flocked to Paris immediately after the war: I remember that the burden of ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... and down several women came to the spring and filled their buckets. They wore shawls or hoods and their garments were somber, but, nevertheless, they appeared to have youth and comeliness. They saw him, looked at him curiously, and then, without speaking, went back on the well-trodden path. Presently down the path appeared a woman—a girl in lighter garb. It was almost white. She was shapely ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... the Vicar noted as he stared. And he hated Essy. He hated her for what he saw in her, and for her buxom comeliness, and for the softness of ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... the whole peninsula knew the minister's grandson, young Master Bruce. The boy was tall of his age—not exactly handsome, being too like his mother for that; nevertheless, the robustness of form, which in her was too large for comeliness, became in him only manly size and strength. He was athletic, graceful, and active; he learned to ride almost as soon as he could walk; and, under Malcolm's charge, was early initiated in all the mysteries of moor and loch. By fourteen years of age Cardross Bruce was the best ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... mother, and was the head of a long Dyak house in which lived some three hundred families. He was strong and active, and handsome in appearance, and there was no one in the country round equal to him either in strength or comeliness. ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... govern his inside, and what secret tempers sully and corrupt his best actions; and he would have no more pretence to be honoured and admired for his goodness and wisdom than a rotten and distempered body is to be loved and admired for its beauty and comeliness. And, perhaps, there are very few people in the world who would not rather choose to die than to have all their secret follies, the errors of their judgments, the vanity of their minds, the falseness of their pretences, the frequency of their ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... towards him, smiling, self-possessed, but a little interrogative. He had a lightning-like impression of her beautiful shoulders rising from her plain black gown, her delightfully easy walk, the slimness and comeliness and stateliness ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 'Painted in his lifetime.' We must console ourselves—if not with Mr. Hardy's statement that 'ideal physical beauty is incompatible with mental development, and a full recognition of the evil of things'—at least with the pictures of those who had some comeliness, and grace, and charm. Dr. Grosart says of a miniature of Edmund Spenser, 'It is an exquisitely beautiful face. The brow is ample, the lips thin but mobile, the eyes a grayish-blue, the hair and beard a golden red (as of "red monie" of the ballads) or goldenly ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of the physical organs. The face, too, was singularly manly, and had once been handsome, even; nay, it was not altogether without claims to be so considered still; though intemperance was making sad inroads on its comeliness. This person was about fifty years old, and his air, as well as his attire, denoted a mariner; not a common seaman, nor yet altogether an officer; but one of those of a middle station, who in navies used to form ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... younger readers of a new generation, who, perhaps, almost despise both letter writing and reasoning,—whether any of these, I say, will see either form or comeliness—any thing inviting—in these paragraphs, I cannot say. But I can tell them, at once, that I do; and it sometimes seems to me, that no greater human benefaction could be offered to mankind, than the application of those principles and methods of ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... by no means as unmoved as she gave out. She had always admired and liked Captain Haney, though he never moved her in the same way that the young barber did (for Ed Winchell had youth as well as comeliness, and there is a divine suppleness in youth), yet he had been a welcome guest. "A hundred thousand dollars a year! And yet he's been coming to our little hotel for ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... born whom I entirely love, Th' immortal gods her birth-rites forth to grace, Descending from their glorious seat above, They did on her these several virtues place: First Saturn gave to her sobriety, Jove then indued her with comeliness, And Sol with wisdom did her beautify, Mercury with wit and knowledge did her bless, Venus with beauty did all parts bedeck, Luna therewith did modesty combine, Diana chaste all loose desires did check, And like a lamp in clearness she doth shine. But ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... King, most Holy Father, that this Lady, His spouse, sends her children whom you see here, who are not of a lower condition than those who came long before them. They do not degenerate; they have the comeliness both of their Father and their mother, since they make profession of the most perfect poverty. There is, therefore, no fear of their dying of poverty, being the children and heirs of the Immortal King, born of a poor mother, of the image of Jesus ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... busy with State affairs they would walk into the garden and pass their time in pleasant devices. After a while, Pandosto began to have doubtful thoughts, considering the beauty of his wife, and the comeliness and bravery of his friend. This humour growing upon him, he went to watching them, and fishing for proofs to confirm his suspicions. At length his mind got so charged with jealousy that he felt quite certain of the thing he feared, and studied for nothing so much as revenge. He resolved to ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... flesh she worshipped. To live life thoroughly, to get out of it all that it contained of pleasure or of experience, this was the germ of his applied philosophy; and it was only by some fortunate mental power of selection, some instinctive sense for comeliness, for a well-ordered, healthful physical existence, which had left him at the end of his forty years of pleasure with a perfectly sound and active mind and body. He himself was accustomed to declare that though he had lived gayly, he had lived ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... and spread the palms of her hands against him. "Please don't," she said, and seeing that she stood her ground, he made no further attempt to touch her. The austerity of her grey nurse's uniform gave a touch of pathos to her childish, blue-eyed comeliness and her pretty attitude ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... elastic and supple. Their voices are sweet and low, while the subdued tone of their complexions is relieved by the arch vivacity of night-black eyes, that alternately swim in melting lustre, and sparkle in expressive glances. If their comeliness matures, like the fruits of their native clime, early and rapidly, it is sad to know that it also fades prematurely. One looks in vain for that serene loveliness combined with age which so frequently challenges ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... that she cared for Comus, but now that Courtenay Youghal had openly proclaimed the fact as something unchallenged and understood matters seemed placed at once on a more advanced footing. The warm sunlit garden grew suddenly into a Heaven that held the secret of eternal happiness. Youth and comeliness would always walk here, under the low-boughed mulberry trees, as unchanging as the leaden otter that for ever preyed on the leaden salmon on the edge of the old fountain, and somehow the lovers would ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... yet he was but tender-bodied, and the only son of my womb; when youth with comeliness plucked all gaze his way; when for a day of Kings' entreaties, a mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding; I—considering how honour would become such a person; that it was no better than picture-like to hang by the wall, if ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... having left the walls of the city, prostrated himself, alas! at the feet of the obstinate Achilles. The mariners of the indefatigable Ulysses, put off their limbs, bristled with the hard skins [of swine], at the will of Circe: then their reason and voice were restored, and their former comeliness to their countenances. I have suffered punishment enough, and more than enough, on thy account, O thou so dearly beloved by the sailors and factors. My vigor is gone away, and my ruddy complexion has left me; my bones ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... sends its shaft skyward into the sunshine; it is an elemental growth: its simplicity equals its beauty. But until the flower blooms, after its ages of preparation, the plant seems to have no meaning, proportion, or comeliness; only when those golden petals have unfolded upon the summit of their stately eminence do we comprehend the symmetry and significance that had so long waited to ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... said the tall lady, and at that moment Betty herself arrived. She was a plump person with a kind of vulgar comeliness, and Glory had a vague sense of having seen ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... again! But I say, Congrio, yon homunculus—yon pigmy assailant of my cranes—yon pert-tongued neophyte of the kitchen, was there aught but insolence on his tongue when he maligned the comeliness of my sweetmeat shapes? I would not be out ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... him I have but a dim memory, yet it is of something bonny. To be sure I have his picture in my grandmother's boudoir to remind me of him, a fair, full-lipped, smiling and merry face, with dark brown hair which would have curled if it were permitted. His comeliness survived even the hideous fashion of men's dress of his day, and my memory of him is of one in riding-breeches and a scarlet coat, for I think that must have been how I saw ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... pleasure, or to catch her a heat in the cold mornings. Nevertheless it is not so decent in a meaner person, as I have discerned in some counterfeit ladies of the country, which use it much to their own derision. This comeliness was wanting in queen Mary, otherwise a very good and honorable princess. And was some blemish to the emperor Ferdinando, a most noble-minded man, yet so careless and forgetful of himself in that behalf, as I have seen him run up a pair of stairs so swift and nimble a pace, as ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... without doubt thou wilt be taken with it." So Scaliger ingenuously confesseth, exercit. 274. [3491]"I am beyond all measure affected with music, I do most willingly behold them dance, I am mightily detained and allured with that grace and comeliness of fair women, I am well pleased to be idle amongst them." And what young man is not? As it is acceptable and conducing to most, so especially to a melancholy man. Provided always, his disease proceed not originally from it, that he be ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... in the year 1835. He found it a plain, convenient, and thoroughly built country residence. An amiable neighbor of Mr. Coolidge had placed a miserable old barn irregularly upon the edge of that gentleman's lot, which, for the sake of comeliness, he was forced to buy and set straight and smooth into a decent dependence of the mansion house. The estate, upon passing into Mr. Emerson's hands, comprised the house, barn, and two acres of land. He has enlarged house and barn, and the two acres have grown to nine. Our author ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... come to something more than a mere jolly friendship for a girl was the regard in which he held his partner in the "Mixed Doubles," but that was all on account of her exuberant health, spirits, general comeliness of face and form, and exquisite skill in tennis. But this day a new and eager longing was eating at his heart; a strange, dull pang seemed to seize upon it as he noted in a flash that the seat that was to have been his was occupied by an officer many years his senior, a man he knew only by ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... against the treasury observing the poor widow, he attracted no particular attention—when he visited the sick and dying at the pool of Bethesda, he was not at first recognized as any extraordinary personage, and the prophet intimates that he possessed "no form nor comeliness: but his visage was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men." It was before the majesty of his character this Syrophenician woman bowed with holy reverence and humble admiration. Conscious of having no claim ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... afterwards. He saw nothing in it different from usual. But it was terrible to me! He read words that I never knew were in our Scriptures—concerning One whom it seemed to me must be—must be, He whom you call Messiah. 'As a root out of a dry ground'—'no form nor comeliness'—'no beauty that we should desire Him,'—'despised and rejected of men'—and lastly, 'we hid our faces from Him.' For we did, Doucebelle,—we did! I could think of nothing else for a while. For we did not hide them from others. ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... widow early in life, this old lady; and all the interest and sympathy she gained by her comeliness and charm she tried to turn into a source of profit for herself and her two sons, the elder of whom was now lying here in his coffin. They were the only beings on earth she loved, and love them she did with a passionate ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... to Mu'awiyah the letter, and when he had read it he cried, "Verily, he hath obeyed handsomely, but he exceedeth in his praise of the woman." Then he called for her and saw beauty such as he had never seen, for comeliness and loveliness, stature and symmetrical grace; moreover, he talked with her and found her fluent of speech and choice in words. Quoth he, "Bring me the Arab." So they fetched the man, who came, sore ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... more sincerely and more beautifully, and, with Ronsard, regret for the lost wonder of his own youth was perhaps the acutest emotion he ever knew. He was himself, in his early years, one of those glorious youths who have the genius of charm and comeliness, of grace and strength and the arts. He excelled at football as in lute-playing. He danced, fenced, and rode better than the best; and, with his noble countenance, his strong limbs, his fair beard, and his "eyes full of gentle gravity," he must have been the picture of the perfect ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... this young squaw, as he called her, a prisoner in one of his excursions into Canada during the war of the Revolution, and adopted her into his family on account of her comeliness and natural graces. ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... face away. Lucy looked closely at him. He was indeed a beggared rider. His clothes and his boots hung in tatters. He had no hat, no coat, no vest. His gaunt face bore traces of what might have been a fine, strong comeliness, but now it was only thin, worn, wan, pitiful, with that look which always went to a woman's heart. He had the look of a homeless rider. Lucy had seen a few of his wandering type, and his story was so plain. But ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... missionary account speaks less favourably of the comeliness of these islanders. But this being a matter of taste, will of course be very variously considered. The reader may amuse himself by comparing the following quotation with the text, and forming his own opinion. He will at all events readily admit, that nature has done more for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... and "Honour" alike fail to convey the full force of the Latin honestus. The word expresses a progress of thought from comeliness and grace of person to a noble and graceful character—all whose works are done in ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... in squalid garb, and destitute of his comeliness, just as he is wont to be when he suffers an eclipse of his disk, abhors both the light, himself, and the day; and gives his mind up to grief, and adds resentment to his sorrow, and denies his services to the world. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Hymn to our Lord upon the Cross with all that Winckelmann and Hegel have so truly said about the restrained expression, dignified generality, and harmonious beauty essential to sculpture. It is the negation of tranquillity, the excess of feeling, the absence of comeliness, the contrast between visible weakness and invisible omnipotence, the physical humiliation voluntarily suffered by Him that "ruled over all the angels, that walked on the pavements of heaven, whose feet were clothed with stars"—it is all this that gives their force and ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... hair; she swayed and turned before the glass, bringing the lines of her neck into critical inspection. There was the turn of youth there yet, it comforted her to see, and some degree of comeliness. He would come soon, and she must be at her best, to show him that she believed in him, and give him to understand that she was celebrating his triumph over the contrary forces which he had ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... southern indifference to deceiving the very man she loves, is sufficiently remarkable, as she stands out of the canvas. But De Flores,—the broken gentleman, reduced to the position of a mere dependant, the libertine whose want of personal comeliness increases his mistress's contempt for him, the murderer double and treble dyed, as audacious as he is treacherous, and as cool and ready as he is fiery in passion,—is a study worthy to be classed at once with Iago, and inferior only to Iago in their class. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... And said he wha told us, 'The gilt ball fell frae the standard pole, and there's nane to think that a good omen!' But I saw it," said Mother Binning. She turned her wheel, a woman not yet old and with a large, tranquil comeliness. "What I see makes ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... grey riding-dress with a little silver lace about it, and looked wonderfully plump and well, full of importance and complacency, and with such a return of comeliness that Aurelia would hardly have recognised the lean, haggard, fretful Harriet of the previous year. Her sentiment and romance, her soft melancholy and little affectations had departed, and she was already the notable prosperous wife of a beneficed clergyman, of whose abilities ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fight or the skill of a clever trick; his band of youths met and fought other bands, but they bore no malice when the strife was over. In one point only was Hereward less than true to his own nobility of character—he was jealous of admitting that any man was his superior in strength or comeliness, and his vanity was well supported by his extraordinary ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... year, and from constant health, the possession of a competent property, and from having had no other children but Mary and another daughter (the father died in their infancy), retaining for the greater part her personal attractions and comeliness of appearance; but a woman of low education and violent temper. The answer which she at once returned to Edward's application was remarkable—"Well, Edward! you are a handsome young fellow, and you shall have my daughter." From this time all their wooing passed under the mother's eye; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... desires. A man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place; but where friendship is, all offices of life are as it were granted to him, and his deputy. For he may exercise them by his friend. How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these things are graceful, in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's own. So again, a man's person hath many ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... saws at different slopes in the wood, and looked round. The night before, in the nakedness in which Lemuel had first seen them, the worst of them had the inalienable comeliness of nature, and their faces, softened by their relation to their bodies, were not so bad; they were not so bad, looking from their white nightgowns; but now, clad in their filthy rags, and caricatured out of all native dignity by their motley and misshapen attire, they were a hideous gang, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... are there are better than those that are here. All things that are bright are there brighter. There is more gold in the sun and more silver in the moon of that land. There is more scent in the flowers, more savour in the fruit. There is more comeliness in the men and more tenderness in the women. Everything in Faery is better by this one wonderful degree, and it is by this betterness you will know that you are there if you should ever ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... disturbed by drink, but human dignity has not yet yielded to a bestial impulse, this statue proves the energy of Michelangelo's imagination. The physical beauty of his adolescent model in the limbs and body redeems the grossness of the motive by the inalienable charm of health and carnal comeliness. Finally, the technical merits of the work cannot too strongly be insisted on. The modelling of the thorax, the exquisite roundness and fleshiness of the thighs and arms and belly, the smooth skin-surface expressed throughout in marble, will excite admiration in all who are capable of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... adjacent town where the memory of Daniel Grey's meteoric ascent to pecuniosity still lingered in the minds of the oldest citizens, and pleasantly paved the way for a cordial reception of the fortunate son who inherited not only his mother's comeliness but his father's ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... admonish and stir up a man to that which is comely and honest. For flowers, through their beautie, varietie of colour, and exquisite forme, do bring to a liberall and gentle manly minde the remembrance of honestie, comeliness, and all kinds of vertues. For it would be an unseemely and filthie thing, as a certain wise man saith, for him that doth looke upon and handle faire and beautiful things, and who frequenteth and is conversant in faire ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... my wife; for the burden was past bearing, and I must satisfy myself. I found her tending the plants on her window-ledge; and when she turned, I saw that years had not taken from her comeliness one jot. And ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 1663, owing no doubt to the Restoration and the subsequent changes in affairs, the Amis family returned to England, settling in London, where Aphra, meeting a merchant of Dutch extraction named Behn, so fascinated him by her wit and comeliness that he offered her his hand and fortune. During her married life she is said to have been in affluence, and even to have appeared at the gay licentious Court, attracting the notice of and amusing the King himself by her anecdotes and cleverness of repartee; but when her husband died, not impossibly ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... dependent position around the head—a strange style of ornament; indeed, it is difficult to conceive in what their notion of beauty consists. The women have somewhat the same ideas with ourselves of what constitutes comeliness. They came frequently and asked for the looking-glass; and the remarks they made—while I was engaged in reading, and apparently not attending to them—on first seeing themselves therein, were amusingly ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... brave feared that the comeliness of his dear captive would cause her to be coveted by the chiefs of the land. His soul yearned to keep her all to himself. He said: "Let us go to the clear waters of Kalulu. There we will fish together ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... had fought valiantly—love of good times and of pretty clothes—made ingress easy for this sinister and cynical idea. Having gained a foothold it pressed forward boldly. Cutty, who had everything—strength, comeliness, wisdom, and money. To live among all those beautiful things, never to be lonely again, to be waited on, fussed over, made much of, taken into the high world. Never more to add up accounts, to stretch five-dollar bills across the chasm of ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... quite sure that his expression would come off. It is hard at this day to listen to his music as Milton must have listened to it; but having done my best, I am compelled to own that I find some of his songs without meaning or comeliness, and must assume either that our ancestors of this period had a sense which has been lost, or that the music played a less important part compared with the poem than has been generally supposed. Lawes lost ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Hellenes made him blind to the merits of those potent divinities. At first Atta resisted. There was Attic blood in his wife, and he strove to argue with her unorthodox craving. But the woman persisted, and a Lemnian wife, as she is beyond other wives in virtue and comeliness, excels them in stubbornness of temper. A second time she was with child, and nothing would content her but that Atta should make his prayers to the stronger gods. Dodona was far away, and long ere he reached it his throat would be cut in the hills. But ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Madonna-like beauty, and was at this time the fairest of the whole sisterhood. Sarah, who was hereafter to be considered not only the wit but also the beauty of the family, was at this time a child of ten, and not yet grown into her full inheritance of comeliness. In after years it was said of Sarah that she was 'not only beautiful and lovely to a high degree, but was wonderfully happy in ingeny and memory.' But even at her loveliest it was never said of her, as it was of Margaret, that she ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... he could study her without seeming to do so. The line of her ankle where the firelight danced upon it put Coles Phillips to shame, he averred. Extraordinary, how these creatures are made to torment us with their intolerable comeliness! Against the background of dusky bindings her head shone with a soft haze of gold. Her face, that had an air of naive and provoking independence, made him angry with its unnecessary surplus of enchantment. An unaccountable gust of rage drove him rapidly along the frozen street. "Damn ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... the dried-up lake you can see the traces of all the torrents that once poured into it and made it what it is. An old face is nothing to the frivolous world; the frivolous world is shocked by the sight of the destruction of such comeliness as it can understand; a commonplace artist sees nothing there. An old face is the province of the poets among poets of those who can recognize that something which is called Beauty, apart from all the conventions underlying so many ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... destroy the sweet comeliness of her face, however, but in the struggle for life she and Fashion had fallen out—Fashion went in one direction, and Mrs. Staunton strayed gently in another. She did not mind whether her dress was cut according to the mode or not—she scarcely looked at her faded but still pretty face. ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... is, if only my supercilious critics could be trusted to tell the whole truth, that Lily is not good-looking enough for them. But that, again, is all a question of taste. Beauty is relative and not absolute. My critics may themselves be at fault. The real trouble may be, not want of comeliness in Lily, but a sad lack of appreciation in themselves. I notice that the champion Yorkshire sow at the Sydney Show this year was Mr. E. Jenkins' 'Queen of Beauty'; and as I gazed upon her photograph and noted ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... looked on him ever after might thus know to what company and what country he belonged, and that this was not his rest, but that he had been called and chosen to a heavenly inheritance. And, besides, it was no sooner set upon his forehead than it greatly added to his dignity and his comeliness. He had now the gravity and beauty of an angel; nay, the beauty in his measure and the gravity of Goodwill at the gate himself. And, then, as if that were not enough, the third Shining One also gave him a roll with a seal upon it, which he was bidden look on as he ran, and which he was to give ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... Al-Rashid considered her comeliness and the goodliness of her singing and her eloquence and what other qualities she comprised and rejoiced with joy exceeding; and for the stress of that which overcame him of delight, he descended from the couch and sitting down with her upon the floor, said to her, "Thou ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... maribus better than I can. (You don't drink, sir.) When Master Francis was sixteen, and Master Clinton eight, the former was sent abroad on his travels with a German tutor, and did not return to England for many years afterwards; meanwhile Master Clinton grew up to the age of fourteen, increasing in comeliness and goodness. He was very fond of his studies, much more so than Master Francis had been, and was astonishingly forward for his years. So my lord loved him better and better, and would scarcely ever suffer him to be out ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he broke in. "I have a right!" . . . He gasped and a look of almost savage determination passed over his face. For an instant he was another being. And I saw under the worth and the comeliness of the man the humble reality of things. Life was a boon to him—this precarious hard life, and he was thoroughly ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... yet he was but tender-bodied, and the only son of my womb; when youth with comeliness pluck'd all gaze his way; when, for a day of king's entreaties, a mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding—considering how honor would become such a person; that it was no better than picture-like to hang by ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... an answer, nor did she look at him closely till she had put food before him. Then she sat down beside him. He, too, was remarkable-looking. He had no remains of the pleasant comeliness of youth as she had, but there were the same lines of patience and courage in his face. He was closely shaven, with large, marked features and dark, piercing eyes. It was a strong face, good and true, but still it was a hard face, and it was a true index of his character. He was ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... com-plete article this time, I reckon." Then, as Severne laughed merrily at this, she turned her candle and her eyes full on him very briskly. She looked at him for a moment, with a gratified eye at his comeliness; then she ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... question was in the last stages of dilapidation, looking as if it had been run over daily by an omnibus, and then used to fill the place of a broken pane, being crushed out of all shape and comeliness. ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... with the comeliness of an apple, this man was beautiful with the beauty of sun and ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... body which seem to be weak are necessary, [12:23]and those which we esteem to be less honorable members of the body, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our uncomely members have more abundant comeliness, [12:24]for our comely ones have no need. But God has commingled the body, giving more abundant honor to that part which was lacking, [12:25]that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for ...
— The New Testament • Various
... earth, they will rot and germinate according to the vitality with which they are endowed. But, if new and startling opinions are thrown in the face of the community—if they are uttered in triumph or in insult—in contempt of public opinion, or in derision of cherished errors, they lose the comeliness of truth in the rancour of their propagation; and they are like seed scattered in a hurricane, which only irritates and blinds the husbandman. Had Galileo concluded his System of the World with the quiet peroration of his apologist Campanella, and dedicated it to the Pope, ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest Mine." "And thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou didst prosper into a kingdom. And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for it was perfect through My comeliness, which I had put upon thee.... But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown." "As a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... these maidens saw this same tall, fair man, but he no longer fished in the rivulet; he hunted the hares and was passing skilful thereat, so that the maidens admired him not only for his exceeding comeliness but also for his skill as a huntsman, for surely there was no hare that could escape his vigilance and the point of his arrow. So when Talakoa, their father, came that evening the maidens told him of this stranger, and he wondered who he was and whence he fared. Awaking ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... among the young native women that an artist would travel far to study; but although some few are thus extremely handsome, the majority are very homely, ill-formed, and negligent of person. The best looking among the peons lose their comeliness after a few years, owing to hard labor, childbirth, and deprivations. Few women retain their good looks after twenty-five years or until they are thirty. Another fact was remarked, that these Indian men and women never ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... award.[306] "The Episode of Bentley and Wotton," in "The Battle of the Books," is conceived with all the caustic imagination of the first of our prose satirists. There Bentley's great qualities are represented as "tall, without shape or comeliness; large, without strength or proportion." His various erudition, as "armour patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces;" his book, as "the sound" of that armour, "loud and dry, like that made by the fall of a sheet of lead from the roof of some ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... amply thwarted with a branching mustache, and slender of figure, on whom his clothes, lustrous from much sitting down and leaning up, grew like the bark on a tree, and who moved slowly and gently about, and spoke with a low, kind voice. In his young comeliness he was like a god, as the gods were fancied in the elder world: a chewing and a spitting god, indeed, but divine ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was gone, the host, the hostess, the hostler, and two neighbours who chanced to be there, held a council together, and all extolled the great comeliness and graceful deportment of the stranger, agreeing that they had never seen any one so handsome. They discussed his age, and came to the conclusion that it was between sixteen and seventeen. They speculated largely as to what might have been ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sufferings and triumph of the "servant of God," in which all the prophetic force of the genius of Israel seemed concentrated.[1] "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness. He is despised and rejected of men; and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... eyes, which give a very distinct character to the face. The man must have been singularly handsome in youth; he was handsome still, though probably in his forty-seventh or forty-eighth year, doubtless a very different kind of comeliness. The form of the features and the contour of the face were those that suit the rounded beauty of the Greek outline, and such beauty would naturally have been the attribute of the countenance in earlier days; but the cheeks ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... display, and expenses of every kind, what the reign of Louis XIV. had been for France. He was a man of patrician birth and high breeding, who liked to live in a manner worthy of his rank. Remarkable for his personal graces and comeliness, for the dignity of his bearing and the fascination of his address, he was fond of pomp, show, and pleasure; surrounded by a host of brilliant officers, of whom he was the idol, he loved to keep up a miniature court, in distant imitation of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... accidents, such as the stroke of his bird's beak or talons, or by the very outline of the pillow where his curly head had rested only an hour or two ago. Whereas her love for Christ was a deep and solemn passion that seemed to well not out of His comeliness or even His marred Face or pierced Hands, but out of His wide encompassing love that sustained and clasped her at every moment of her conscious attention to Him, and that woke her soul to ecstasy at moments of high communion. These two loves, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... engineer. He had a prettier wife, they said, when he was not present, than was deserved by a mere freight engineer, very recently elevated from the post of fireman. Perhaps, also, the petty malevolence of the women was due to the wife's superior comeliness. Be that as it may, each afternoon at half-past four or thereabouts, when Tom's whistle was blown at the crossing by the planing-mill, loungers in the grocery store and wives in their kitchens smiled knowingly ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens |
