"Courtliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he passed from the chamber arm-in-arm with his elder brother, while the King, chuckling greatly over the lad's show of courtliness and ceremony, went into a learned discussion with my lord of Montacute and Master Sandy as to the origin of the snapdragon, which he, with his customary assumption of deep learning, declared was "but a modern paraphrase, my lord, of ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... who kept going the early evangelicalism of Newton and Cowper and Cecil—dear, sunny, simple-hearted old Manx vicars, who took sweet counsel together in their old-fashioned homes, where you found grace in all senses of the word, purity of soul, the life of the mind, and gentle courtliness of manners. ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... I was within sight of my limit of patience, Bromwell Ellersly appeared at my office. "I can't put my hand on the necessary cash, Mr. Blacklock—at least, not for a few days. Can I count on your further indulgence?" This in his best exhibit of old-fashioned courtliness—the "gentleman" through and through, ignorant of ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... Horace, either disapproving of the work, or doubting of the poetical faculties of the elder Piso, or both, wished to dissuade him from all thoughts of publication. With this view he wrote his Epistle, addressing it, with a courtliness and delicacy perfectly agreeable to his acknowledged character, indifferently to the whole family, the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... not speak grammatically; they could hardly offer him the necessities of life, yet they gave all they had, with a touch of courtliness. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... millionaire who used his bank, and whose business could and would actually be handled by one of his clerks, whom she might as well see in the first place without bothering him. As well, however, he knew that she would never consent to see anybody but himself. Somewhat wearily, but with all courtliness of manner, he had her shown ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... political studies, and, above all, instructed him with endless insistence as to his bearing in society, impressed upon him the importance of good breeding, the "graces," and the general deportment required of a person of quality. The letters are a classic of courtliness and worldly wisdom. They were prepared for the press by Philip Stanhope's widow, and were published in 1774, under the title of "Letters Written by the Earl of Chesterfield, together with Several ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... and mingling with the dash of waters, we hear now and then their petty alarms, their steamers and fire-bells, and the dozen other occasions upon which they see fit to make a great noise in the world; but the travelled sound has a courtliness that is rather pleasant than otherwise; and as a key-note to our mocking-birds, it is quite worthy of the sweet south that brings it up. Whenever there is any sudden ebullition that cannot be pared down to the common air, we are made aware of it by a cannonading that is doubtless very ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... slowly to the fact of her hospitality. "My dear young lady," he said, with a trace of courtliness, "you shouldn't have troubled—" and reached out a trembling hand for the cup. There was a ring on the hand, a seal ring with a coat of arms. As he drank the chocolate eagerly, he spilled some of it on ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... above the medium height, he carried himself and rode with a courtliness and ease that bespoke the accomplished horseman and gentleman. His splendid head and face showed the marks of an adventurous career, and all bespoke the blood of the family from which he had sprung, the ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... Percival came forth again from Joyous Gard, there was no knight, unless it was Sir Launcelot himself, who could surpass him in skill at arms; nay, not even his own brother, Sir Lamorack; nor was there anybody, even if one were Sir Gawaine or Sir Geraint, who surpassed him in civility of courtliness or nobility of demeanor. ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... years that ended with the Mid-Victorians the exclusiveness of Brighton gave way to the excursion train, and though still a fashionable place, it is now more than ever London-by-the-sea and caters with true courtliness for coster and duke. ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... memory. Then, when luncheon came and the servants were present, they spoke quietly of the work to be done for soldiers' wives and of a meeting the mother was to attend that afternoon. Lady Charlton was the mother one would expect Rose to have—indeed, such complete grace of courtliness and kindness points to an education. Afterwards, while they were alone, Lady Charlton, in broken sentences, sketched the future. She supposed Rose would stay on although the house was too big. Much good might be done ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... of Tronje Hagen / with noble courtliness: "Why wilt thou of thy mother / beg such services? Only let thy sister / hear our mind and mood: So shall for this our journey / her ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... courtesy. It was impossible for any one, of the least powers of observation, to fail of detecting in Mr. Smith, though beneath a reserve and formality not very easy to penetrate, a kind of scrupulous antique courtliness, suggesting to you a resuscitated gentleman of the school of Addison, particularly in his intercourse with ladies. He was caution personified,—never saying any thing that required retraction or modification: and though you might guess the contemptuous estimate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... curse on him, with his handsome eyes! Regnald had envied Eustace many a day,— Envied his fame, and that exceeding grace And courtliness which he had learned at Court Of Sidney, Raleigh, Essex, and the rest: For when their father, lean Sir Egbert, died, Eustace, whose fortune dangled at his thigh,— A Damask blade,—had hastened to the Court To line his purse, perchance to build a name; And catching there the passion of the time, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... great taste for literature as well as diplomacy, this respected and respectable peer also possessed a curious felicity for applying quotation; and nothing rejoiced him so much as when, in the same phrase, he was enabled to set the two jewels of his courtliness of flattery and his profundity of erudition. Unhappily enough, his compliments were seldom as well taken as they were meant; and, whether from the ingratitude of the persons complimented or the ill fortune of the noble ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Nine Worthies too absurd in itself to mix well with the courtliness, learning, and elaborate wit of the rest of the Play? Note Berowne's defence of it (V, ii, 569-571) and his rebuke to the King for despising it? The Princess's defence of it and its correspondence with that of Theseus for the show of the "base mechanicals" ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... dictated. And the fascination is not far to seek, for Philippe d'Orleans was of the men who find easy conquests in the field of love. He was one of the handsomest men in all France; and to his good-looks and his reputation for bravery he added a manner of rare grace and courtliness, a supple tongue, and that strange magnetic power ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... bluntness that was absolutely appalling to them. He went straight to the mark aimed at with Napoleonic directness. They were stunned. They had been accustomed to be treated so differently. Hitherto there had been so much courtliness of manner in Halifax; the gradations of rank had been recognized by every one; and the great men and the great women had been treated always with deference. But here was a Jacobin who changed all this; who in dealing with them called a spade ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... railroad or telegraph. The House of Heth looked like a deserted house; its blinds were drawn from fourth story to basement. However, there was old Moses, bowing and running down the steps to open the carriage door and assist with the hand-luggage. He greeted the ladies with courtliness, and inquired mout anybody be sick. Answered vaguely on this point, he announced that he had breakfast ready-waiting on the table; this, though Mr. Canning's telegraph never retched him till nea'bout eight o'clock. His tone indicated a pride of accomplishment ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Miss Maitland had watched, starry-eyed, a function which in essentials had not altered in very many years. Its hostess had grown more gray, but no less alert, had changed in years more than in age. And it was with a courtly bow, which also had not varied in angle or courtliness, that little Miss Maitland saw Mr. Augustus Lispenard bend low over Miss ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... gazing out. His age was about that of the doctor—forty or so; and like the doctor he was rather stout and clean-shaven. Their Scotch accents mingled in greeting, the doctor's being the more marked. Buchanan shook my hand with a certain courtliness, indicating that he was well accustomed to receive strangers. As an expert in small talk, however, he shone no brighter than his visitors, and the three of us stood there by the window awkwardly in the heaped disorder ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... to what they work in. Their "good breeding" respects only secondary objects. The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days,—mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small-clothes, out of date. It is the vice, but not the excellence of manners, that they are continually being deserted by the character; they are cast-off clothes or shells, claiming the respect which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... the force of conflicting emotions which left him only strength enough to realize that he was too angry to advise with dignity, though he was one of the Chiefs of the Ten. He had been outwitted in the presence of the Maggior Consiglio by a son who had shown an astuteness and courtliness of which any Venetian father might be proud, together with a knowledge of the point upon which he based his appeal, which required the summoning of the Avvogadori di Commun, though it was uttered in the presence of the six supreme Councillors of the Republic! He could not interpose to demean his ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... as Dick had assured her, quite civilised. As the meal proceeded she suddenly conceived an interest in Canada and the States, which had never before possessed her. She questioned him with growing eagerness, and he replied with a smile and always that half-reverent, half-shy courtliness that had first attracted her. Undoubtedly he was a pleasant companion. He clothed the information for which she asked in careful and picturesque language. He was ready at any moment to render any service, however slight, but his attentions were ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... lifted up her cup of tea, and with the little finger of her right hand stiffly extended to Mr. Mix's good health. Mr. Mix, sitting upright in a gilded chair which was three sizes too small for him, bowed with a courtliness which belonged to the same historical period as the chair, and also drank. Over the rim of his ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... wide-spread wings holds a large pair of scales and smiles as he caresses a little child with folded hands, while a goat-headed devil watches eagerly to seize him if the Archangel should turn away; and behind this lingering demon begins the dolorous procession of the outcast. Nor have we here the infernal courtliness of the scene as represented at Chartres, the doubtful consideration of an evil spirit gently driving in a nun; it is brutality in all its horror, the lowest violence; the sometimes comic side of these struggles is not to be seen here. At Bourges the myrmidons of the deep work ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... and do not all speak the idiom of the people who created their forms, but their original characteristics ought to be known. The Polonaise was the stately dance of the Polish nobility, more a march or procession than a dance, full of gravity and courtliness, with an imposing and majestic rhythm in triple time that tends to emphasize the second beat of the measure, frequently syncopating it and accentuating the second half ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... civilization. Neither would quibble or uphold an argument which he thought unjust, even though his nation might gain in a material sense, and neither would pitch the discussion in any other key than forbearance and mutual accommodation and courtliness. For both men had the same end in view. They were both thinking, not of the present, but of the coming centuries. The cooeperation of the two nations in meeting the dangers of autocracy and Prussian ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... colony Sir William Berkeley, then almost forty years of age, when John Stevens was only seventeen. Berkeley was a man of charming manners, proverbially polite, and he delighted the Virginians, who had a weakness for courtliness. He belonged to an ancient English family, and believed in monarchy as a devotee believes in his saint, "and he brought to the little capital at Jamestown all the graces, amenities, and well-bred ways which at ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... personal letters. His niece and housekeeper, Mrs. Donelson, one of the anti-Eatonites, he turned out of the White House, with her husband, his private secretary. The breach was serious anyway, and might have been far more so but for the healing offices of Van Buren, who used all his courtliness and power of place to help the President bring about the social recognition of Mrs. Eaton. He called upon her, made parties in her honor, and secured her entree to the families of the greatest foreign ministers. Mrs. Eaton triumphed, but the scandal ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... day appeared indefinitely prolonged, judging by Percy Dacier's behaviour to Miss Asper. Lady Wathin watched them narrowly when she had the chance, a little ashamed of her sex, or indignant rather at his display of courtliness in exchange for her open betrayal of her preference. It was almost to be wished that she would punish him by sacrificing herself to one of her many brilliant proposals of marriage. But such are women!—precisely because of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... particle of hostility toward him or his section in the men with whom he dealt and associated. They invited him to their homes; he met the women of their families, from whom he often received rather more than courtesy, for his fine appearance and a certain courtliness of manner, inherited from his aristocratic father, had won a thinly veiled admiration of which he had been agreeably conscious. Since these people had no controversy with him, how could he continue to cherish enmity and prejudice against ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... art. Few consciences, at times, seem so enlightened as that of this personally unknown person, so withdrawn into his work, and so lost to the intensest curiosity of after-time; at other times he seems merely Elizabethan in his coarseness, his courtliness, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and—sat down. He was no longer on familiar ground. Then Fra Diavolo proceeded to verify mademoiselle's judgment of him. Sombrero in hand and with a pompous courtliness, he repeated his natural supposition that the senorita was on her way to the City (meaning the City of Mexico), and perhaps to the court of His Glorious Majesty, Maximiliano. He offered himself, therefore, in case he might have the felicity to be of use. This she need not consider ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Like It." The Queen and ladies were lodged in bowers of the branches of trees, slept on the skins of deer and roe, and the King and his young knights hunted, fished, or gathered the cranberry or the whortleberry for their food; while the French courtliness of James Douglas, and the gracious beauty of young Nigel, threw a romance over the whole of the sufferings so faithfully and ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... his opportunities well. He had caught the Major's little idiosyncrasies of speech, accent, and intonation and his pompous courtliness to perfection—exaggerating all to the purpose of the stage. When he performed that marvelous bow that the Major fondly imagined to be the pink of all salutations, the audience sent forth a ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Frenchman would take his meals alone with Sir Henry in the library, while at others he would lunch with her ladyship and her guests. On these latter occasions he proved himself a most amusing cosmopolitan, and at the same time exhibited an extreme courtliness towards every one. His manner was quite charming, yet his presence there was always puzzling, and had given ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... charmed, I'm sure," Felix replied, smiling in spite of himself at so much Parisian courtliness under so ragged an exterior. "It is a great pleasure to us to find we are not really alone on this barbarous island. But you were going to explain to me, I believe, the exact nature of this peril in which we both stand—the precise ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... to the place where she had sent the lady. A right worthy dame is this same Duchess, and a stately; and that young King, as they call him, seems hard to please, for he told Berry that his wife's courtliness and ease in his reception were far above aught that he found here. What he means is past a plain man, for as to Berry's wife she is handy, and notable enough, and 'tis well he loves her so well; but what a little brown ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... application is the conjecture of Black, vol. i. p. 317. Serassi suppressed the whole passage. The indecent word would have been known but for the delicacy or courtliness of Muratori, who substituted an et-cetera in its place, observing, that he had "covered" with it "an indecent word not fit to be printed" ("sotto quell'et-cetera ho io coperta un'indecente parola, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... strength at the roots, little that sprang from the soil, but in New York, which men already forecast as the metropolis of the New World, there was strength everywhere. It might be a sprawling town. There might be no courtliness to equal the courtliness at the heart of Quebec, but there was vigor, vigor everywhere. The people were eager, restless, curious, always ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... into the parlour on her way to the kitchen. Mr Verloc would want his tea presently. Confident of the power of her charms, Winnie did not expect from her husband in the daily intercourse of their married life a ceremonious amenity of address and courtliness of manner; vain and antiquated forms at best, probably never very exactly observed, discarded nowadays even in the highest spheres, and always foreign to the standards of her class. She did not look for courtesies from him. But he was a ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... pall upon readers who demand a more nervous and accented kind of writing. It is felt that a little roughness, a little harshness, even, would give relief to his pictures of life. There is, for instance, something a little irritating in the old-fashioned courtliness of his manner toward women; and one reads with a certain impatience smoothly punctuated passages like the following: "As the vine, which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Ruth's right hand; Monsieur de Stafforth, Oberhofmarshall of the court of Wirtemberg, was at her left; Madame Friedrich de Graevenitz sat beside the Duke to his right; beside her was the Freiherr von Reischach, a gentleman famous for his fine courtliness and his experience in war and love; Friedrich Graevenitz sat next to him, and then came Wilhelmine seated between her brother and Monsieur de Stafforth, opposite her hostess and the Duke of Zollern. Madame de Ruth sat with her back turned towards the light; she ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and scanty as it was, I seldom recollect an evening which I passed with a lighter sense of the burden of a prisoner's time. I found the Vendean nobles a manlier race than their more courtly countrymen. Yet they had courtliness of their own; but it was more the manner of our own country gentlemen of the last century, than the polish of Versailles. Their habits of living on their domains, of country sports, of intercourse with their peasantry, and of the general simplicity of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various |
