"Exquisitely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "His noble and exquisitely beautiful countenance, the tone of his voice, his manners, the thousand enchantments that surrounded him, rendered him so different and so superior a being to any whom I had hitherto seen, that it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... honest work in my life," he said. "I was born with the silver spoon in my mouth. Alas, I have been amazingly lazy; it was my metier to look on. I ought, at least, to have written a book; but then all the things I wanted to say have been so exquisitely said by Count Gobineau in his immortal volumes, that I should only have been an echo. The world is too full of echoes as it is. Believe me, if I had been called to work for my living, I should have cut a respectable figure, for I have ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... d'un deporte." by P. Villiers, (Robespierre's secretary for seven months in 1790,) p. 2. "Of painstaking cleanliness."—Buchez et Roux, XXXIV., 94. Description of Robespierre, published in the newspapers after his death: "His clothes were exquisitely clean and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... languidly and stood before him. Rallywood saw a slight woman, tall and exquisitely fair, who carried her small head with its gleaming coronet royally. Her skin and her soft flushed cheeks had the pure, evanescent quality of a child's complexion. Moreover, her chief charm was perhaps ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... a man perhaps sixty years of age, strongly built, gray-haired, cleanshaven except for the conventional seaman's fringe of beard below the chin, and always exquisitely neat. Whether you met him in his best suit, on Sunday morning, or in his old clothes, going to his oyster-beds or his cranberry-marsh, it was always the same. He was usually in his shirt-sleeves in summer. His white cotton shirt, ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... compound is laid with broken coral, excruciating to the eyes and the bare feet, but exquisitely raked and weeded. A score or more of buildings lie in a sort of street along the palisade and scattered on the margin of the terrace; dwelling-houses for the wives and the attendants, storehouses for the king's curios and treasures, spacious maniap's for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... frites, a small portion of Gruyere, and a bottle of wine. He eats appreciatively after the manner of a bon vivant; he uses his napkin gently and frequently; he glances blandly at the surroundings; watching him, you would suppose the viands were the choicest of the season, exquisitely prepared, while, in reality, they are poor and unsubstantial stuff, the refuse, perhaps, of better restaurants. Having finished the edibles, he calls for a 'gloria,' that is, black coffee and cognac; and, sipping this, he communes with his fancies which come ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... and made some jeering comments on the "bravery" of the Russian colonel. Nevertheless, after peace had been made with Austria, M. de Czernicheff came very often to Paris, where he spent part of the years 1810 and 1811. Handsome, courteous, likeable, highly deceitful and exquisitely polite, his title of aide-de-camp to the Russian emperor gave him entry not only to the court but also to the salons of high society, where he never discussed politics, and appeared to be interested only ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... derived from that of smell or of taste, though we may talk sometimes of an educated palate and an acquired taste. The finer organs of sight and hearing are the chief mediums of humour, but the sense of touch might by education be rendered exquisitely sensitive, and Dickens mentions the case of a girl he met in Switzerland who was blind, deaf, and dumb, but who was constantly laughing. Among infants, also, where very slight complication is required, the sense of humour ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... me as she spoke, her hips undulating exquisitely, that sultry smile of completely improper intent on her beautiful face. She wore still the silkily gleaming black net in which I had first met her. It was torn ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... "How exquisitely he tortures me," she said. "He uses roses as his weapons.... But what think you of this my friend? I shall bear his image into life! What matter laws and customs, and sins forbidden.... I shall be happy again when I hold ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... resentment. Except for the Serial-Letter Co.'s ingeniously varied attentions there was practically nothing to help him make either day or night bearable. More and more Cornelia's infrequent letters suggested exquisitely painted empty dishes offered to a starving person. More and more "Molly's" whimsical messages fed him and nourished him and joyously pleased him like some nonsensically fashioned candy-box that yet proved brimming full of real food for a real man. Fight as he ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... has been going on from 1793 to this day. M. Guary remembers the stately ruins as much more extensive in his youth than they now are, and as the good people of St.-Amand have very recently allowed the local architect to put up, under the very shadow of the exquisitely beautiful belfry still standing, one of the most dismal and commonplace brick school-houses I have seen in France, it is to be presumed that a few more years will see everything pulled down, and replaced, perhaps, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the scope of the present work, yet it is, by its nature, so closely connected therewith, and is, moreover, so exquisitely tender and pathetic, so beautiful in its mournful simplicity, that I decided on giving it a place amongst ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... of Justine was calm. She was dressed in mourning, and her countenance, always engaging, was rendered, by the solemnity of her feelings, exquisitely beautiful. Yet she appeared confident in innocence and did not tremble, although gazed on and execrated by thousands, for all the kindness which her beauty might otherwise have excited was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the imagination ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... for the guillotine itself, you know what has been done with that. Oh! we had a narrow escape! Would you believe that that infamous, that abominable Government of Versailles, conceived the idea, at the time it sat in Paris, of having a new and exquisitely improved guillotine, constructed by anonymous carpenters? It is exactly as I have the honour of telling you. You can easily verify the fact by reading the proclamation of the "sous-comite en exercice." What is the "active under-committee?" I admit that I am in ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... low, soft tones, exquisitely expressive of the overthrow of reason and the merging of all the senses in the sweet abandonment ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... Colonel agreed in his daughter's desire to replace the wooden house in which they lived, with a nobler mansion which would be more fitting for his heirs to inherit. His daughter had a very high opinion indeed of her ancestry, and her father, growing exquisitely calm and good-natured in his serene declining years, humoured his child's peculiarities and interests in an easy bantering way. Truth to tell, there were few families in England with nobler connections than the Esmonds. The Virginians, Madame Rachel Warrington's ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... and wander there, a ravish'd guest; Gaze on those hidden treasures thou shalt find, Wander through all the glories of thy mind. Of perfect knowledge, see, the dawning light Foretells a noon most exquisitely bright! Here, springs of endless joy are breaking forth! There, buds the promise of celestial worth! Worth, which must ripen in a happier clime, And brighter sun, beyond the bounds of time. Thou, minor, canst not guess thy vast estate, What stores, on foreign ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... resolution to be independent of party, and during his brief administration did all that man could do for the benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking of a sixpence more than ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... of emotion overmastered him. He forgot where he was, the darkness of the night, the lateness of the hour, the melancholy murmur of the wind in the trees, he forgot that she was rich and he a poor dependent, he only remembered that she was exquisitely fair and that he—poor fool!—was mad ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... languid pleasure-seeker, wearily thirsting for fresh sources of amusement. The evening's entertainment commenced with a play obligingly described by the author as a farce, which was followed by a new and original operetta, containing some very pretty music by Mr. PERCY REEVE, with the exquisitely droll title of The Crusader and the Craven. The one lady and two gentlemen who took part in this were, from a prompter's point of view, nearly perfect. Mr. R. HENDON as Sir Rupert de Malvoisie (the Crusader) suggested, by his accent and gestures, ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... on the bench and stood back to scrutinize the cottage. It was exquisitely picturesque, but this very picturesqueness constituted its danger; for the place was a perfect death trap. The crumbling cob-walls that had taken on those wonderful patches of green colour, soaked in the damp like a sponge: ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that being yet at nurse, and before the first loosing of my tongue, I was delivered to a Germane (who died since, a most excellent Physitian in France) he being then altogether ignorant of the French tongue, but exquisitely readie and skilfull in the Latine. This man, whom my father had sent for of purpose, and to whom he gave verie great entertainment, had me continually in his armes, and was mine onely overseer. There were also joyned unto him two of his countrimen, but not so learned; ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... surrounded by numerous chambers of small dimensions, varying from 29 feet by 16, to 16 feet by 8. The walls of this small sanctuary, standing on the site of a more ancient one, are highly polished, sculptured, and painted, and the ceiling of stars on a blue ground, the whole exquisitely finished. The entire height of the hall, i. e., the central portion, is not less than 80 feet, the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... suppose money would induce me to touch this business with a stick? I give you my word of honour, it would not. But I own I have a real curiosity to see how you conduct this interview—that tempts me; it tempts me, Pitman, more than gold—it should be exquisitely rich." And suddenly Michael laughed. "Well, Pitman," said he, "have all the truck ready in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... most cares for and most rarely attains, even with the help of audacity and the glitter of an existence in the light of the sun. Valerie's beauty, formerly buried in the mud of the Rue du Doyenne, now, like a well-cut diamond exquisitely set by Chanor, was worth more than its real value—it could break hearts. Claude Vignon ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... is the white family so wonderfully described in Mrs. Stowe's 'Dred'—whose only slave brings up the orphaned children of his masters with such exquisitely grotesque and pathetic tenderness. From such the conscription which has fed the Southern army in the deplorable civil conflict now raging in America has drawn its rank and file. Better 'food for powder' the world could scarcely supply. Fierce and idle, with ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... more subtle far than thought, That stoop to carry the grace of a girl's breast; And hanging flowers, so exquisitely wrought In airy metal, that they seem possessed Of souls; and there are distant hills that lift The shoulder of a goddess towards the light; And arrowy trees, sudden and sharp and swift, Piercing the ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... beguile not only myself but my instructors—which I infer I did from their so intensely letting me alone—I am quite at a loss to say; I have in truth mainly the remembrance of being consistently either ignored or exquisitely considered (I know not which to call it;) even if without the belief, which would explain it, that I passed for generally "wanting" any more than for naturally odious. It was strange, at all events—it could only have been—to ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... a certain grace and dignity, especially in the way in which she bent her head on one side to listen, a gesture often seen in a drawing-room, but never, in my experience, in a cabin. What astonished me most, however, were her hands—her exquisitely modelled hands, still ruddy from the fresh night air, but so wonderfully curved and dimpled. And then, too, the perfect graciousness and simplicity of her manner and its absolute freedom from coquetry or self-consciousness. Her mother was right—I would not ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... various periods of time was very intimate with Laurier thinks he was a man of deep emotions. This may be doubted. A man who talked so easily and was so exquisitely conscious of himself could scarcely be considered spiritually profound. Other men and events played upon him like the wind on an Aeolian harp. He was tremendously impressionable; and by turns grandly impressive. A personal friend relates how a man with some experience as a critic of drama—probably ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... received a severe stroke on the shin-bone, and when in such a state to be asked a question; and if he has any candour, he will not be surprized at the answers which Johnson sometimes gave in moments of irritation, which, let me assure them, is exquisitely painful. But it must not be erroneously supposed that he was, in the smallest degree, careless concerning any work which he undertook, or that he was generally thus peevish. It will be seen, that in the following year he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... lost in sudden storms; even when to other eyes the appearances are most pacific and the skies most splendidly blue, they divine some far-off danger, like the gulls; and like the gulls also, you see their light vessels fleeing landward. These men seem living barometers, exquisitely sensitive to all the invisible changes of atmospheric expansion and compression; they are not easily caught in those awful dead calms which suddenly paralyze the wings of a bark, and hold her helpless in their charmed circle, as in a nightmare, until the blackness overtakes her, and the long-sleeping ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... he is remarkably accomplished, and has not only written a number of German plays over the pen-name of "George Conrad," which have been successfully staged in Germany, but is even the author of a drama written in the purest and most exquisitely correct French, sparkling with Parisian wit and brilliancy, which has had long runs in many theatres without either the actors or the public being aware that it was from the pen of a ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... good to talk to you. You want to know. You are so near it all. I wish I could help you; I am so exquisitely ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... delectable sight on this fine July afternoon, is set about with wire netting to a height of some six feet. By the energies of Mr. Fletcher and Frederick the sward is exquisitely trimmed and rolled; and their labours join with the wire netting to make the lawn a safe and pleasant exercise ground ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... evanescent changes, Nor comprehend their motions, till minute And curious observation caught the clew To this live labyrinth,—where every one, By instinct taught, perform'd its little task; —To build its dwelling and its sepulchre, From its own essence exquisitely modell'd; There breed, and die, and leave a progeny, Still multiplied beyond the reach of numbers. To frame new cells and tombs; then breed and die, As all their ancestors had done,—and rest, Hermetically ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... she came back to him for the last look from the marble balustrade by which they had descended, covering her hand, there resting, lingeringly with his own. He was awakened only to the implication of this movement by the discovery that she had deeply and exquisitely blushed. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... "She is exquisitely pretty. And beauty is one of the most excellent among all the gifts of God. Our sense of what is beautiful and the delight we have in the perception of it must linger with us from those days when Angels walked visibly on earth, and talked with the children of men. A lovely ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... welcome it and applaud it and rejoice in it as we do when THE right one blazes out on us. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt: it tingles exquisitely around through the walls of the mouth and tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that creams the sumac-berry. One has no time to examine the word and vote upon its rank and standing, the automatic recognition of its supremacy is so immediate. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... exquisitely performed, and saw the concluding combat furiously fought at this theatre. This was all, appertaining unto Macbeth in which we could detect a near approach to the meaning and purpose of the text, except the performance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... in all the long list of brilliant dissertations on every subject under the sun, no English essayist should have yielded a word under the seductive title of "Gossip." Even Leigh Hunt, who wrote vivaciously and exquisitely on so many light topics, was not attracted by the enticing possibilities of this subject to which both the learned and the unlearned are ready at all times to bestow a willing ear or eye. One usually conceives gossip as something to which one lends only one's ear, and never one's eye; but what ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... improved quarters. Colonel Esmond, of Castlewood, neither cared for quarters nor for quarterings. But his daughter had a very high opinion of the merit and antiquity of her lineage; and her sire, growing exquisitely calm and good-natured in his serene, declining years, humoured his child's peculiarities in an easy, bantering way,—nay, helped her with his antiquarian learning, which was not inconsiderable, and with his skill in the art of painting, of which he was a proficient. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... foppish guardsman content to amuse ladies by strumming them snatches of "Il Trovatore" and "La Traviata" on the piano, and gave him his profound sense of reality, his knowledge of how simple and sad a thing human life is after all, and made him vibrate so exquisitely with the suffering inherent in the constitution of the world. It gave his art its color, its character, its tendency. It filled him with the unsentimental, warm, animal love that made him represent man faithfully and catch the very ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... wholly master of the situation, was laughing and jeering at his prisoners when Polychrome, exquisitely beautiful and dancing like a ray of ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... three kinds of baptism. At one time Nancy would read nothing but the Bible, sing nothing but hymns, and play only sacred music. She felt guilty if she talked on any subject except religion. She was, in all respects, a fitting mate for her attractive husband. Exquisitely refined in feeling and manner, beautiful in face and form, earnest and sincere, she sympathized with him in all his ideas of religion and reform. Together they passed through every stage of theological experience, from the uncertain ground of superstition ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of feeling, being by nature a lyric rather than an epic poet. But his happy choice of subject,—for the Crusades were still fresh in the memory of the people, and chivalry was a thing of the present—his zeal for the Christian cause, his impassioned delineations of love, and his exquisitely poetical treatment of his whole ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... stone, or marble, is not an act of reason, but one of pure unreasoning imitation. The arch is the only true and reasonable mode of covering over wide spaces with stone, and therefore, Grecian architecture, however exquisitely beautiful, is false in principle, and is by no means a good example of the application of reason to the art of building. And what do most of us do at the present day but imitate the buildings of those that have gone before us? We ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... moment she seemed infinitely more human, startled, a little nervous, exquisitely sympathetic to an amazing and unexpected impression. She seemed to look with glad but terrified eyes towards the vision of possible things—and then to realise that it was but a trick of the fancy and to come shivering back ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Michelangelo's pupil and friend and the biographer to whom we are so much indebted, carried on the work. His scheme of windows has been upset on the side opposite the cloisters by the recent addition of a rotunda leading from the main room. If ever rectangular windows were more exquisitely and nobly proportioned I should like to see them. The library is free for students, and the attendants are very good in calling stray visitors' attention to illuminated missals, old MSS., early books and so forth. One of Galileo's fingers, stolen from ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... and extreme consideration for others was characteristic of the man. I saw much of him in the years following, and found in him the most exquisitely refined and gentle nature I have ever known,—one to which a brutal or inconsiderate act was positive pain, and any aggression on the least creature, cause of intense indignation. My recollection of his condescension ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the diadem of Apollo, or the cestus of Venus. So indeed they have, for here are many subjects from ancient and modern poetry, and other literature, and from portraits of beautiful women. Among the first class, the exquisitely finishing graver of Mr. Warren gives us many after the designs of Messrs. Westall, Wilkie, Smirke, Cooke, Uwins, and Corbould; as do the lucid gravers of Messrs. Englehart and Rhodes, the nicely executing hands of Messrs. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... roofing, and serving also for the purposes of ventilation, as it contains windows at each end. There are four pillars near the end of the hall, rising to the ceiling, the capitals of which, as also those of some pilasters at the upper extremity of the hall, are exquisitely carved in straw-coloured marble. Behind the platform are numerous and convenient committee-rooms. The word "Philadelpheion," which may be rendered "loving brothers," is carved in Greek capitals over the entrance in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... a tall, slim, dark-skinned young man walked up, hands behind his back, and stood there regarding us with eyes as clear and cool as mountain water when the sunlight is upon it and golden flecks come and go in its brown depths. The exquisitely aquiline features, the small black mustache, an indescribably proud and high-bred ease and grace of manner and bearing, were oddly exotic and even more oddly fascinating. His slenderness was as strong as a tempered sword-blade, his quietness ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... the life of me conceive why I thought this would be a suitable present for my husband, except that the face of Our Lady was so young, so sweet, so beautiful, and so exquisitely feminine that it seemed impossible that any man in the world should not love her. But however that might be I bought her, and carrying her home in a cab, I set her on my husband's desk without a word, and then stood by, like the mother of ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... beauty seen so rarely in Italy, that Raffaelle, believing it divine, has appropriated it to all his Madonnas, curtained a lovely forehead, and fell in flowing locks over her shoulders. Her azure eyes bore a heavenly expression; she was of middle height, exquisitely proportioned; and during the rare moments when a gleam of happiness allowed her natural character to display itself, she was lively, joyous, and sympathetic, but at the same time evinced a firm ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... How exquisitely pastoral, yet soul-stirring, is the view from that majestic height! The towers of Windsor Castle behind us breathing of the historic past; the Thames unrolling its silver windings below; the meadows; the roofs of Eton College lifting through the veil of foliage— can aught on earth ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... one—different; through—how shall I put it?—an imperceptible shifting of her centre of gravity. My besetting fear was that I couldn't count on her obtuseness. She wasn't what is called clever; she left that to him; but she was exquisitely good; and now and then she had intuitive felicities that frightened me. Do I make you see her? We fellows can explain better with the brush; I don't know how to mix my words or lay them on. She wasn't clever; but her heart thought— that's ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... there, with the steep, descending wall, the red Devon cliffs, the blue, glittering sea for her background; a picture which might have been presented with a summer number of one of the illustrated weeklies; and all as unreal and as unlike life as they are. It is true that she wore a yachting costume exquisitely made and perfectly fitting; and Drake, as he looked at it, acknowledged its claims upon his admiration, but he knew it was all a sham, and, half unconsciously, he compared it with the old worn skirt and the ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... purely idyllic loveliness, the Cornice is surpassed by nothing in the South. A very few spots in Sicily, the road between Castellammare and Amalfi, and the island of Corfu, are its only rivals in this style of scenery. From Cannes to Sestri is one continuous line of exquisitely modulated landscape beauty, which can only be fully appreciated by travellers in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... some of the most beautiful, as well as common of the tribe. The forms of the umbrella are often most lovely, and present an astonishing variety. As an example of the beauty which they sometimes display, we may refer to a species which resembles an exquisitely formed glass-shade, ornamented with a waved and tinted fringe. The most perfect grace of form, the transparency of the crystal, and colour as delicate as that of the flower, combine to render this frail being one of the loveliest of ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... the porch of his house as the bride and bridegroom entered their humble vehicle. Though then November, the day was exquisitely mild and calm, the sky without a cloud, and even the leafless trees seemed to smile beneath the cheerful sun. And the young bride wept no more; she was with him she loved—she was his for ever. She forgot the rest. The hope—the heart of sixteen—spoke brightly ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... compassion, from recklessness, from a sense of fun. Jimmy's steadfastness to his untruthful attitude in the face of the inevitable truth had the proportions of a colossal enigma—of a manifestation grand and incomprehensible that at times inspired a wondering awe; and there was also, to many, something exquisitely droll in fooling him thus to the top of his bent. The latent egoism of tenderness to suffering appeared in the developing anxiety not to see him die. His obstinate non-recognition of the only certitude whose approach we could watch from day to day was as disquieting as the failure of ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... speed and assured confidence of a master. By years of patient industry he had wrested from Nature the secrets of her tints and tone values. Quickly there grew into being an exquisitely bright and well balanced drawing, impressionist, but true; a harmony of color and atmosphere. Leaving subtleties to the quiet thought of the studio, he turned to the lake. Here the lights and shadows were bolder. They demanded the accurate appraisement ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... are exquisitely sharp and cold, proceeding from Clouds arising from the vast Lakes and prodigious snowy Mountains that lie to that Quarter; but the Southerly Winds and others ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... E major Scherzo, Op. 54, with its skimming, swallowlike flight, its delicate figuration, its evanescent hintings at a serious something in the major trio? Have you ever heard Pachmann purl through this exquisitely conceived, contrived and balanced composition, truly a classic? Whaur is your Willy Mendelssohn the noo? Or are you acquainted with the G-sharp minor Prelude? Do you play the E-flat Scherzo from the B minor Sonata? Have you never shed a furtive tear—excuse my old-fashioned romanticism—over ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... popular songs of all countries frequently depict them combing their fine fair hair, which they seem daintily to cherish. Their stature is that of the other European fairies: they are not above two feet in height. Their shape, exquisitely proportioned, is as airy, slight, and pellucid as that of the wasp. They have no other dress than a white veil, which they wrap around their body. Seen by night, they are very beautiful: in the daytime, you perceive that their hair is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... laws of etiquette that to disturb others needlessly in the enjoyment of a dearly purchased pleasure is evidence of very bad manners. Musical people suffer more from such interruptions than persons whose ears are not similarly refined can imagine; for the tone colors of a Wagnerian score are as exquisitely delicate and refined as the evanescent films and colors of a soap-bubble, so that the mere rustling of a fan or a ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... light, Her nostrils delicately closed, and on Her cheek a rosy tint, as if the tip Of Beauty's finger faintly press'd it there,— Alas! Consumption is her name. Thou loved and loving one! From the dark languish of thy liquid eye, So exquisitely rounded, darts a ray Of truth, prophetic of thine early doom; And on thy placid cheek there is a print Of death,—the beauty of consumption there. Few note that fatal bloom; for bless'd by all, Thou movest through thy noiseless sphere, the life, Of one,—the darling of a thousand ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... Frenchman could have been so exquisitely pompous over a penny? I saw by Terry's face that he was far from considering the incident closed; but he had too much true Irish tact to try and get us ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... by him, was this: "To confound the functions of the dispensers of the poor-rates with those of the dispensers of a charitable institution is a great and pernicious error." This sentence is so accurately and exquisitely wrong, that its substance must be thus reversed in our minds before we can deal with any existing problem of national distress. "To understand that the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the nation, and should distribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of hand as much ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... happens in cases of "cold in the head" as well as in constant irritation from adenoids, then may follow a vast train of difficulties—earache, mastoiditis, etc.—with the result that the tiny bones in the middle ear which vibrate so exquisitely may become ankylosed (stiffened) and deafness often follow. Everything known must be done to prevent baby's catching "cold in the head." If the sinuses become infected it may ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... Otranto, sweeping up and carrying away every thing that is worth the transport. After this, you need hardly feel nervous (as some we have known were) lest, in the event of falling in with something exquisitely beautiful, the government should interfere to prevent its leaving Italy. Such an event not being in question, you need make no provision to meet it. Of the brigands and brigandage of Italy, the public has had enough; of her cheats and cheating—her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... encourage good thoughts, and no hard fate shall bind him down to wretchedness and shame. The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colours, which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... dirty or ragged. The mole, living always in the dark and in the dirt, is yet as clean as the otter or the wave-washed seal; and our wild sheep, wading in snow, roaming through bushes, and leaping among jagged storm-beaten cliffs, wears a dress so exquisitely adapted to its mountain life that it is always found as unruffled and ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... moment to him on that fine morning when he went to give a final order for plate: in the presence of other jewels enormously expensive, and as an addition to orders of which the amount had not been exactly calculated, thirty pounds for ornaments so exquisitely suited to Rosamond's neck and arms could hardly appear excessive when there was no ready cash for it to exceed. But at this crisis Lydgate's imagination could not help dwelling on the possibility of letting the amethysts take their place again among Mr. Dover's stock, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... had a slight, graceful figure, a little under height, but carried himself with the dignity of a grandee; his eyes were large, dark and languishing; his complexion was a pale olive; while his moustache, black and exquisitely pencilled, was a sign of itself of towering superiority above the rest of us callow youths. That alone would have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... reported that she had been secretly married for several years to Young Hopeful, and was left penniless with two boys. Lord Chesterfield was above all things a practical philosopher, as hard and as exquisitely rounded and polished as a granite column. He accepted the vanishing of his lifelong dream with the admirable stolidity of a fatalist, and in those last days of his radically artificial life he disclosed a welcome tenderness, a touch of the divine, none the less so for being common duty, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... The Bridge of Sighs and the Dream of Eugene Aram. In the latter years of his life—which was one of prolonged suffering—he was editor of The New Monthly Magazine. As a punster he is unrivalled, and some of his serious poems are exquisitely tender and pathetic. In all his works a rich current of genial humour runs, and his pleasant wit, ripe observation and sound sense have made him an ornament to English literature. He died ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... by the influence of Rossetti; but they are already differentiated from the elder master's style by their more facile though less intensely felt elaboration of imaginative detail. Many are pen-and-ink drawings on vellum, exquisitely finished, of which the "Waxen Image" is one of the earliest and best examples; it is dated 1856. Although subject, medium and manner derive from Rossetti's inspiration, it is not the hand of a pupil merely, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Universalists beating Rinehart out and throwing the Center open to everybody. Et cetera, et cetera. But somewhere along the line I began to see that it just wasn't true. The holdups, the changes, the digressions and snags and refinements were all excuses, all part of a big, beautiful, exquisitely reasonable facade built up to obscure the real truth. Lijinsky and Keller ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... amongst the healthiest. The medical men, therefore, recommend places along the neighboring coast which enjoy the same or even greater advantages of climate. That of Nice, after all that has been written about it, still seems to me one of the finest in the world. The air is exquisitely pure and clear, and has proved beneficial in many hundreds of cases of incipient consumption. But the fatal error is often made of sending hither patients in whom the disease has made considerable progress. In such cases the irritating air hastens death. I have known ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... vaguely around, but her look was on the raven woman, on whose face the white cosmetic, exquisitely applied, was like ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... that time not more than sixteen years old: she was exquisitely beautiful; and, though prematurely womanly in the developement of her person, had yet an expression of almost childlike innocence in her style of countenance which made it peculiarly charming. Edward Nicholas first saw her in the woods of Tre Mawr from a situation where he was ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... how a person so beautiful as you are can be so sorrowful as you seem to be; for though I can boast of having seen a great number of exquisitely charming ladies, I can say that I never beheld any one whose ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... to publish it in his collection, out of respect for his great uncle the Duke d'Orleans, and for Dunois his old comrade, the son of the same. But the person of the lady of Hocquetonville is so sublimely virtuous, so exquisitely melancholy, that in her favour the present publication of this narrative will be forgiven, in spite of the diabolical invention and vengeance of Monseigneur d'Orleans. The just death of this rascal nevertheless caused many serious rebellions, which finally ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Oxford Street, breathing a southern calm on the north wind. The child has something better than warmth in the cold, something more subtly out of place and more delicately contrary; and that is coolness. To be cool in the cold is the sign of a vitality quite exquisitely alien from the common conditions of the world. It is to have a naturally, and not an artificially, different ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... photograph as an example of a costume made exquisitely artistic by being kept simple in line and free ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... character of these meetings was perhaps seen best of all in the musical part of the proceedings, which was always arranged locally. Usually the songs were well-known Highland or Lowland airs, in many cases so exquisitely rendered that it was quite evident there had been much previous preparation. When my opinion was asked beforehand, I invariably recommended national melodies. It was always a treat to get a Gaelic song or ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... that His presence is only being made a bone of contention He quietly slips away from Judea, turning north through Samaria towards Galilee. Then comes the great story of the visit to Sychar, with the exquisitely tactful winning of the sinful woman to a life of purity, and then using her as a messenger to her people. Imbedded in the story is another bit of Jesus' ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... an ungrateful study. For, let your soul be assured of this, in any rank or profession whatever, the more general or major part of opinion goes with the face and simply respects nothing else. Therefore, if that can be made exactly, curiously, exquisitely, thoroughly, it is enough: but for the present you shall only apply yourself to this face of the elementary courtier, a light, revelling, and protesting face, now blushing, now smiling, which you may help much with a wanton wagging of your head, thus, (a feather will teach you,) ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... out for a turn around the decks, they passed a deck-chair sheltered in a jog where the engine-room ventilating shaft joined the forward deck-house, in which Miss Brooke lay cocooned in wraps and furs, her profile, turned aside from the sea, exquisitely etched against the rich blackness of a fox stole. She slept as quietly as the most carefree, a shadowy smile ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... a plain little creature, with not too fine ankles,—but that self-confidence which material possessions bring, casts a spell over people.—Coralie is attractive. Odette, the widow, is beautiful. She has the brain of a turkey, but she, too, is exquisitely dressed and surrounded with everything to enhance her loveliness, and the serenity of success has given her magnetism. She announces platitudes as discoveries, she sparkles, and is so ravishing ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... those occasions over which the world draws the veil of decency. In the morning O'Iwa arose early to attend to the matutinal needs of her spouse. The ablutions performed, Iemon sat down to tea, as exquisite and exquisitely served as in any dream in literature of how such ceremony of the opening day should be performed. Then the morning meal was brought, under the same supervision of this woman, as expert in all the technique of her craft as she was ugly ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... was learning all the royal virtues. At last she came. The little mermaid stood eager to see her beauty, and she was obliged to confess that a lovelier creature she had never beheld. Her complexion was exquisitely pure and delicate, and her trustful eyes of the deepest blue ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... "The plant is exquisitely adapted for tall hedges. It is often called the 'umbrella tree,' as it gives a capital shade. The heart-wood is dark, hard, heavy ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... rib, but they have now all gone except two, leaving the rib of thick pink braid. The supporting replicas underneath are, however, perfect, showing what the original upper petals were like. This spray has two leaves, exquisitely worked in needlepoint, and fastened by a stitch at one end, with the usual flat replicas underneath them, and there is also a bud. The stem is a piece of green braid. Above the spray is a parrot in needlepoint, most of him fastened down round the edges, but his ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... literary discussions, and his friendship was valued by such men of intellect as Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, and others of that charmed circle making the Literary Club. He had a genial, kindly nature, and his manners were exquisitely courteous. Thackeray once wrote that "of all the polite men of that age, Joshua Reynolds was the finest gentleman." He was a member of several clubs, was fond of society, and was a welcome guest in many of the best houses in London. He himself entertained with generous hospitality, ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... the origin of rhyming Latin, and concludes with the music of the hymn itself. The book is illustrated by delicate photographs from the Last Judgments of Michel Angelo, Rubens, and Cornelius, and from the "Christus Remunerator" of Ary Scheffer. It is exquisitely printed at the Riverside Press, which is doing such good service ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... advantage of my solitary situation: but I am nevertheless sure that I have more half-hours, I dare not say hours, of true enjoyment, and fewer days of real misery, than half of those whom the world accounts happy. And I thank God, who gave me the temper to feel grief exquisitely, that he at the same time gave me an equal capacity for joy. And it is a joy to find minds that can understand and communicate with our own; to meet occasionally with persons of similar habits of thinking, and who, when the business of life rests a while, seek recreation in the same pursuits. ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... often comic, with their exquisitely drawn faces so full of subtlety—intensely comic! Their enormous perplexities about nothing, their utter guilelessness, their innocence of the wicked world and its ways, make them engaging sometimes in spite of a certain ungainliness ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... oval, the forehead somewhat over-round, with minute curls, like a fleece, of bright auburn hair; the nose a trifle over-aquiline, and the cheek-bones a trifle too low; the eyes grey, large, prominent, beneath exquisitely curved brows and lids just a little too tight at the corners; the mouth also, brilliantly red and most delicately designed, is a little too tight, the lips strained a trifle over the teeth. Tight eyelids and tight lips give a strange refinement, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... completed, she sat down and drew off her stockings, displaying her beautiful white calves and charming little feet. I believe it was this first admiration of really exquisitely formed legs, ankles and feet, which were extraordinarily perfect in make, that first awakened my passion for those objects, which have since always exercised a peculiar charm over me. She was also so particularly neat in her shoes—little dark ones—that were bijoux to look at, I often took ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... have denied all knowledge of Angel. The child evidently took him for someone she had known; perhaps she had seen a photograph of some long lost friend of her family, who resembled him, and she had sprung to a conclusion, as children do. But she was an exquisitely pretty and engaging little thing, a grand little pal, and worth cultivating. Hugh liked children, especially girls, though he had always been rather shy with them, not knowing exactly how they liked best to be entertained, ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... jewel of the performance. It flattered one's patriotic feelings, to see this noble young countrywoman realizing so exquisitely, and restoring to our imaginations, the noblest of Grecian girls. We critics, dispersed through the house, in the very teeth of duty and conscience, all at one moment unanimously fell in love with Miss Faucit. We felt in our remorse, and did not pretend ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... personal inspiration has had time to fuse itself with the poetic inspiration. It is always useful to remember Wordsworth's phrase of 'emotion recollected in tranquillity,' for nothing so well defines that moment of crystallisation in which direct emotion or sensation deviates exquisitely into art. Donne is intent on the passion itself, the thought, the reality; so intent that he is not at the same time, in that half-unconscious way which is the way of the really great poet, equally intent on the form, that both may come to ripeness together. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... ablaze with fairy-lights under the starry sky. Rose de Vigne, exquisitely fair in ruby velvet and ermine furs paused on ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... soon shall call my wife, is so young, so elegant, and so joyful. I recalled our first meetings, our rides into the country, my declaration of love and the weather, which, as though expressly, was so exquisitely fine all the summer; and the happiness which at one time in my old rooms seemed to me possible only in novels and stories, I was now experiencing in reality—I was now, as it were, holding it in ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... most exquisitely delicate in their texture of all forms in the vegetable kingdom. Look at the petals of this one. Could any thing be softer or finer? The leaf, the bark, and the wood of the plant are all coarse, in comparison to the flower. Now, as nothing is made in vain, there must be some reason ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... beds lay side by side enveloped by the transparent silken hangings of a single canopy. The room was exquisitely done in pink and everywhere were evidences that the two lucky mortals who slumbered therein were coddled and pampered to the limit ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... duty of her station with all the care and diligence she had ever given to it. She neglected nothing. Basil's wardrobe was kept in perfect order; his linen was exquisitely got up; his meals were looked after, and served with all the nice attention that was possible. Diana did not in the least lose her head, or sit brooding when there was something to do. She did not sit brooding at any time, unless at rare intervals. Yet her husband's heart ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... Elizabeth represented everything that was desirable in her sex, from the flowing lines of her beautiful body to the sympathy which seemed to be always shining out of her eyes. Notwithstanding her strength, she was so exquisitely and entirely feminine, a creature of silk and laces, free from any effort of provocativeness, yet subtly, almost clamorously human. He forgot, in those few moments, that she had become the arbitress of his material fate—that he was a humble ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... over," says she, "and the gardens are exquisitely lit. Lady Warbeck has great taste. After all, Maurice," slipping her hand into his arm, "our bet is a purely imaginary one. We know nothing. And perhaps I have been a little severe; but as it is a bet, I am willing to lose it to you. ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... beside many most perfect harmonies, there are facts which prove the existence of incomplete harmony, or even absolute disharmony. Rudimentary and useless organs are widely distributed. Many insects are exquisitely adapted for sucking the nectar of flowers; many others would wish to do the same, but their want ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... to belong to her from the moment she entered. She moved like a whirlwind—a well-mannered and exquisitely dressed whirlwind, of course—with an air of abounding vigour and vitality, up to where we ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... comprehend, Madam, how a person so beautiful as you are, can be so sorrowful as you seem to be; for tho' I can boast of having seen infinite numbers of ladies exquisitely charming, I can say that I never beheld any one ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... of Pitt; and, of course, his style of speech had none of the passionate and sometimes the extravagant declamation of which Brougham was a leading master. He had a dignified presence, a calm, clear, and penetrating voice, a style that was always exquisitely finished and nobly adapted to its purpose. It would not be too much to say for Earl Grey that he might have been the ideal orator for an ideal House of Lords, if we assume the ideal House of Lords to be an assembly in which appeal {169} was always made to high principle, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Keelings do not do all the drudgery, as in many places visited on the voyage. It would cheer the heart of a Fuegian woman to see the Keeling lord of creation up a cocoanut-tree. Besides cleverly climbing the trees, the men of Keeling build exquisitely modeled canoes. By far the best workmanship in boat-building I saw on the voyage was here. Many finished mechanics dwelt under the palms at Keeling, and the hum of the band-saw and the ring of the anvil were heard from morning till night. The first Scotch ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... which seemed to me as if I were looking at it through the penumbra of an aquarium; it was I myself, an I composed of three, which was changing into something that was floating adrift in something, though what it was I did not know, composed of palpable fog and intangible water, and it was exquisitely delightful. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... spirits. The paleness, for instance, which settled on her cheeks, when the news of her lover's apostacy, as it was called, and as she considered it, reached her, never for one moment left it afterwards, and she resembled some exquisitely chiselled statue moving by machinery, more than anything else to which ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... to progression," "adaptations from the slow willing of animals," etc.! But the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his; though the means of change are wholly so. I think I have found out (here's presumption!) the simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends. You will now groan, and think to yourself, "on what a man have I been wasting my time and writing to." I should, five years ago, have thought so...(13/3. On the questions here dealt with see the interesting letter ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... strode in, the tall ladies in blue cloaks following close behind. Soon sashes began to be raised, blinds flew open, and the tall ladies were seen standing on high chairs hanging curtains of rich damask and exquisitely wrought muslin, before the deep bay windows. The three tall men threw off their overcoats, and, with the assistance of the blue-frocked teamsters, commenced the business of unlading ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... in the narrow limits that he has imposed upon himself, can M. Caro be said to be a very fortunate or felicitous critic. To take merely one instance out of many, he says nothing of George Sand's delightful treatment of art and the artist's life. And yet how exquisitely does she analyse each separate art and present it to us in its relation to life! In Consuelo she tells us of music; in Horace of authorship; in Le Chateau des Desertes of acting; in Les Maitres Mosaistes of mosaic work; in Le Chateau ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... afternoon I saw Fraeulein Antoinette in the shop looking at silks and laces. Hoping to improve the opportunity, I approached her, and was received with a serene and gracious smile. Near Antoinette were the saucy brown eyes and the bedimpled mouth. Truly they were exquisitely beautiful in combination, and, old as I was, I could not keep my eyes from them. The eyes and dimples came quickly to Antoinette, who presented me to her "Cousin Fraeulein Yolanda Castleman." Fraeulein Yolanda bowed with a grace one would not expect to ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... followed this piece of eloquence, exquisitely uttered. It was checked, and the prisoner resumed, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... toward all the world except what she called "high society." In her mind the word high had the significance it has with reference to game that has been kept to the last critical moments, and trembles, exquisitely putrid, between being eaten immediately and being thrown ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... fathoms (reported by Mr. Goodfellow) the water, which was exquisitely clear, showed good white sand under us. Ahead of us the creek narrowed, promising an anchorage almost completely landlocked and as peaceful as the soul of man could desire. We drew a short eight feet ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... to see Dinah's great superiority over the best women of Sancerre; she was better dressed, her movements were graceful, her complexion was exquisitely white by candlelight—in short, she stood out against this background of old faces, shy and ill-dressed girls, like a queen in the midst of her court. Visions of Paris faded from his brain; Lousteau was accepting the provincial ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... whether it be animated by a soul,[14] which opinion was strenuously maintained by a host of philosophers, at the head of whom stands the great Plato, that temperate sage, who threw the cold water of philosophy on the form of sexual intercourse, and inculcated the doctrine of Platonic love—an exquisitely refined intercourse, but much better adapted to the ideal inhabitants of his imaginary island of Atlantis than to the sturdy race, composed of rebellious flesh and blood, which populates the little matter-of-fact ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... We mean to stay at Florence a week or two longer and then go northward. I love Florence—the place looks exquisitely beautiful in its garden ground of vineyards and olive trees, sung round by the nightingales day and night. . . . If you take one thing with another, there is no place in the world like Florence, I am persuaded, for a ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... her poverty and went to the kitchen to cook lunch for her man. He followed her and read her his poem while she slammed the oven door of the gas-stove at the exquisitely wrong moments. She broke his heart by her indifference and he tore up the poem, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... at the historical novel or novelette—short sketches of Mary Queen of Scots (very sympathetic and evidently French in origin from the phrase "a temple which was formerly a church"), Jane Shore (an exquisitely absurd piece of eighteenth-century middle-class modernising and moralising), Essex, Buckingham, and other likely figures. There are cuts by the "Van-somethings and Back-somethings" of the time: and the whole, though not worthy of ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... cocks and hens the Pleadings did Most exquisitely utter; And some few pans of cream there were, Which made ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... out of their mothers' arms, and still them; it was always his back that Irishwomen thumped, to ask if they must get out at the next station; and he might be seen handing out decrepit paupers, as if they were of royal blood and bore concealed sceptres in their old umbrellas. Exquisitely nice in his personal habits, he had the practical democracy of a good-natured young prince; he had never yet seen a human being who awed him, nor one whom he had the slightest wish to awe. His courtesy, had, therefore, that comprehensiveness which we call republican, though it was really ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... not dared any such flippancy with Rue Carew, and the girl, who knew she was exquisitely gowned, felt an odd little pang in her heart as this young man's praise of the Princess Mistchenka fell so easily and gaily from his lips. He might have noticed her gown, as it had been chosen with many doubts, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... tendency; but, in the opinion of many, it is the poet's masterpiece, and undoubtedly it displays all the variety of his powers, combined with a quaint playfulness not found to an equal degree in any other of his works. The serious and pathetic portions are exquisitely beautiful; the descriptive have all the distinctness of the best pictures in Childe Harold, and are, moreover, generally drawn from nature, while the satire is for the most part curiously associated ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... Hunt, "he has no right to despise any dress. What snips at the collar and lapels! What a mechanical and ridiculous cut about the flaps! What buttons in front that are never meant to button, and yet are no ornament! And what an exquisitely absurd pair of buttons at the back! gravely regarded, nevertheless, and thought as indispensably necessary to every well-conditioned coat, as other bits of metal or bone are to the bodies of savages whom we laugh at. There ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and others. Next, in the fulness of time, came Tennyson and Browning, to raise the level of English poetry by their deeper views of life, their elevation of thought, and their incomparably greater imaginative power. Tennyson's composition is pellucid and exquisitely refined. Browning is rugged and often obscure; he cares more for the force than for the form of expression. The great problems of religion and politics are seriously and cautiously handled. Browning analyses them with caustic irony, while Tennyson, after making vain attempts ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... with a fearsome growl; then shook it savagely, tore it apart, cast it aside. Over the ground it now undulated, its shining yellow breast like a target of gold. Again it stopped. Now in pose like a pointer, exquisitely graceful, but oh, so wicked! Then the snaky neck swung the cobra head in the breeze and the brown one sniffed and sniffed, advanced a few steps, tried the wind and the ground. Still farther and the concentrated interest showed in its outstretched neck and quivering tail. Bounding ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... lies a-quiver, Knowing that always, exquisitely, This April twilight on the river Stirs anguish in ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... time he was alone and in earnest conference with Mr. Markland. The evenings were always pleasant seasons in the family circle. Fanny's voice had been well cultivated, and she sung with fine taste; and as Mr. Lyon was also a lover of music, and played and sung exquisitely, the two very naturally spent a portion of their time at the piano. If it crossed the father's mind that an attachment might spring up between them, it ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... of his ships. He did not seem very comfortable while on board, and when he had got his papers he took his leave. I could not help admiring the whale-boat in which he was rowed back to his own vessel. It was a beautiful little thing, though dirty; but, it had doubtless seen much service. It was exquisitely modelled, and the two seamen in the little craft handled it to perfection. How they contrived to stand up in it quite steady, while the boat, sometimes apparently half out of the water, kept rising and falling on the long ocean-swell, seemed to me ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... injurious. They are nearly all metallic poisons, and, if there be any that are innocent of this charge, they are in every instance harmful to the health. The color and surface of the skin cannot be changed by any application which does not close the pores; the pores, which are so exquisitely fine that there are millions of them to the square inch, and which must be kept open if a healthy and cleanly body is to be preserved. There is more breathing done through the pores of a healthy person than through the lungs; and we need not remind ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... the victor to exercise magnanimity, and easiest of all for the sculptor in the presence of so beautiful an enemy, and Hermon thought he had never seen the Biamite look fairer. How exquisitely rounded was the oval, how delicately cut the profile of her face, how large were the widely separated, sparkling eyes, above which, even in the pale moonlight, the thick black brows were visible, united under the forehead as if for a dark deed to be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the night, of the inanimate and imponderable black walls, and of herself, were exquisitely and abnormally keen. She saw him there, bowed under his burden, gloomy and wroth and sick with himself because the man in him despised the coward. Men of his stamp were seldom or never cowards. Their lives did not breed ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... Two or three exquisitely dressed but frivolous-looking women stood in a group not far from the window where Priscilla sat forlorn. They talked about the cut of their mantles and the price they had given for their new winter bonnets. Their shrill laughter reached Prissie's ears, also their words. They complimented one ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... mass, part of which has broken off and fallen down. Some pieces which I picked up were of a very fine white marble, somewhat resembling that of Carrara. The opening of the quarry made a striking picture, the soft pink hue of the weather-stained rock contrasting exquisitely with the vivid green of the vines ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... show that he has left some living thing to perpetuate his memory. Boys should early be made planters. None but those who love trees, and plant them, know the serene pleasure of watching their growth, and anticipating their future beauty and grandeur; and no one can so exquisitely enjoy their grateful shade, as he whose hand has planted and cared for them. Planting, too, is a most agreeable pastime to a reflecting mind. It may be ranked among the pleasures, instead of the toils of life. We have always so found it. There is no pleasanter sight of labor ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... one night to a hundred and three, and for a few brief moments his mother and Aunt Annie enjoyed visions of fighting the grim spectre of Death. The tiny round pink spots covered his face and then ran together into a general vermilion. He coughed exquisitely. His beard grew. He supported life on black-currant tea and an atmosphere impregnated with eucalyptus. He underwent the examination of the doctor every day at eleven. But he was not personally and genuinely ill. He did not feel ill, and he said so. His most disquieting ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... sound, something unusual had jarred upon the exquisitely sensitive ears of the leader, for with a meaning shake of the head to his followers, he resumed the march in a direction at right angles with the ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... himself—the men who too, though in a different degree, or in a different kind, possessed the 'vision and the faculty divine.' This great estimation of the Faerie Queene was due not only to the intrinsic charms of the poem—to its exquisitely sweet melody, its intense pervading sense of beauty, its abundant fancifulness, its subtle spirituality—but also to the time of its appearance. For then nearly two centuries no great poem had been written in the English tongue. ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales |
