"Corpulency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... make use of these and various other gelatinous viands for the purpose of acquiring, as they suppose, a proper degree of corpulency[61], which is considered by them as respectable and imposing upon the multitude; of a great portion of whom it may be observed, as Falstaff said of his company, "No eye hath seen such scare-crows." It would be rare to find, among the commonalty of China, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... exposed than the female, and offers anatomical suggestions invaluable alike to the artistic and medical professions,—suggestions that are equally ignored by both. The coolies are frequently possessed of physiques which would have delighted Michael Angelo; and as for the phenomenal corpulency of the wrestlers, it would have made of the place a very paradise for Rubens. In regard to the doctors,—for to call them surgeons would be to give a name to what does not exist,—a lack of scientific zeal has been the cause of their not investigating what ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... boldly or slyly to maraud in your wardrobe: he reappears caparisoned in the drawers you laid aside that morning, and brings to the light of day many articles condemned to solitary confinement. He brings the elegant Madame Fischtaminel, a friend whose good graces you cultivate, your girdle for checking corpulency, bits of cosmetic for dyeing your moustache, old waistcoats discolored at the arm-holes, stockings slightly soiled at the heels and somewhat yellow at the toes. It is quite impossible to remark that these stains are caused ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... dissonant color to brighten his black attire. He would listen patiently to things that did not concern him in the least, rather than venture a personal opinion with the chance of going wrong—satisfied with premature wrinkles, premature corpulency, and premature baldness, since nothing could be more respectable than a thoughtful face, a conspicuous paunch, and a pate that could shine with venerable brilliancy under the lamps of the Chamber. At thirty-four, he looked more like forty-five. When he spoke he would ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to appear always in boots, in order that they might not be taken for vassals. Ten men were sufficient for the collection of all the taxes. There were no more than two gates to the city; and under Lewis surnamed le Gros, from his corpulency, the duties at the north gate produced no more than twelve francs ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the travellers satisfied them that in king M'Bongwele they had a man of more than ordinary intelligence to deal with. The colour of his skin and complexion was a rich deep brown, he stood nearly six feet high on his naked feet, and, but for his somewhat excessive corpulence, he would have been a man of magnificent proportions. His lips were rather thick, and his nose somewhat flattened, but not nearly as much so as in the case of the genuine negro. His forehead was broad and lofty, though receding, his eyes keen, restless, and ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... do let us get into the shade," said Uncle Frederick; for there were two things he could not endure: heat and laughter—the first on account of his corpulence, and the second on account of what he himself called "his ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... tended to corpulence, the result of sedentary life; she had round shoulders and very short legs. Her face would not have been disagreeable but for its spoilt complexion; the homely features, if health had but rounded and coloured them, ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... who died young, the little ten-year-old boy to whom he addressed the treatise on the Astrolabe. Others see no evidence that Thomas was any relation of the poet. An Elizabeth C., placed in the Abbey of Barking by John of Gaunt, was probably his dau. In person C. was inclined to corpulence, "no poppet to embrace," of fair complexion with "a beard the colour of ripe wheat," an "elvish" expression, and an ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... these two men was most remarkable, for whereas Mafuta appeared to be the living embodiment of extreme age, King Banda could scarcely have been forty; and while Mafuta was an image of decrepitude, Banda, despite his excessive corpulence, appeared to be— what in fact he was—a man of immense physical strength. Yet, notwithstanding this marked dissimilarity in their appearance, there was one point of strong resemblance between them: the expression of ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... expenditure of ten cents for a drink when a hand was placed on his shoulder, and a voice said, "Have one with me, neighbour." He found himself addressed by a man of about his own age, shorter and somewhat lighter of frame and with a growing hint of corpulence. The stranger wore a good pepper-and-salt suit, and the stone on his finger danced ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Frank and the young ladies made their way across the green. At the corner of Southdown Road they found the General, the schoolmaster, and a retired farmer ardently gossiping; Mrs. Horlock, prim in her black gown and poke bonnet, waited with admirable patience, and Angel, the blind pug, in horrible corpulence, waddled and sniffed the grass. The story of Town's impertinence was told. The General was shocked—it was surprising. What are we coming to? The retired farmer said that Town was a hot-tempered ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... high change, and the Forum is crowded. All Pompeii is here, and his wife. Patres conscripti, inclined to corpulence, taking their constitutional, exquisites lazily sauntering up and down the pavements; decurions discussing the affairs of the nation, and the last news from Rome; city magnates fussing, merchants chaffering, clients petitioning, parasites fawning, soldiers swaggering, and ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... to you the retired General-major Vyatcheslav Ilarionovitch Hvalinsky. Picture to yourselves a tall and once slender man, now inclined to corpulence, but not in the least decrepit or even elderly, a man of ripe age; in his very prime, as they say. It is true the once regular and even now rather pleasing features of his face have undergone some change; his ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... proportion; his head is hidden under an enormous mask; his huge mouth gapes upon the audience as if he would swallow them; to say nothing of the chest-pads and stomach-pads with which he contrives to give himself an artificial corpulence, lest his deficiency in this respect should emphasize his disproportionate height. And in the middle of it all is the actor, shouting away, now high, now low,—chanting his iambics as often as not; could anything ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... to the doctor, who did not curse his corpulence the less for that. He wished to judge for himself about ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... Nikolaevna whom you know. The next time I met her I was already an ensign. In spite of all her efforts she could not recognize the hated Petya in the ensign with his moustache, but still she did not treat me quite like a relation. . . . And even now, in spite of my good-humoured baldness, meek corpulence, and unassuming air, she still looks askance at me, and feels put out when I go to see my brother. Hatred it seems can no more be forgotten than love. . ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... This was Oliver Whyte, the owner of the house and garden, which he had christened, in true Australian fashion, "The Mia-Mia." He was a man of about sixty, short and thick-set in appearance with a tendency to corpulence. His character was written in his fine open face, clean-shaven save for a ring of white hair that set his honest countenance in an oval frame; was felt as one listened to the tones of his rough, good-natured voice. He was ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... heads, not much unlike a turban; or, in some instances, like a high conical cap. We could also perceive that they were of a tawny colour, and, in general, of a middling stature, but robust, and inclining to corpulence. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... into the sleeves of the transparency. She was a pretty and highly developed girl of twenty-six, short, still lissom, but with the fear of corpulence in her heart. She had beautiful hair and beautiful eyes, and she had that pucker of the forehead denoting, according to circumstances, either some kindly, grave preoccupation or a benevolent perplexity about something ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... been lost had it not been for his comprehension and appreciation. His father, too, was a kind friend to us, inviting us to his house to hear Music and talk Art, to ply knives and forks, and to empty glasses of various dimensions. That gentleman's corpulence had reached a degree which clearly showed that he must have "lost sight of his knees" some years back, but he was none the less strong and active. There were two daughters, one pathetically blind, the ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... indications offered themselves to the eye that looked for other betrayals. There had been opportunities—even the day nurse had gone and Lindsay came to tea in the drawing-room—but he seemed to prefer to talk about the pattern in the carpet, or the corpulence of the khansamah, or things in the newspapers. Alicia once, at a suggestive point, put almost a visible question into a silent glance, and Lindsay asked her for some more sugar. Surgeon-Major Livingstone, coming into his office unexpectedly one morning, found his ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... blooming American girl has no apparent correlative in the French race. A majestic plumpness flourished all around me—the plumpness of triple chins and deeply dimpled hands. I mused upon it, and I concluded that it was the result of the best breakfasts and dinners in the world. It was the corpulence of ladies who are thoroughly well fed, and who never walk a step that they can spare. The assiduity with which the women of America measure the length of our democratic pavements is doubtless a factor in their frequent absence of redundancy of outline. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... obstinate, like the Breton race from which she came; they resisted all treatment. Florine now wore long boots stuffed with cotton, to give length, and the semblance of an instep. Her figure was of medium height, threatened with corpulence, but still ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... loathing, and exemplifies the fallen, depraved, and sophisticated state of human nature and human society. In those juicy quarters and surloins of beef and those fat porcine carcasses the vegetable-eater, Grahamite or Brahmin, sees nothing but the cause of beastly appetites, scrofula, apoplexy, corpulence, cheeks flushed with ungovernable propensities, tendencies downward toward the plane of the lower animals, bloodshot eyes, swollen veins, impure blood, violent passions, fetid breath, stertorous respiration, sudden ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... respectable corpulence were incapable of sentiment, bad husbands, and unfit for civilized society. Though it is esteemed a beauty in the East, to be fat seemed to her a misfortune for a woman; but in a man it was a crime. These paradoxical views were amusing, thanks to a certain liveliness of rhetoric. The ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... many of the characteristics that mark other great cities. She is almost totally lacking in hotel life. A city of one-tenth her population would have more hotels. But municipal greatness never rested upon hotel life. It breeds corpulence, not courage. It discourages the rearing of children, a thriving industry in Brooklyn. Brooklyn has not the wealth in proportion to her size that she should have. Brooklyn sat for long years under the shadow of old New York, contributing to the wealth of the ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... Misleading Testimony of Visitors "Decoration" at the Age of Puberty "Decoration" as a Test of Courage Mutilation, Fashion, and Emulation Personal Beauty versus Personal Decoration De Gustibus non est Disputandum? Indifference to Dirt Reasons for Bathing Corpulence versus Beauty Fattening Girls for the Marriage Market Oriental Ideals The Concupiscence Theory of Beauty Utility is not Beauty A New Sense Easily Lost Again Moral Ugliness Beautifying Intelligence ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... complexion from his own. John Bull has a good heart, which at times he conceals in his fat and phlegm under his well-wadded and buttoned-up coat. Jonathan has a good heart also, but does not hide it. His blood is warmer; he has no corpulence; he marches with coat unbuttoned or without one. Some persons maintain even that Brother Jonathan is John Bull stripped of his coat, and it is with this American saying that I take leave, for the present, of John Bull and his ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... was a representative of the melancholy or nervous, Othello of the choleric, Romeo of the sanguine, and Falstaff of the phlegmatic. Secondly, that in Falstaff, Shakspeare parodied—himself! Or to give his own words, "We may suppose that Shakspeare's physical constitution inclined to corpulence, and inspired in him the disposition to the life of a bon vivant. His intimacy with the Earl of Southampton may have favored this disposition, since they led for a long time a dissipated tavern-life, and were rivals in love matters!" The work is principally ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... encompassed it; an operation worthy of a monarch, since it gave an extensive country to the agriculture of his Pannonian subjects. [36] His death was occasioned by a very painful and lingering disorder. His body, swelled by an intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers, and devoured by innumerable swarms of those insects which have given their name to a most loathsome disease; [37] but as Galerius had offended a very zealous and powerful party among his subjects, his sufferings, instead of exciting their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... of enormous corpulence. His stomach was always half a step in front of him. His face was copper-colored at its palest, and violet when he ought to have been rosy: even when he shaved in the morning his chin was all bristles by the evening, his scrubby mustache perfumed with smoke, snuff, and various spirits; his ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... rector, and at thirty-five a prebendary; and as his rectory was rich and his prebendal stall well paid, the Rev. Augustus Horne was called by all, and called himself, a happy man. His stature was about six feet two, and his corpulence exceeded even those bounds which symmetry would have preferred as being most perfectly compatible even with such a height. But nevertheless Mr. Horne was a well-made man; his hands and feet were small; his face was handsome, ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope
... overflowings of the tankard, and much the worse for wear, and unbuttoned at bottom for the ease of his enormous paunch. Behind him lay a favourite bull-dog, whose round head and single black glancing eye, as well as the creature's great corpulence, gave it a burlesque resemblance ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... following account: "In figure, John Adams was not tall, scarcely exceeding middle height, but of a stout, well-knit frame, denoting vigor and long life, yet as he grew old inclining more and more to corpulence. His head was large and round, with a wide forehead and expanded brows. His eye was mild and benignant, perhaps even humorous when he was free from emotion, but when excited it fully expressed the vehemence of the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... Compassionate and the Merciful." The chaouch also lectured the people on courage, and publicly maintained that the Fezzanees were all cowards. This fellow is a second Sir John Falstaff, without the corpulence. The tone of all members of the caravan, as I have mentioned, is now much humanised. Every one is more civil to us, and, by habit, to one another. However, the chaouches must, of course, get up a quarrel now and then: they do it between themselves; ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... rescuing Andromeda from the sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the model of such a strange creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in his own "Perseus Descending," make out one whit better. The huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface, scarcely drawing one inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on its back, and its distended tusked mouth into which the billows are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors' Gate leading from the Thames by water into the Tower. Then, there are ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the confounding of poetic with pictorial subjects. In the latter, the exterior accidents are nearly everything, the unseen qualities as nothing. Othello's colour—the infirmities and corpulence of a Sir John Falstaff—do they haunt us perpetually in the reading? or are they obtruded upon our conceptions one time for ninety-nine that we are lost in admiration at the respective moral or intellectual attributes of the character? But in a picture Othello is always a Blackamoor; ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... MARLOW ushers in a man of middle age, inclined to corpulence, in evening dress. He has a ruddy, thin moustache, and dark, quick-moving little eyes. His ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to squeeze, (She was recovering from disease), Which led her to a farmer's hoard. There lodged, her wasted form she cherish'd; Heaven knows the lard and victuals stored That by her gnawing perish'd! Of which the consequence Was sudden corpulence. A week or so was past, When having fully broken fast, A noise she heard, and hurried To find the hole by which she came, And seem'd to find it not the same; So round she ran, most sadly flurried; And, coming back, thrust out her head, Which, sticking there, she said, "This is the ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... dilemma to which the Duchess was reduced, she again bethought herself of a special mission to Spain. At the end of the year (1564), it was determined that Egmont should be the envoy. Montigny excused himself on account of private affairs; Marquis Berghen "because of his indisposition and corpulence." There was a stormy debate in council after Egmont had accepted the mission and immediately before his departure. Viglius had been ordered to prepare the Count's instructions. Having finished the rough draught, he laid it ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... raised his faultless right hand—and oddly enough his great corpulence did not extend in the slightest degree to his hand, but stopped short at the wrists—and stroked his immense chin. His skin was like Lou Macon's, except that in place of the white-flower bloom his was a parchment, dead pallor. ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... had a complete set of new teeth about twenty years ago, which remained sound to the day of his death. His hair had turned quite gray. He retained his sight and memory well, and had all his senses perfect, except that of smelling. He was stout and inclined to corpulence, was never sick but once, and all the physic he ever took in his life was one dose of nut oil. He had twenty-six children by different women. His appetite was always good, and a few days previous to his death, he walked a distance of four miles. His dissolution was gradual, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... for the presence of a dead man. My own situation, indeed, sufficiently solved the riddle of that corpse. But the ship, perfect in all respects, was like a stroke of magic. She lay with a slight list or inclination to larboard, but on the whole tolerably upright, owing to the corpulence of her bilge. The hollow or ravine that formed her bed went with a sharp incline under her stern to the sea, which was visible from the top of the cliffs here through the split in the rocks. The shelving of the ice put the wash of the ocean at a distance of a few hundred feet ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... of him in 1807:—"In height he seemed about five feet eight inches, in reality he was an inch and a half taller.[K] His person was broad and full, and tended even to corpulence; his complexion was fair, though not what painters technically call fair, because it was associated with black hair; his eyes were soft and large in their expression, and it was by a peculiar appearance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... gig, which he drove himself. But the springs of the right side having at length given way beneath the weight of his corpulence, it happened that the carriage as it rolled along leaned over a little, and on the other cushion near him could be seen a large box covered in red sheep-leather, whose three brass clasps ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... learned of Lucy's engagement to marry Doctor Woodthrop, of Davenham Minster, our nearest market-town. I had found Woodthrop a decent fellow enough, but thirty-four as against Lucy's twenty-one, inclining ominously to corpulence, and as flatly prosaic and unadventurous a spirit as a small country town could produce. Now, as Lucy seemed to me to have hankerings in the direction of social pleasures and the like, with a penchant for brilliancy and daring, I was a little puzzled about her engagement, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... her soft corpulence, looked to her guest very bleached and tumid; her complexion had a kind of withered glaze; her hair, very scanty, was drawn off her forehead a la Chinoise; she had no eyebrows, and her eyes seemed to stare, like those of a figure of wax. When she talked and wished to insist, and she was always ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... latter, somewhat saddened by the falling-out between his brother and his wife, sought consolation in stringing his sausages and salting his pork. Sometimes he would come and stand on his door-step, with his red face glowing brightly above his white apron, which his increasing corpulence stretched quite taut, and never did he suspect all the gossip which his appearance set on foot in the markets. Some of the women pitied him, and thought that he was losing flesh, though he was, indeed, stouter than ever; while ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... Harree and Pompom (but nevertheless managing to overawe a goodly portion of his fellow-captives) an extraordinary human being paced the cour. On gazing for the first time directly at him I experienced a feeling of nausea. A figure inclined to corpulence, dressed with care, remarkable only above the neck—and then what a head! It was large, and had a copious mop of limp hair combed back from the high forehead—hair of a disagreeable blond tint, dutch-cut behind, falling over the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... though plainly clad in a velveteen shooting-jacket, had an air and mien greatly above those common to the pedestrian visitors of A——. He was tall, and of one of those athletic forms in which vigour in youth is too often followed by corpulence in age. At this period, however, in the full prime of manhood—the ample chest and sinewy limbs, seen to full advantage in their simple and manly dress—could not fail to excite that popular admiration which is always given to strength in the one sex as to delicacy in the ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... woman in England, and was accommodated on the ground-floor of the house in consequence of the difficulty of getting her up and down stairs. You are her only child; you have been under my care since the sad event at Cheltenham; you are twenty-one years old on the second of August next; and, corpulence excepted, you are the living image of your mother. I trouble you with these specimens of my intimate knowledge of our new family Skin, to quiet your mind on the subject of future inquiries. Trust to me and my books ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the poor lovers that the increasing corpulence of the queen and her swollen right foot rendered her advance rather slow, so that when she at last reached the lower end of the conservatory she found no one there but her son Augustus William, whose embarrassed ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... You know, Sir, we come when we are called, and are expected to carry all who require our assistance. It is common for men of the most unwieldy corpulence to crowd themselves into a chair, and demand to be carried for a shilling as far as an airy young lady whom we scarcely feel upon our poles. Surely we ought to be paid, like all other mortals, in proportion to our labour. Engines should ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... alone in the cleanly kept room which she and her husband occupied. Madame Toussaint was a portly woman, whose corpulence increased in spite of everything, whether it were worry or fasting. She had a round puffy face with bright little eyes; and was a very worthy woman, whose only faults were an inclination for gossiping and a fondness for good cheer. Before Madame Theodore even opened her mouth she ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... from personal inclinations or personal qualities, was better calculated to sustain his part in a brilliant ceremonial such as then struck the eyes of the spectators. An admirable horseman, tall and muscular, slightly inclined to corpulence, with a red beard and ruddy countenance, Henry VIII was at this time, by the admission of his rivals, the most comely and commanding prince of his age. Closely attending on the King was Sir Henry Guilford, the master of the horse, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... a dressing-gown, very clean linen, and trodden-down slippers. He was a man of about five and thirty, short, stout even to corpulence, and clean shaven. He wore his hair cut short and had a large round head, particularly prominent at the back. His soft, round, rather snub-nosed face was of a sickly yellowish colour, but had a vigorous and rather ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rich but respectable parents; called, with no uncertain voice, to the Bar in 1894; of a weighty corpulence and stormy visage, Mr. Jones now settles himself in his arm-chair to hear and determine all this business about Absalom Adkins and the Boots. How admirably impressive is Mr. Jones's typically English absence of hysteria, his calm, his restfulness. Indeed, give ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... Ben Jonson in extreme corpulence, and proposed him for the model of dramatic writing, seems to have affected the coarse and inelegant debauchery of his prototype. He lived chiefly in taverns, was a gross sensualist in his habits, and brutal in his conversation. His fine gentlemen ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... and died of sickness. Chares informs us that he was kept in confinement for seven months, in order that he might be tried in the presence of Aristotle himself, but that during the time when Alexander was wounded in India, he died of excessive corpulence, covered with vermin. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... given me. Under this was standing, and gazing about him, a man whom I shall describe. In height he might seem to be above five feet eight: (he was in reality about an inch and a half taller;) his person was broad and full, and tended even to corpulence: his complexion was fair, though not what painters technically style fair, because it was associated with black hair: his eyes were large and soft in their expression: and it was from the peculiar appearance of haze or dreaminess, which ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... more like a silver penny than a genius. It was a neat fiddle-faddle bit of sterling, that had read good books, and kept good company; but was too trifling for use, and only fit to please a child."—On Dr. Nash's first volume of 'Worcestershire': "It is a folio of prodigious corpulence, and yet dry enough; but it is finely dressed with many heads and views." He characterises Pennant; "He is not one of our plodders (alluding to Gough); rather the other extreme; his corporal spirits (for I cannot call them animal) do not allow him ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... not go on with the infuriating interview. It ended as it began, except that Rowley was in tears, and that I had acquired one fact. The man was drawn for me as being of any height you like to mention, and of any degree of corpulence or leanness; clean-shaved or not, as the case might be; the colour of his hair Rowley "could not take it upon himself to put a name on"; that of his eyes he thought to have been blue—nay, it was the one point on which he attained to a kind of tearful certainty. "I'll take my davy on it," he asseverated. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... condescendingly thanking the sword-cutler, in perfect ignorance that the man who stood before him had been born to a home that was an absolute palace compared with the Dragon court. The two men were a curious contrast. There stood the Englishman with his sturdy form inclining, with age, to corpulence, his broad honest face telling of many a civic banquet, and his short stubbly brown grizzled beard; his whole air giving a sense of worshipful authority and weight; and opposite to him the sparely made, dark, thin, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passed, and John was drawing near to thirty. He had kept the promise of his boyhood, and was now of a lusty frame, verging toward corpulence; good features, good eyes, a genial manner, a ready laugh, a long pair of sandy whiskers, a dash of an American accent, a close familiarity with the great American joke, and a certain likeness to a R- y-l P-rs-n-ge, who shall remain ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... instructor they had disputes about it. They would sit down breathless upon the tombs and then begin again. Several even dieted themselves. Some imagined that it was necessary to eat a great deal in order to acquire strength, while others who were inconvenienced by their corpulence weakened themselves with fasts ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... with the hostile posterior, I was hurled about by the momentum of my shot that missed its mark, and suddenly stood facing in the opposite direction. I had to laugh at myself. But Alcides made a quick move round the corner of the house. Donna Leocadia, whose corpulence still filled the window, called to me that I was always too good-natured; I ought not to have let the rascal run away, but ought to have banged his head several times against the wall. Then with an undulating lurch she got up and stepped back from the window, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the quiet crowds went in and out of the Maillot entrance to the Bois de Boulogne. There was a sense of order and security in the air. I took a seat on the terrace of a little restaurant. The garcon was a small man in the fifties, inclined to corpulence, with a large head, large, blue-gray eyes, purplish lips, and blue-black hair cut pompadour. As we watched the orderly, Sunday crowds going to the great park, we fell into conversation about the calmness of ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... endeavored to re-establish the concern, the new cremiere, was a person of about fifty years of age, whose corpulence passed all bounds, and who still retained some debris of beauty, half submerged in fat. It was said in the quarter that she had set herself up in business with the money of an old gentleman, whose servant she had been until his death, in her native ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... by M. de Kercadiou, in completest contrast. On legs of the shortest, the Lord of Gavrillac carried a body that at forty-five was beginning to incline to corpulence and an enormous head containing an indifferent allotment of intelligence. His countenance was pink and blotchy, liberally branded by the smallpox which had almost extinguished him in youth. In dress he was careless to the point of untidiness, and to this and to the fact ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... several times from the top of the stairs, raising his voice at each repetition, "Andrea! Andrea!" to his wife; and as she did not come immediately, he stumbled as fast as his corpulence would allow him down the stairs, pausing, however, with a vacant look upon ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... some days of pain and penitence. I saw where all must end. I saw, too well, Edward was growing idle,—that his form Was gathering disgustful corpulence,— That he was going down, and dragging me To shame and ruin, beggary and death. But judgment came, and overshadowed us; And one quick bolt shot from the awful cloud Severed the tie that bound two worthless lives. What God hath joined together, God may part:— Grace, have you thought ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... Hampshire, to take up their lodgings in dwellings also abandoned by their owners. A few individuals refused to fly with the multitude; some, unable to move by reason of sickness, were left behind by their relatives. One old gentleman, whose excessive corpulence rendered retreat on his part impossible, made a virtue of necessity; and, seating himself in his doorway with his loaded king's arm, upbraided his more nimble neighbors, advising them to do as he did, and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... apprehensions of his friend, assured him it was only the burning of the villages, which the country people had abandoned to the flames: after this he retired to rest, and it is most certain he was so little disquieted as to fall into a sound sleep: for his breathing, which, on account of his corpulence, was rather heavy and sonorous, was heard by the attendants outside. The court which led to his apartment being now almost filled with stones and ashes, if he had continued there any time longer, it would have been ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... personally examining witnesses at the scenes of the rascality he unveiled. The orator showed a true Roman lack of appreciation of Greek art, and exercised his own love of puns to a considerable extent, playing a good deal upon the name Verres, which meant a boar. The extreme corpulence of the defendant, too, offered an opportunity for gross personal allusions. Cicero compared him to the Erymanthean boar, and called him the "drag-net" of Sicily, because his name resembled the word everriculum, a drag-net.] Though protected by Hortensius, an older advocate, who, during ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... which changed my prospects in life, and I must, therefore, say a little more about my father and mother, bringing up their history to that period. The propensity of my mother to ardent spirits had, as always is the case, greatly increased upon her, and her corpulence had increased in the same ratio. She was now a most unwieldy, bloated mountain of flesh, such a form as I have never since beheld, although, at the time, she did not appear to me to be disgusting, accustomed ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Lovell bustled downstairs as quickly as her corpulence would allow her, and Margery followed, a few minutes later. While the former was busy in the hall, ordering fresh rushes to be spread, and the tables set, Margery repaired to the ample kitchen, where, summoning the maids to assist her, and tying a large coarse apron round her, she proceeded to concoct ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... was a large stately looking personage, somewhat inclined to corpulence, but showing many a sign of giant strength, and vigor unimpaired by years or habit. His head was large but well shaped, with a broad and massive forehead, and an eye keen as the eagle's when soaring in his pride of place. His nose was prominent, but rather ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... was tall in stature, his face modest, and very ruddy; he had large eyes, but was dim-sighted; naturally graceful in his person, particularly in his youth, excepting only that his toes were bent somewhat inward, he was at last disfigured by baldness, corpulence, and the slenderness of his legs, which were reduced by a long illness. He was so sensible how much the modesty of his countenance recommended him, that he once made this boast to the senate, "Thus far you have approved both of my disposition and ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Seville,' had from the first discreetly thought otherwise. Unfortunately, even Schroder-Devrient only saw when the rehearsals were too far advanced how utterly incapable Wachter was of realising the horror and supreme suffering of my Mariner. His distressing corpulence, his broad fat face, the extraordinary movements of his arms and legs, which he managed to make look like mere stumps, drove my passionate Senta to despair. At one rehearsal, when in the great scene in Act ii. she comes to him in the guise of a guardian angel to bring the message of salvation, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... "The corpulence is essential, dear Mrs. Potiphar," said Mr. Cheese. "I have been much abroad; I have mingled, I trust, in good, which is to say, Christian society: and I must say, that few things struck me more upon my return than that the ladies who drive ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... Paradiso); but there seems a clear prospect that in the coming generation he will be known to them through burlesques, and that his plays will find a new life as pantomimes. A bottle-nosed Lear will come on with a monstrous corpulence from which he will frantically dance himself free during the midnight storm; Rosalind and Celia will join in a grotesque ballet with shepherds and shepherdesses; Ophelia in fleshings and a voluminous brevity of grenadine will dance through the mad scene, finishing with the famous "attitude ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Beetle.—Translator's Note.), the Anoxia (A Beetle akin to the Cockchafer.—Translator's Note.), the Cockchafer. Weighed down by a heavy belly and living underground, where they feed either on leaf-mould or on roots, these larvae all possess the vigorous constitution needed to drag their corpulence through a resisting medium. All of them also roll themselves into a hook which is not straightened without ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... devoted herself to her mother. It was admitted by all who knew her that Maryanne Brown had charms. At that time she was about twenty-four years of age, and was certainly a fine young woman. She was, like her mother, a little too much inclined to corpulence, and there may be those who would not allow that her hair was auburn. Mr. Robinson, however, who was then devotedly attached to her, was of that opinion, and was ready to maintain his views against any man who would dare to say that ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... atmosphere of nervousness radiated—a man of medium height, inclined towards corpulence, with small grey imperial, a thin red ribbon in his buttonhole, and slightly prominent features—promptly intervened. He had the air of a man wholly ill-at-ease. All the time Mr. Grex had been speaking, he had been drumming upon the ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... three of these nights I might just as well have slept in my bed as any respectable burgher who has nothing to trouble him but his growing corpulence. But last night I dared not undress, for I have much to do this morning. Good Heaven! Gunther," continued the emperor, suddenly remembering the hussar, "what has become of the man whom I gave into ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... story of his interview with his professor of Greek. When Foster laughed as he told of Splinter's description of his marvelously increased corpulence, Will did not join, for the ludicrous side now was all swallowed up in his anger. And when his room-mate scowled as he heard of the professor's insinuation that the young freshman was trying to "boot-lick," ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... Kemble, has lately amused the Town by his performance of Falstaff. He exhibited the humours of the jovial knight with skill enough to make the audiences laugh. But he was perhaps the first actor who ever played the fat knight to the life. His remarkable corpulence qualified him to play the character without stuffing. The good-humour of his visage was fully equalled by the protuberance of his stomach; and if the "totus in se teres atque rotundus" of Horace, is the poet's definition of a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... on corpulence, quotes Pennant in mentioning a woman in Rosshire who lived one and three-quarters years without meat or drink. Granger had under observation a woman by the name of Ann Moore, fifty-eight years of age, who fasted for two ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... both of them. The friendship thus begun continued without break or coolness to the end of Gibbon's life. Thirty-five years after his first interview with his step-mother, and only a few months before his own death, when he was old and ailing, and the least exertion, by reason of his excessive corpulence, involved pain and trouble, he made a long journey to Bath for the sole purpose of paying Mrs. Gibbon a visit. He was very far from being the selfish Epicurean that has been ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... fifty or upwards, a corpulent figure, big in the paunch and enormous in the rear; yet there is such an appearance of strength and robustness in his frame, that his corpulence appears very proper and necessary to him. A pound of flesh could not be spared from his abundance, any more than from the leanest man; and he walks about briskly, without any panting or symptom of labor or pain in his motion. He has a round, jolly face, always mirthful and humorous and shrewd, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... been often said of Mr. Pickwick and his time, that age has been much "put back" since that era. Mr. Pickwick, Wardle, Tupman and Co., are all described as old gentlemen, none of the party being over fifty; but they had to dress up to the part of old gentlemen, and with the aid of corpulence, "circular spectacles," &c, conveyed the idea of seventy. Forster in the same way was then not more than forty-five, but had a full-blown official look, and with his grave, solemn utterances, you would have set ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... which he would have instantly missed had it been removed. There was a French bronze group representing a duel with swords, fought by a couple of very fat toads, one of them (characterised by that particular buoyancy which belongs to corpulence) in the act of making a prodigious lunge forward, which the other receives in the very middle of his digestive apparatus, and under the influence of which it seems likely that he will satisfy the wounded honour of his opponent by promptly expiring. There was another bronze figure which ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... not now seconded as it had been formerly by a vigorous constitution. They were alarmed at finding their chief no longer insensible to the heat of a burning atmosphere; and they remarked to each other with melancholy forebodings, the tendency to corpulence by which his frame was now distinguished; the sure sign of ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... ideas of feminine perfection. The gracefulness of figure and motion, and a countenance enlivened by expression, are by no means essential points in their standard. With them corpulence and beauty appear to be terms nearly synonymous. A woman of even moderate pretensions must be one who cannot walk without a slave under each arm to support her; and a perfect beauty is a load for a camel. In consequence of this prevalent taste for unwieldiness of bulk, the ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... upstairs. How glad I am," Maslenikoff began excitedly, seizing Nekhludoff by the arm, and, notwithstanding his corpulence, nimbly leading him up the stairs. Maslenikoff was in a particularly happy mood, which Nekhludoff could not help ascribing to the attention shown him by the important person. Every attention shown him by an important person ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... with the loss of many or his ships, upon a dangerous coast without a harbor. So the expedition returned without effecting anything. Antigonus, now nearly eighty years old, was no longer well able to go through the fatigues of a marching campaign, though rather on account of his great size and corpulence than from loss of strength; and for this reason he left things to his son, whose fortune and experience appeared sufficient for all undertakings, and whose luxury and expense and revelry gave him no concern. For though in peace he vented ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... flesh," said an Austrian diplomat who saw him at Pillnitz in 1791. "The true type of a King," according to Metternich, who was presented to him in 1792 at Coblenz, at the time of the German crusade against France and the Revolution. "His stature," he added, "was gigantic, and his corpulence in keeping. In every company he stood a head higher than the surrounding crowd. His manners were noble and engaging." He expressed himself with a certain effort, in little abrupt phrases. There was nothing in him to recall the implacable and ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... to look more closely at the personality of the greatest Duke of Rouen. William the Bastard has been described[16] as tall and very stout, fierce of visage, with a high, bald forehead, and, in spite of his great corpulence, of extreme dignity, whether on his throne or in the field. The strength of his arms, for which he was famous, was proved very early, when the chivalry of France went down before his boyish lance at Val-es-Dunes. He evidently possessed all the true ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... distinguish the astonished countenances of a rather fine-looking race of natives of yellowish-brown complexion. Women of incredible corpulence were dawdling about through the cultivated grounds, and the doctor greatly surprised his companions by informing them that this rotundity, which is highly esteemed in that region, was obtained by an obligatory ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... upon the stage in Ireland, and in company with Brownlow Ford, a clergyman of convivial habits, strolled over the greater part of the island. On his return to London he played several times at the Haymarket, and was later introduced by Goldsmith to Colman. But on account of his corpulence Colman declined his services. Parker then joined the provincial strolling companies, and was engaged for one season with Digges, then manager of the Edinburgh Theatre. At Edinburgh he married an actress named ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... pale, thought that he was done for, and although they were fully armed, took to their heels and fled, deaf to his feeble cry for assistance. While all this was going on, the tyrant was making his way up the grand staircase, as fast as his corpulence would permit, and reached the top just in time to see Isabelle, pale, dishevelled, motionless, and apparently dead, being borne along the corridor by two lackeys. Without stopping to make any inquiries, and full of wrath at ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... parliament, to retain their offices after having incurred their displeasure. They have shown their artful policy in the choice of a guardian for the young King. It has fallen on the tributary King of the island of Balabola, distinguished by his giant height of seven feet, and by his enormous corpulence, which almost prevents his moving, but by ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... exercise. In fact, one of the benefits of exercise is perspiration. When a person can not or will not take exercise, perspiration can be induced by hot baths. Such extreme measures ought not, however, to be taken too often. How often will depend on the corpulence and other circumstances of each individual. Sweating may be overdone, and should never be pushed to the extent of exhaustion. The function of the skin in removing wastes from the body is much less important than formerly ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... and forty-eight pounds, to one hundred and forty; and restored his health and the vigor of his mind. After a few years, he ventured to change his abstemious diet for one more rich and stimulating. But the effect was a recurrence of his former corpulence and ill health. A return to milk, water, and vegetables restored him again; and he continued in uninterrupted health to ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... exulting superiority over others most common in Sir John's mouth is his corpulence and the exterior marks of good living which he carries about him, thus "turning his vices into commodity." He accounts for the friendship between the Prince and Poins, from "their legs being both of a bigness;" and compares Justice Shallow to "a man made after ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Longinus.—He had been a competitor with Cicero for the consulship. Ascon. Ped., in Cic. Orat. in Tog. Cand. His corpulence was such that Cassius's fat (Cassii adeps) became proverbial. Cic. Orat. ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... Pompaedius, "come down and fight;" to which the veteran replied, "Nay, do you, if you are a great general, compel me to fight against my will." The Romans considered that Marius was over-cautious and too slow; and Plutarch says that his age and corpulence rendered him incapable of enduring the fatigue of very active service. But it is more probable that he was not very willing to destroy the Allies, who had been among his most active partisans, and ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... impossible. Many urged the king to change his purpose in the matter; but he cried, 'Nay, what we resolved on at Laon stands: I would not hold back therefrom, though it were to save my life. The king's majesty would be vilified, if I were to fly before this scoundrel.' Forthwith, in spite of his corpulence, and with admirable ardor, he pushed on with his troops through ravines and roads encumbered with forests. . . . Thomas, made prisoner and mortally wounded, was brought to King Louis, and by his order removed to Laon, to the almost universal satisfaction of his own folk and ours. Next day, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... about the year 1637, was reigning Duke of Bracciano. Among Italian princes he ranked almost upon a par with the Dukes of Urbino; and his family, by its alliances, was more illustrious than any of that time in Italy. He was a man of gigantic stature, prodigious corpulence, and marked personal daring; agreeable in manners, but subject to uncontrollable fits of passion, and incapable of self-restraint when crossed in any whim or fancy. Upon the habit of his body it is needful ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... decorations, and a broad red divan, the cushions of which were considerably the worse for wear. Such was the bureau of the Deftendar Effendi, who sat surrounded with papers, and the implements of writing. He was a man apparently of fifty-five years of age, slightly inclining to corpulence, with a very short neck, surmounted by large features, coarsely chiselled; but not devoid of a certain intelligence in his eye, and dignity in general effect. He spoke English with a correct accent, but slowly, occasionally stopping to remember a word; thus showing that his English was ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... and gathered himself up until he appeared to taper from his stem like a florist's bouquet, and all the upper part of him was pink and trembling with emotion. Arthur may one day attain corpulence; he ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... even by some of his warmest admirers, that at this period the genius and energy of Napoleon had declined; and they sought in his tendency to corpulence, in his attacks of languor, in his long slumbers, the explanation of his ill fortune. I believe the reproach to be unfounded, and the pretext frivolous. I can discover in the mind or actions of Napoleon during the hundred days, no symptoms of infirmity; I ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Candace, looking down from the tower of her ample corpulence on the small, quiet man whom she had been fledging with the ample folds of a worsted comforter, out of which his little head and shining bead-eyes looked, much like a blackbird in a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... to the pavement. In an instant he was hammering at the door in his lively style. There was no avoiding him. The door had to be opened. Sophia opened it. Dick Povey was over forty, but he looked considerably younger. Despite his lameness, and the fact that his lameness tended to induce corpulence, he had a dashing air, and his face, with its short, light moustache, was boyish. He seemed to be always upon ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... wealth is corpulence, if it is not disease. 4. No other English author has uttered so many pithy sayings as ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... had turned upon those curious entities; and the more curious they were, the more intimately at home with them he seemed to be. But Lady Beaconsfield, with her cracked idolatry, and Mrs. Brydges-Williams, with her clogs, her corpulence, and her legacy, were gone: an even more remarkable phenomenon stood in their place. He surveyed what was before him with the eye of a past-master; and he was not for a moment at a loss. He realised ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... joy, from his brief inspection of Parsons' unconscious back. Parsons had his tail coat off and was working with vigour; his habit of pulling his waistcoat straps to the utmost brought out all the agreeable promise of corpulence in his youthful frame. He was blowing excitedly and running his fingers through his hair, and then moving with all the swift eagerness of a man inspired. All about his feet and knees were scarlet blankets, not folded, not formally unfolded, but—the only phrase is—shied ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... his new adventure in all its details, invited some of his friends to sup with him at the pastrycook Lecoq's. This man, who was a brother of the famous Lecoq of the rue Montorgueil, was the cleverest eating-house-keeper in Avignon; his own unusual corpulence commended his cookery, and, when he stood at the door, constituted an advertisement for his restaurant. The good man, knowing with what delicate appetites he had to deal, did his very best that evening, and that nothing might be wanting, waited upon his guests himself. They spent ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and are clean-limbed, receive still greater ease and grace from it; while at the same time, it prevents the gathering of those gross and foggy humors which in time form a disagreeable and inconvenient corpulence. On the other hand, those whose make and constitution occasion a kind of heavy proportion, whose muscular texture is not distinct, whose necks are short, shoulders round, chest narrow, and who, ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... covering the forehead down to the eyebrows. Some were yellow, and some white-types of the Mongolian and Caucasian races. Now and then a pretty face was seen, rarely a beautiful one. Many were plump, even to corpulence, and these were the closest veiled, being considered the greatest beauties I presume, since with the Turk obesity is the chief element of comeliness. As the carriages passed along in review, every now and then ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of gold and purple, azure and green: These, as a line, their long dimension drew, Streaking the ground with sinuous trace; not all Minims of nature; some of serpent-kind, Wonderous in length and corpulence, involved Their snaky folds, and added wings. First crept The parsimonious emmet, provident Of future; in small room large heart enclosed; Pattern of just equality perhaps Hereafter, joined in her popular tribes Of commonalty: Swarming next appeared The female bee, that ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... besides, some law affairs to transact with his agent, he was called suddenly away to Newstead by the intelligence of an event which seems to have affected his mind far more deeply than, considering all the circumstances of the case, could have been expected. Mrs. Byron, whose excessive corpulence rendered her, at all times, rather a perilous subject for illness, had been of late indisposed, but not to any alarming degree; nor does it appear that, when the following note was written, there existed any grounds for apprehension as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of the fire, and placed his heels on the fender. His feet and legs seemed indistinctly to swell, and swathings showed themselves round them, and they grew into something enormous, and the upper figure swayed and shaped itself into corresponding proportions, a great mass of corpulence, with a cadaverous and malignant face, and the furrows of a great old age, and colourless glassy eyes; and with these changes, which came indefinitely but rapidly as those of a sunset cloud, the fine regimentals ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... farm-house. On a bench at the foot of the trees, with a pipe in his mouth, and a tankard by his side, sat the worthy carpenter, looking the picture of good-heartedness and benevolence. The progress of time was marked in Mr. Wood by increased corpulence and decreased powers of vision,—by deeper wrinkles and higher shoulders, by scantier breath and a fuller habit. Still he looked hale and hearty, and the country life he led had imparted a ruddier glow to his cheek. Around him were all ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... subject with might and main as I do at this moment, here, nevertheless, is Count Fosco, as fat as Henry the Eighth himself, established in my favour, at one day's notice, without let or hindrance from his own odious corpulence. Marvellous indeed! ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... woman than a round-favored man. Two who are short, thick-set and stocky, should not unite in marriage, but should choose those differently constituted; but on no account one of their own make. And, in general, those predisposed to corpulence are therefore ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... his great corpulence usually permitted the jovial man to move, he ascended to the deck, calling: "Great, greater, the greatest of news I bring, as the heaviest but by no means the most dilatory of messengers of good fortune from the city of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... been a present from that pretty cousin, of whom he speaks with such warmth in one of the notices already quoted. He was also, it appears, not a little aware of his own beauty, which, notwithstanding the tendency to corpulence derived from his mother, gave promise, at this time, of that peculiar expression into which his features ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... monk's care, Casanova hoisted himself through the broken ceiling and gained Balbi's cell, where the sight of Count Asquino dismayed him. He found a middle-aged man of a corpulence which must render it impossible for him to face the athletic difficulties that lay before them; of this the Count himself seemed ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... dect of Summers pride With spots of Gold and Purple, azure and green: These as a line thir long dimension drew, 480 Streaking the ground with sinuous trace; not all Minims of Nature; some of Serpent kinde Wondrous in length and corpulence involv'd Thir Snakie foulds, and added wings. First crept The Parsimonious Emmet, provident Of future, in small room large heart enclos'd, Pattern of just equalitie perhaps Hereafter, join'd in her ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... continual successes of the French armies overrunning Europe forbade the duke to keep up his retinue of artists. But he secured Weber a post at Stuttgart as private secretary to his brother, Ludwig, another younger brother of the King of Wuertemberg, a monster of corpulence, who had to have his dining-table made crescent-wise that he might get near enough to eat. Into the circle of these two unlovable figures and their ugly court ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... and dignity to a strength otherwise cumbrous and graceless. And indeed, since William's visit to England, his athletic shape had lost much of its youthful symmetry, though not yet deformed by that corpulence which was a disease almost as rare in the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from mouth to mouth. Yes. Fat Taskinar! He was known well enough! His corpulence had been the theme of many an article in the journals ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... buck. The occupant was allowed to put her face through an opening to be photographed, in consideration of another present."[92] As a consequence of their long enforced idleness in the shade the girls grow fat and their dusky complexion bleaches to a more pallid hue. Both their corpulence and their pallor are regarded ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Corpulence and slovenliness. Sense of touch. The blind—how taught to read. Hint to parents. The hand. Neglecting the left hand. Physiology of the hand and arm. Evils of being able to use but one hand. Both should ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... it cannot but be felt to be barren. It is, in fact, perhaps the least powerful of all the series; and its effect is further marred by what Lord Lindsay has partly noted, the appearance—perhaps accidental, but if so, exceedingly unskilful—of matronly corpulence in the figure of the Madonna. The unfortunate failure in the representation of the legs and chests of the camels, and the awkwardness of the attempt to render the action of kneeling in the foremost king, put ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... the Hawaiian erotic taste is indicated by "Haeole's" reference (123) to "the immense corpulency of some of the old Hawaiian queens, a feature which, in those days, was deemed the ne plus ultra of female beauty." Incest was permitted to the chiefs, and the people vied with their ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... determined to consider her my wife; and, this done, all my powers of discovery were put to work in search of perfections in her which might be fairly set off against her defects. I tried to imagine her handsome, which, but for her unfortunate corpulency, was actually true. Exclusive of this no woman that I have ever seen has a finer face. I also tried to convince myself that the mind was much more to be valued than the person; and in this she was not inferior, as I could discover, to any with ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... one trooped into the carriages again. How they ever got so many full-dressed people into one carriage is a mystery to this day. But in they piled, regardless of trains, corpulency, or height; and coach after coach lumbered away to ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott |
