"Fascination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he was fashionably dressed, and my experience had not led me to believe in the marriage of genius and well-cut cloth, he was painting very well indeed. His shoulders were beautiful and broad; a long neck, a tiny head, a narrow, thin face, and large eyes, full of intelligence and fascination. And although he could not have been working more than an hour, he had already sketched in his figure, and with all the surroundings—screens, lamps, stoves, etc. I was deeply interested. I asked the young lady next me if she knew who he was. She could give me no information. But at four o'clock ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the simplicity of style and circumstantiality of detail that give such charm to the works of Defoe. In spite of the fact that Cooper and Marryat had created a taste for sea-tales, this story never became popular. It is superabundant in horrors—a vein that had a fatal fascination for ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... some hill listening, enchanted by the strange silver voice that floated to him across the sunset. The bell has indeed become something of a personality in the island: all the neighbouring savages listen to its voice with awe and fascination, pausing with inclined heads whenever it begins to speak from ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... a dreadful fascination, she watched the doom settling like a storm about her husband Thore. She only saw it; he himself, now that he was better, was unconscious of anything impending. He talked hopefully of what he should do when Thorwald came ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... scenes. But the moment the first spark of fire sends a fitful gleam of light upwards, these thoughts and feelings take wing and vanish. The indistinct scenery is rendered utterly invisible by the red light, which attracts and rivets the eye as if by a species of fascination. The deep shadows of the woods immediately around you grow deeper and blacker as the flames leap and sparkle upwards, causing the stems of the surrounding trees, and the foliage of the overhanging branches, to stand out in bold ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... her; it was only the manner of one whose thoughts have dwelt more upon heroic deeds, and lived more with heroes than with actual living men and women; the effect of this, however, soon passed away, but not so the fascination which was in all she said and did. Her voice was soft and musical, and her conversation addressed to one person rather than to the company at large, while Maria talked rapidly to every one, or for every one ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... of satisfaction and admiration; and when the Emperor of the French himself came to town, as Heine saw him do in 1810, we can easily understand how the enthusiasm of the boy surrounded the person of Napoleon, and the idea that he was supposed to represent, with a glamor that never lost its fascination for the man. To Heine, Napoleon was the incarnation of the French Revolution, the glorious new-comer who took by storm the intrenched strongholds of hereditary privilege, the dauntless leader in whose army every common soldier carried ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... through the Christian mind of the poet. Not only are the heathen myths inoffensive, but they are positively favourable to a train of Christian thought. Beowulf's descent into the abyss to extirpate the scourge is suggestive of that Article in the Apostles' Creed which had a peculiar fascination for the mind of the Dark and Middle Ages; the fight with the dragon; the victory that cost the victor his life; the one faithful friend while the rest are fearful—these incidents seem almost like reflections of evangelical history. Without seeing ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... with the manner of one dealing with an incurable romanticism and sentimentality, would lift his hands in despair. And in spite of the fact that Janet detested him, he sometimes exercised over her a paradoxical fascination, suggesting as he did unexplored intellectual realms. She despised her father for not being able to crush the little man. Edward would make pathetic attempts to capture the role Shivers had appropriated, to be the practical party himself, to convict Shivers of idealism. Socialism scandalized ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... constant, I cannot fear his love will injure me, so either way Octavio has my leave to love the charming Sylvia; alas, I know her power, and do not wonder at thy fate! For it is as natural for her to conquer, as 'tis for youth to yield; oh, she has fascination in her eyes! A spell upon her tongue, her wit's a philtre, and her air and motion all snares for heedless hearts; her very faults have charms, her pride, her peevishness, and her disdain, have unresisted power. Alas, you find it ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... uneasy, trotting back and forth in a half circle, warning, calling, pleading. Then, as he came between her and the fire, and his little shadow stretched away up the hill where she was, showing how far away he was from her and how near the light, she broke away from its fascination with an immense effort: Ka-a-a-h! ka-a-a-h! the hoarse cry rang through the startled woods like a pistol shot; and she bounded away, her white flag shining like a wave crest in the night ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... like Johnson's, a deep, hopeless, 'inspissated gloom,' thickened by memories of remorse, and lighted up by the lurid fires of feared perdition; it is not, like Byron's, dashed with the demoniac element, and fretted into universal misanthropy; it is not, like Foster's, the sad, fixed fascination of a pure intelligence contemplating the darker side of things, as by a necessity of nature, and ignoring, without denying, the existence of the bright; nor is it, like that of the 'melancholy Jacques,' in 'As you Like it,' a wild, woodland, fantastical habit of thought, as of one living ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... is possible that the influence of the place, the charm of the beautiful evening, the fascination of your look—the thousand circumstances, in short, which sometimes unite to destroy a woman—were grouped around me on that fatal evening; but, my Lord, you saw the queen come to the aid of the woman who faltered. At the first word you dared to utter, at the first freedom ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is as great as its conditions are merciless. Murray McTavish had sought the explanation, and found it in the fact that it was a land in which man could make his own laws and break them at his pleasure. Was this really its fascination? Hardly. The explanation must surely lie in something deeper. Surely the primitive in man, which no civilization can out-breed, ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... poet indicate the absorbing interest that the story has for these men? He says the fascination is so great as to draw the attention of these rough miners even from ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Gifted Hopkins, who was on one side of her, while Clement walked on the other. Women love the conquering party,—it is the way of their sex. And poets, as we have seen, are wellnigh irresistible when they exert their dangerous power of fascination upon the female heart. But Clement was above jealousy; and, if he perceived anything of this movement, took no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... leaning forward, watching with a certain sense of fascination the wild, disease-stricken face, listening to the man's breathless periods. It seemed that the fear of death, which had gotten hold of him, gave Victor Durnovo no time ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... which carries him over the many gaps in the story without any palpable difference in texture. How fragmentary the latter part of the Satyricon is you will see if you turn to the edition published last year in the Loeb Classical Library. The reading of fragments has a fascination for the curious mind: you also, I think, must have devoured those casual sheets of forgotten masterpieces in which book-sellers envelop their parcels, and have dignified the whole with an importance which it can never when in circulation ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... you,' repeated Elena, noticing that his eyes were fixed upon her lips, and being perhaps aware of the fascination that emanated from them while pronouncing ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... sentence was never concluded. What was it that had broken in upon them? What object was that, gliding into the room like a ghost, on whom all eyes were strained with a terrible fascination? Was it a ghost? It appeared ghastly enough for one. Was it one of Jan's "subjects" come after him to the ball? Was it a corpse? It looked more like that than anything else. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... (predilection?) for siggers." So Wiggins puffed and chatted away; and at last, delighted with the sprightly conversation of the lady, seated himself on the small-beer barrel, and so far forgot his economy in the fascination of his entertainer, that he purchased a second. At this favourable juncture, Mrs. Warner, (for she was a widow acknowledging five-and-twenty) ordered the grinning shop-boy, who was chopping the 'lump,' to take home them 'ere dips to a customer who lived at some distance. ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... gave it an air of great snugness." It is quite certain that an author familiar with the country, and with a memory stocked with a multitude of kindred scenes, would have given a more determinate outline to this picture. But whether he would have given to his definite outline the fascination that belongs to the vagueness of Goldsmith, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... about. The transition, for example, from the actual to the supernatural event is so abrupt that it might well have left the uninformed helplessly befogged. But this very fact again, as supposing some further treatment only now to be guessed at, helps to make the unique fascination of the book as revealing the difficulties ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... sweeps toward the plunge beneath that perpetual white cloud above the Falls! From Bedell's clearing below Navy Island, two miles above the Falls, he could see the swaying and rolling of the mist, ever rushing up to expand and overhang. The terrible stream had a profound fascination for him, with its racing eddies eating at the shore; its long weeds, visible through the clear water, trailing close down to the bottom; its inexorable, eternal, onward pouring. Because it was so mighty ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... I never loved till I saw your face for the first time?" said his wife. "I had no experience to place me on my guard against the fascination—the madness, some people might call it—which possesses a woman when all her heart is given to a man. Don't despise me, my dear! Remember that I had to save you from disgrace and ruin. Besides, my old stage remembrances ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... Jose, "that you now follow this work because of its fascination—for you must have found and laid aside much treasure in the years ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... scenes in the midst of landscapes bathed in the glowing rays of the sun and azure light." The vague Ossianic figures that raised their gigantic heads in the fog-wreaths of clouded mountain-tops and lonely lochs had a peculiar fascination for him, and acted like wine on his imagination. The "Hebrides" overture was the fruit of this tour, one of the most powerful and characteristic of his minor compositions. His sister Fanny (Mrs. Hensel) asked him to describe ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the fifteenth-century painters of Italy. The sweetness of feeling in a picture such as Botticelli's 'Nativity,' the delicacy of workmanship and beautiful painting of detail in Antonello's 'St. Jerome' and other pictures of that date, had an irresistible fascination for them. They fancied and felt that these artists had attained to the highest of which art was capable, so that the best could only again be produced by a faithful study of their methods. The aims of the Brotherhood were not imitation of the artists but of the methods ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... on the automatic. This also was a gun, though it fired only bullets. His fingers began beating a tattoo on his trousers' seam; a hungry brilliance shone in his eyes. He took four or five steps forward as if drawn by an overpowering fascination. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... might have admired her more and more and in the end asked her to marry him. He had said there must be no mistakes, and she had not been allowed to fall into making one. The fact that she had not, had, finally, made her feel the power of a certain fascination in him. She thought it was a result of his special type of looks, his breeding, the wonderful clothes he wore—but it was, in truth, his ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... England. I have not yet had time to study the question, but as I lack all knowledge of the other two branches of Presbyterianism, I am enabled to say unhesitatingly that I belong to the Free Kirk. To begin with, the very word "free" has a fascination for the citizen of a republic; and then my theological training was begun this morning by a gifted young minister of Edinburgh whom we call the Friar, because the first time we saw him in his gown and bands (the little spot ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... art—vocation, inspiration, fantasy, inventiveness, ambition, and a long and arduous apprenticeship to the science. From it is absent virtue alone, concerning which the great Karamzin wrote with such stupendous and fiery fascination. Gentlemen, nothing is further from my intention than to trifle with you and waste your precious time with idle paradoxes; but I cannot avoid expounding my idea briefly. To an outsider's ear it sounds absurdly ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... deserted her for other women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his artistic reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his person and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable charlatan nature, in which there was ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... cousins repaired together to their grandmother's suite of apartments; where, in point of fact, Madame Wang had already gone through the ceremony of recognizing Hseh Pao-ch'in as her godchild. Dowager lady Chia's fascination for her, however, was so much out of the common run that she did not tell her to take up her quarters in the garden. Of a night, she therefore slept with old lady Chia in the same rooms; while Hseh K'o put up in Hseh ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that you can pull away from them, Conway?" Clio was staring in horrified fascination into the plate, watching the pictured vessel increase in size, moment ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... of it made her heart grow sick and faint. Still, it held a strange fascination for her. She turned to look at it again—to study it closely, to see how it appeared in print, when, to her amazement, she caught the name "Jay Gardiner" in ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... of him goes back to much earlier days. As a child at Fox How, he roused in me a mingled fascination and terror. To listen to him quoting Shakspeare or Scott or Macaulay was fascination; to find his eye fixed on one, and his slender finger darting toward one, as he asked a sudden historical question—"Where did Edward the First die?"—"Where was the Black Prince buried?"—was terror, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... self-restraint. There was, however, no mistaking what she had seen, and the girl remembered that one of the Winnipeg ladies she travelled with, who had visited one of the weird valleys across the American frontier, described to her the fascination of throwing stones into the basin of a geyser to see how many it would take before it erupted. During her intercourse with rancher Alton, Alice Deringham had experienced ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... quite well aware of the fact. And I often wish that in public, at any rate, you had been more demonstrative. For me you have always had an irresistible fascination. Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you. [Jack looks at her in amazement.] We live, as I hope you know, Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideals. The fact is constantly mentioned in the more expensive monthly magazines, and has ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... moment during which it must so often befall the recalcitrant observer on the deserted deck to find himself aware of how delightful it might be if none of them should come out again. The charm, the fascination of the idea is not a little—though also not wholly—in the fact that, as the wave rises over the aperture, there is the most encouraging appearance that they perfectly may not. There it is. There is no more of them. It is a case to which nature has, by the neatest stroke and with the best ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... those matchless summer mornings, for he loved to adopt the hours kept by the birds, Edward set forth alone on a voyage of discovery. The wilds of his native land had a great and enduring fascination for him. He never ceased to enjoy the charm of a forest so dense that one might stay in it for days without the danger of discovery. Wandering as he listed, hurrying or loitering as it pleased him, and resting when weary beneath the outstretched ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... an angel. All the same, you frighten me a little. You've a terrible fascination for the child. Don't use it too much. Let her feelings alone. Don't work on them for the fun of seeing what she'll do next. If she tries to break away don't bring her back. Don't jerk her on the chain. ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... that was necessary was to follow her advice and the beautiful Drusilla would be his. He must treat her at first like any young country girl, as if she had no beauty or charm; and then in some way, unrevealed as yet, he would win her love in return. He had schooled himself rigidly to resist her fascination, but when she had looked up at him with her beseeching blue eyes and asked him to sell back the mine, only a miracle of intercession had saved him from yielding and accepting back the five hundred dollars. He was like clay in her hands—her voice thrilled him, her eyes ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... the Indians dashed to the water's edge, but a sharp crack came from the further shore, and Early fell forward directly into the river. Wyatt and the Indians shrank back into the bushes where they lay hidden. But the renegade, with a sort of frightened fascination, watched the water pulling at the body of his slain comrade, until it was carried away by the current and floated out of sight. The boat, meanwhile, moved on until it, too, passed a curve, and was ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the little cluster of frame buildings, a tall, horse-faced man clambered onto the pilot of the passenger locomotive and, removing his hat, proceeded to harangue the crowd. As they paused to listen Alice stared in fascination at the enormous Adam's apple that worked, piston-like above the neckband of the collarless shirt of ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... solution of the difficulty was found in the words of the man who loved London and planned the great scheme. The work "fascinated" him, and it was because of these associations that it did so. These links between past and present in themselves largely constitute The Fascination of London. ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... gentleman in the neighborhood. Still the arrangement had its disagreeable side; for it involved a great many cows, which made them afraid to cross the fields; a great many tramps, who made them afraid to walk the roads; and a scarcity of gentlemen subjects for the maiden art of fascination. ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... mirror remained at her window for a long time, and Laurie watched her in growing fascination. It was not until she rose and disappeared that he felt moved to consider so sordid a question as that ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... combines his description of these odd creatures with stories of his own adventures in pursuit of them in many parts of the world. These are told with much spirit, and add greatly to the fascination of ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... such tales as these were in those early days of the West, I still remained boy enough in heart to feel a fascination in Thockmorton's narrative. Besides, there was at the time so little else to occupy my mind that it inevitably drifted ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... was lucky in mines, oils or land, Eilie, dear;—and you have my promise. If ever I have anything to do with real estate, believe me, it will be simply—as you suggest—in buying and selling for the other fellow. That game has always had a great fascination for me." ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... the best model of manly beauty in existence, George the Fourth, during the early part of his manhood, eclipsed the whole of his gay associates in fashion and gallantry, as much by personal attractions, as pre-eminence in birth. Byron describes him as having possessed "fascination in his very bow;" and it is said, that a young peeress, on hearing of the prince's attentions to one of her fair friends, exclaimed, "I sincerely hope that it may not be my turn next, for to repel him is impossible." Towards the middle period of his life, he became so enormously fat, that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... build. His black eyes were set close to his fine Roman nose. The mouth was so tightly compressed that its original curves were quite destroyed, and the intellectual development of the brow was very marked. His hands exerted a peculiar fascination over Roldan. They were of huge size, even for so big a man, lean and knotted, with square-tipped fingers. The skin on them was fine and brown; it looked as soft as a woman's. He used them a good deal ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... evening. Mr. Tagg took the first watch, from eight o'clock to midnight. Under ordinary conditions, Royson, who was free until four in the morning, would have gone to his cabin and slept soundly. But, like many another who passes through the great canal for the first time, he could not resist the fascination of the ship's noiseless, almost stealthy, passage ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... the dynasty of the Ptolemies, she seemed to possess an undue share of the evil propensities of an evil race; and, with this, the gift of rare beauty, added to very winning manners and remarkable powers of fascination. In her constitution was blended a dangerous combination of varied charms and varied vices. The learning of the Egyptian schools she had mastered; there were none of the then modern accomplishments of which she had not made herself mistress; wealth and regal honors were hers; ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... post was old Dugald Murchison's post! Hedin remembered Murchison well. It was only last year he had spent a week as the guest of his old friend McNabb, and nearly every evening at dinner Hedin had sat at meat with them, and listened in fascination to the talk of the far outlands. He remembered the shrewd gray eyes of Murchison—eyes that bespoke wisdom, ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... even while there were tears for Raphael in the laugh. Sidney's intellectual fascination reasserted itself over her; there seemed something inspiring in standing with him on the free heights that left all the clogging vapors and fogs of moral problems somewhere below; where the sun shone and the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... d'Ossoli expresses herself, at the time of my parents' marriage, as thoughtfully as the rest. Her personality never ceased to hover about Concord, even after her death. She is a part of its fascination:— ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... scarf from her neck. He took it and replaced it, and his hand touched the soft warm flesh. It stayed there. He had no power to remove it. This girl of unearthly beauty and fascination paralyzed him. To think that he should be sitting there with the perfectest woman God ever made——! The storm within him broke. His body quivered, and his great hand took the warm slim one and held it ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... above all things impersonal. His human figures are devoid of all individuality; yet they have inimitable merit as types embodying the characteristics of a class: the childish curiosity of the peasant, the shyness of the maiden, the fascination of the joro the self-consciousness of the samurai, the funny, placid prettiness of the child, the resigned gentleness of age. Travel and observation were the influences which developed this art; it was never a ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... to please. This sudden desertion placed me in a false position. People said that Gerome had never loved me—simply trifling. The friends of that other woman, a great brown-eyed beauty with the subtle charm and fatal fascination of a devil most lovely, made it appear that of course Gerome Meadows had never loved me—why should he? He cowardly held his peace and let them prattle; he was kneeling low before the shrine of his own selection; he was in open rebellion against his irate mother, who did not approve ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... The fascination of the ballroom was utterly lost on Craig. "Think of all the houses only half guarded about here to-night," he mused, as we joined Armand and McNeill on the end of the dock. I could not help noting that that was the only idea which the gay, variegated, sparkling tango throng ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the hedge with Hallie Ferguson, who lived a block below us, I had come to accept this trick of the city as somewhat less extraordinary. It was developing other characteristics not so fearful to my mind and of far greater fascination; and I spent hours, when I could not be out of doors, watching it from the windows of my room. Father had built what was at the time one of the finest houses in San Francisco. It had a glass conservatory at the side, and a garden with a lawn and palm in the ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... never-forgotten compliments by the late Mr. Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest of hearts I ever knew. These trivial things I mention as an assurance to you that I never have forgotten the fascination of that old pursuit. The pleasure that I used to feel in the rapidity and dexterity of its exercise has never faded out of my breast. Whatever little cunning of hand or head I took to it, or acquired in it, I have ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... through these silent streets, fronting the beach, and yet, such was the subtle enigma of charm with which these dumb villas and mute shops were invested, that we walked along as if under the spell of fascination. Perhaps the charm is a matter of sex, after all: towns are feminine, in the wise French idiom, that idiom so delicate in discerning qualities of sex in inanimate objects, as the Greeks before them were clever in discovering sex distinctions in the moral qualities. Trouville ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... submission, left Diard no chance for planned ill-humor. Besides, she was one of those noble creatures to whom it is impossible to speak disrespectfully; her glance, in which her life, saintly and pure, shone out, had the weight of a fascination. Diard, embarrassed at first, then annoyed, ended by feeling that such high virtue was a yoke upon him. The goodness of his wife gave him no violent emotions, and violent emotions were what he wanted. What myriads of scenes are played in the depths of ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... the life of Fairyland, as coming within the vision of one only. And we were reminded too of the Midsummer-madness that overtook the company in Dear Brutus. I won't say that it wasn't natural enough for Melisande, under the fascination of a moonlit Midsummer Eve, to imagine, when she chanced upon a gentleman in fancy dress of the right period, that at last she had realised her dream of a hero of romance; but she was stark Midsummer-mad to suppose, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... Pers., a word apparently built on the model of "Kmiy" alchemy, and applied, I have said, to fascination, minor miracles and white magic generally like the Hindu "Indrajal." The common term for Alchemy is Ilm al-Kf (the K-science) because it is not safe to speak ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... fine keen air in winter, and to watch its iris-hedges deck themselves with blue in spring;—like Virgil's hero, dying, he would think of San Marino: Aspicit, et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos. Even a passing stranger may feel the mingled fascination and oppression of this prospect—the monotony which maddens, the charm which at a distance grows upon the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... anything —and find out for myself? It was a game worth playing. The stakes were a million dollars and the forfeit nothing. As I looked around the little office and at the weazened old barrister before me, something of the fascination of the law ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... neither a sect nor a school; but a common spirit, a sweet and penetrating influence was felt. His amiable character, accompanied doubtless by one of those lovely faces[9] which sometimes appear in the Jewish race, threw around him a fascination from which no one in the midst of these kindly and ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... certain circumstances, the circumstances in which I—ah—myself, I may say, am situated, there is no more delightful occupation. The work is interesting. There is the constant fascination of seeing these fresh young lives develop—and of helping them to develop—under one's eyes; in any case, I may say, there is the exceptional interest of being in a position to mould the growing ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... her phrases, the demure glance of her eyes. Her great lady's grace, her most striking characteristic, had not destroyed the very French quick mobility of her person. There was an extraordinary fascination in her swift, incessant changes of attitude. She seemed as if she surely would be a most delicious mistress when her corset and the encumbering costume of her part were laid aside. All the rapture of ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... was hardly any guide to our artillery fire. Yet it is to the artillery fire that all the losses of the Boers that day were due. The cleverness of Cronje's disposition of his trenches some hundred yards ahead of the kopjes is accentuated by the fascination which any rising object has for a gunner. Prince Kraft tells the story of how at Sadowa he unlimbered his guns two hundred yards in front of the church of Chlum, and how the Austrian reply fire almost invariably ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Gabriel, without turning aside his eyes from the window towards which he felt himself drawn by a fascination for which he could not account. Bastiano disappeared, and Nisida's brother, assisted by the waves, was drawing nearer and nearer to the shore, when, at all once, he uttered a terrible cry which sounded above the noise of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... every possible way, though he knew that the good father was too cunning for him, and that he must give in at last. Nevertheless, like a rabbit who runs squealing round and round before the weasel, into whose jaws it knows that it must jump at last by force of fascination, he parried and parried, and pretended to be stupid, and surprised, and honorably scrupulous, and even angry; while every question as to her being married or single, Catholic or heretic, English or foreign, brought his tormentor a step nearer the goal. At last, when ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... was nearly ready for the regular performance. Kit and Dan regarded the sawdust arena with the interest which it always inspires in boys of sixteen. Already it was invested with fascination for them. Two acrobats who performed what is called the "brothers' act" were rehearsing. They were placarded as the Vincenti brothers, though one was a French Canadian and the other an Irishman, and ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... beginning to recover her spirits, and when at last Raeburn, after a few words with a minister who had just arrived, disappeared suddenly behind the Speaker's chair, the spectacle below her seized her with the same fascination as before. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of faithful knights who went about redressing human wrongs and were loyal lovers and zealous servants of Holy Church; great also because Malory's heart is in his stories, so that he tells them in the main well, and invests them with a delightful atmosphere of romance which can never lose its fascination. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... he was putting out the candles. It was too dark already to see his face. With fascination she began to watch his hand. How steady it was as it moved among the boughs, extinguishing the lights. Out they went one by one and back into their darkness returned the emblems of darker ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... hidden goddess in her soul arose and asserted her claim to beauty. A rare indefinable charm of exquisite tenderness and fascination seemed to environ her small and delicate personality with an atmosphere of resistless attraction. The man beside her felt it, and his heart beat quickly with ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... wistful gaze Across green valleys, back to tender Mays; And something of her large contentment goes, When Roses die; Yet all her subtle fascination stays To lure us into idle, sweet delays. The lowered awning by the hammock shows Inviting nooks for dreaming and repose; Oh, restful are the pleasures of those days When ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... from the enthusiastic congregation. Did it rest there? Alas, no! Bridegroom and bride, parish priest and curate, were blotted out of the interested vision of the spectators; and, concentrated with absorbing fascination, the hundreds of eyes rested on the snowy cap and the spotless streamers of Mrs. Darcy. It was the great event of the day—the culmination of civilization in Kilronan! Wagers had been won and lost over it; one or two pitched battles had been fought with pewter weapons at Mrs. Haley's; ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... very frightful," answered Julia, "and almost reminds me of the tales of sorceresses, witches,' and evil genii, which I have heard in India. They believe there in a fascination of the eye, by which those who possess it control the will and dictate the motions of their victims. What can your brother have in common with that fearful woman, that he should leave us, obviously against his will, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... smoke, eagerly hanging on the words of the old tars spinning yarns to each other, we do not wonder at finding him on his way to the land of wonders, the New World, making the voyage in company with La Salle. The wilderness, full of hardships and haunted by treacherous savages though it was, had a fascination for him, and we soon find him serving as an itinerant missionary on ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... call probably came on the lofty heights of the mountain in which he, in common with the Kenites, believed God dwelt. The wilderness with its flaming bush spoke to him God's message. Recent writers have felt and forcibly interpreted the fascination and the message of the desert and plain, none more vividly than the Welsh writer Rhoscomyl in describing the experience of one of his ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... intonation; and her father's voice was instinctively familiar to her. People had often said that it was hard to dislike a man with a voice like Caspar Brooke's; and Lesley was not insensible to its fascination. No, he could not be a mere insensate clod, with that pleasant and cultivated voice, she decided to herself; but he might be something worse—a heartless man of the world, who cared for nothing but himself and his own low ambitions: not a man who was worthy to be the husband of a gentle, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... a certain fascination. You stepped out of the anteroom and found yourself on a raised concrete platform at the back of which washed the sea. Very extensive harbour works, half completed, ran farther out in a great semicircle across a wide space of leaden water, over which gulls were circling and crying; ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... of the reproaches which every loving word of the dying girl hurled into the conscience of Fanny, there was a strange and unaccountable fascination in the languid look of the sweet sufferer. Wherever she turned, Jenny seemed to be looking at her with a glance full of heaven, while the black waters of her own soul ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... courtesans are accomplished and are perfect in the arts of blandishment and dalliance, which they accompany with expressions adapted to every description of person, insomuch that strangers who have once tasted of their charms, remain in a state of fascination, and become so enchanted by their meretricious arts, that they can never divest themselves of the impression. Thus intoxicated with sensual pleasures, when they return to their homes they report that they have been in Kinsai, or the celestial city, and pant for the ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... of rotten timber, the gaping hole in the splintered bannister, the dark gleam of the water beneath, told their own story. One long, horrified look was enough for Mary. The others hung over the spot as if it held some unexplainable fascination, pointing out the step which tripped her first, the rusty nail to which still clung a shred of her dress torn out in falling, the jagged splinter that must have been the one which made the gash in ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... little girl." Laurent smiled with such a fascination that it brought the bright color to her face. "Mademoiselle, I have been thinking of you as the little girl whose advice I disdained and had a ducking for it. I did not look for a young lady. I do not wonder now that you have taken so much of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... factis: no fabulous personage of antiquity made more haste than Guynemer to multiply the exploits that increased his glory. But the enumeration of these would not furnish a key to his life, nor explain either that secret power he possessed or the fascination he exerted. "It is not always the most brilliant actions which best expose the virtues or vices of men. Some trifle, some insignificant word or jest, often displays the character better than bloody combats, pitched battles, or the taking ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... and centred all his attention. He halted abruptly as he caught a view of her face—shaded his eyes with his hands as if to gaze more intently—and at length burst into an exclamation of surprise and pleasure. At that instant Alice turned, and her gaze met that of the stranger. The fascination of the basilisk can scarcely more stun and paralyse its victim than the look of this stranger charmed, with the appalling glamoury of horror, the eye and soul of Alice Darvil. Her face became suddenly locked and rigid, her lips as white as marble, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to put up their hair, but the boys have gone to Pilkington's. He is a man with a cane. You may not go to Pilkington's in knickerbockers made by your mother, make she ever so artfully. They must be real knickerbockers. It is his stern rule. Hence the fearful fascination of Pilkington's. ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... a rush of waters, and the boat glanced onward but still Hartley Emerson stood motionless and statue-like, his eyes fixed upon the shore, until the swiftly-gliding vessel bore him away, and the object which had held his vision by a kind of fascination ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... something in the development of the time leads and governs every trend of popular thought. It may be the attraction of new inventions, or the perfection of new processes, or even, and this is not uncommon, the charm and fascination of some rare personality, whose ruling is absolute in its own immediate vicinity, and whose example spreads like circles in water far and far beyond the immediate personal influence. We cannot trace this apparent dearth of the art to one particular ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... who started the break-up of the party. She was attacked by a craving to yawn that gradually became irresistible. I saw the incipient symptoms of the attack and watched her with a sympathetic fascination, as she clenched her jaw, put her hand up to her lips, and made little impatient movements of her head and body. I knew that it must come at last, and it did, catching her unawares in the middle of a sentence—undertaken, ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... rose was so lovely that even her matter-of-fact soul had to pause to admire. It was a perpetual wonder to her and a perpetual fascination. The dark, unawakened eyes, the long, perfect brows, the deep, rich colouring, all combined to make such a picture as good Mrs. ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... same way by any painting. The emotions it caused were strange and indefinite. They were something like what I have heard ascribed to the eyes of the basilisk; or like that mysterious influence in reptiles termed fascination. I passed my hand over my eyes several times, as if seeking instinctively to brush away this allusion—in vain—they instantly reverted to the picture, and its chilling, creeping influence ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... as the day of instant action is once again adjourned to a period both remote and indefinite, the agitation must be drooping, and virtually we may repeat that the game is up. But the last moves have been unusually interesting. Not unlike the fascination exercised over birds by the eye of the rattlesnake, has been the impression upon Mr O'Connell from the fixed attention turned upon him by Government. What they did was silent and unostentatious; more, however, than perhaps the public is aware of in the way of preparation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... succession of entertainments especially in summer were enjoyed to the full by the happy Farmers, but it was conversation, the mutual exchange of bright ideas that afforded their chiefest enjoyment. Not literature, not the drama, not the dance, but the fascination of human speech in its best employ attracted and held their enthralled attention. It is impossible to report in writing even the heads of this discourse, pervading as it did the atmosphere of Brook ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... is suffering to the sex, or so accustomed are they to it, that they subject themselves spontaneously to enormous loads of trouble and torture, which no one would think of imposing upon them, and which they might easily avoid. It might almost be said, that suffering has a sort of fascination for them, drawing them placidly into it, whether they will or not. It seems in some mysterious way wrought up ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... between AEnone and Cleotos were to result in a mutual love? It was no uncommon thing in those days for the high-born lady to cast her eyes upon the slave. How mortifying to herself, then, if, while she had been exerting all her powers of fascination, taxing the utmost resources of her intellect, and making of her whole existence one labored study for the purpose of gaining an undue influence over the lord, Cleotos, without art or disguise or apparent effort, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... influence than Montesquieu was Voltaire. He exercised an irresistible fascination on the intellectual class by the unrivalled lucidity and logic of his powerful yet witty prose. He carried common sense to the point of genius, threw the glamour of intellect over the materialism of his century, and always seized his pen most eagerly when a question ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... difficult to perceive the fascination which Voltaire, with this character and this unrivalled splendour of public position, would have for a man like Condorcet. He conceived the warmest attachment to Voltaire, and Voltaire in turn the highest ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... bank was shrouded from his view, and imagination allowed him to think himself standing on the shore of some almost boundless lake. Seen under such conditions, the Serpentine put off the cheerful vulgarity of its everyday aspect, and exercised over the spirit of the watcher the same fascination as a mountain tarn or some deep, quick-flowing stream. "Come hither and be at rest," it seemed to whisper, and Stafford, responsive to the subtle invitation, for a moment felt as if to die in the thought of his mistress ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... her tell that remarkable story of her first attempt at controlling that remarkable class which came under her care, many years ago, in St. Louis? It is full of wonder and pathos and terror and fascination, even to those who are somewhat familiar with such experiences. But Flossy and her boy had never heard, or dreamed of its like. No, I am wrong; the boy had dreamed of scenes just so wild and daring, but even he had not fancied that such people ever ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... From one to another of these she flitted with the delicate sensuousness of a butterfly, smelling them and touching them lightly with the hand she had ungloved (which was as white as the snow without), as if they had for her a peculiar fascination. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... But accident had brought Nick directly in front of the opening through which was obtained the view of the Hut. In turning from one to the other of the two soldiers, his quick eye took in this glimpse of the buildings, and it became riveted there as by the charm of fascination. Gradually the ferocity left his countenance, which grew human ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... study of history is that of the origin of names, and there is in it a wonderful fascination. The following brief statements will show from what a trifling incident a name may be derived—especially ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... stared in a kind of incredulous fascination, until McMurtrie's voice abruptly recalled me to ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... itinerant preacher, cherished no less a project than an insurrection of negroes and the capture of New Orleans. The robber of to-day is a stern realist. He knows nothing of romance. A ride under the stars and a swift succession of revolver-shots have no fascination for him. He likes to work in secret upon safe or burglar-box. He has moved with the times, and has at his hand all the resources of modern science. If we do not know all that is to be known of him and his ambitions it is our own ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... see his way?" asked Mac Strann, and lowered his glance once more to the dead man. As for Haw-Haw Langley, he made a long, gliding step back towards the door, and his beady eyes opened in terror; yet a deadly fascination drew him back again ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... seconds, blinded to their own danger by the fascination of the struggle going on before them, the two men witnessed the grim watcher of the tunnel as it drove back wave after ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... her face, unable to bear it. When she turned her miserable eyes toward them again, allured by some strange fascination she was powerless to analyse, Edith was in his arms, her mouth crushed ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Edward's letters to Charles, and even to the Pope, became so pressing, that for very shame Charles could not allow his sister to remain at Paris any longer, and, rather than provoke a war, he dismissed her. She was a woman of great plausibility and fascination, and she not only persuaded her young son to believe her in danger from his father, but she also won over her brother-in-law, the Earl of Kent, as well as her cousin, the Sieur Robert d'Artois; and setting out from Paris in their company, she proceeded to the independent ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... ruthlessly stripped off, as if an ugly and abominable nakedness were gradually appearing. The shame of it all was very hateful to him; and yet—yes, he couldn't deny it—there was a sort of dreadful fascination in it, too. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... closely about her he glanced over toward the box whence the match had come. He saw the horror-stricken young men looking at him and the girl in fascination, but they had not been quick to act. After all, it was an accident and the fault ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... children had reached the higher ground, and were close to one of the gates in the iron railing which fenced the Park from the street. Drawn by an irresistible fascination, Magdalen followed them again, gained on them as they reached the gate, and heard the voices of the two children raised in angry dispute which way they wanted to walk next. She saw Norah take them through the gate, and then stoop and speak ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... manure is allowed to lie scattered about over a large surface, it is liable to have much of its value washed out by the rain. In a compact heap of this kind, the rain or snow that falls on it is not more than the manure needs to keep it moist enough for fermentation. 3d. There is as much fascination in this fermenting heap of manure as there is in having money in a savings bank. One is continually trying to add to it. Many a cart-load or wheel-barrowful of material will be deposited that would otherwise be allowed to run to ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... Soymanof, born at Moscow, who married General Swetchine, and, after turning Catholic, became celebrated in Paris during 1817-51 as the gracious hostess of a salon where much religious and ethical discussion went on; plain and unimposing in appearance, she yet exercised a remarkable fascination over her "coterie" by the elevation of her character and eager ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... owner of the mill in question, was in full sympathy with this newly aroused ambition on the part of the Chester boys to excel in athletic sports. He himself had been a devoted adherent of all such games while in college, and the fascination had never entirely died out of his heart. So he saw to it that Joe Hooker had considerable latitude in the way of afternoons off, in order that the town boys might profit by his ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... shoulders; the loss of the black feather had left nothing but the rustic costume, the blue gown, the black stockings, and the ribbon-tied shoes. Her voice had that full soft volume of melody which gives to common speech the fascination of music. Mr. Chainmail could not reconcile the dress of the damsel with her conversation and manners. He threw out a remote question or two, with the hope of solving the riddle, but, receiving no reply, he became satisfied that she was not disposed to be communicative ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... in blind rage, charging through thick and thin, has had a fascination for me as long as I can remember. The true aurochs and this, the European Bison, ceased to exist in the British Isles, except in the Zoological Gardens; but the latter is still found wild in Lithuania, and is also carefully preserved in other parts of Russia, of which the Emperor has a herd. There ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... this sin; he is born again and again, and dies again and again. For this reason it is right for a man, who has been born in the world, to cultivate religion. Behold! Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahadeo, being under the influence of love, anger, and fascination, descend upon the earth in various ways; but a cow is superior to them all, for it is free from anger, enmity, intoxication, rage, avarice, and inordinate affection, and affords protection to the subject; and her sons also behave kindly to, and cherish the animals of the earth, and therefore all ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... sheaf of pink roses on the white cloth; still the humming continued, though mechanically the woman's long, white fingers gathered up the flowers and held them against her face. At last, unexpectedly, she raised her head, looked at the man whose eyes were now fixed in fascination upon her, looked away beyond him, and, lifting her voice from its murmuring note, ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... materials and rare colors. Her face was skilfully painted, and her dark hair disposed so as not to overweight her small head. The clergyman, foolishly resisting a natural impulse to admire her, felt like St. Anthony struggling with the fascination of a disguised devil. He responded to her smile of welcome ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... that, in obedience to the blast of eloquence to which he might be last subjected. But latterly the idea had grown upon him that Clara might possibly marry Owen Fitzgerald. There was about Owen a strange fascination which all felt who had once loved him. To the world he was rough and haughty, imperious in his commands, and exacting even in his fellowship; but to the few whom he absolutely loved, whom he had taken into ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... staring at the bottle so long in such fascination that Lady Webling came to the door ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... not see how he could get on faster. He had, he felt, to create certain ideas and vivify certain curiosities and feelings in her. Until that was done a certain experience of life assured him that a girl is a locked coldness against a man's approach. She had all the fascination of being absolutely perplexing in this respect. On the one hand, she seemed to think plainly and simply, and would talk serenely and freely about topics that most women have been trained either to avoid or conceal; and on the ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... to blind ads evenings he could take his replies to the two newspaper offices during his lunch hour, thereby losing no great amount of time. Although he never received a reply, he still persisted as he found the attempt held something of a fascination for him, similar probably to that which holds the lottery devotee or the searcher after buried treasure—there was always the chance that he ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and proceed in the direction of the Burlington Arcade. He was elaborately disguised as a young man, even to the youthful flower, and I was incontinently smitten with curiosity respecting the dark purpose he might veil in this way. There is, to me, a peculiar and possibly rather a childish fascination in watching my more intimate friends unobserved, and, curiously enough, I had never before studied the avuncular back view. I found something singularly entertaining in the study of the graceful contour of his new frock coat, ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... master, and an occasional rancher or prospector; the other, a big one, and often a riotous, for the soldiery, scouts, packers and riffraff of the frontier, and for this establishment Bennett's dago had an indescribable fascination. Here he had met and differed with Munoz, the two coming to a knife duel, promptly suppressed by the gun butts of the guard. None the less was Munoz called into requisition as interpreter, for between peril, exhaustion and defective English the "dago" could only splutter ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... of books, and a very thin voice. Few public speakers of our time use such admirable diction, and it is a rare one who can make so lean a voice thrill so completely with passion in the presentation of powerfully synthetic ideas. This is a great gift; but like personal beauty it has its fatal fascination. Mr. Rowell has not ceased to suffer from a sort of bondage to his oratory as he has from the tyranny of his conscience. In conversation he seldom just talks. He seems to deliver dicta. He rarely glows with the fire of the moment; he seems to ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... down, down went the trout, its white sides glistening through the clear water. For some reason still unaccountable I let it go, and yard after yard of line was reeled out. Perhaps, after all, it was fascination that kept me from stopping the plunge of the fish, that never stopped until the entire line was let out. That brought me to my senses, and I reeled the fish up and got a fine trout, but I also got at ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... horror unspeakable, yet withal a morbid fascination, in the spectacle of the actual booty for which so many lives had been sacrificed before my eyes. Minute followed minute in which I looked at nothing, and could think of nothing, but the stolen bullion at my feet; ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... appeal to the delicate and mystical temper of the vicar's sister, in whom the ardour of the "watcher for souls" was a natural gift. Jenny seemed to be aware of it. She was flushed and a little excited, alternately shy and communicative—like the bird under fascination, already alive to the signal of its captor. At any rate, Margaret Shenstone kept both her ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the ministry, musing over the hours so recently passed and striving to arrest them in their flight, to enjoy again their seductive joy and to squeeze as from a delicious fruit, all their intoxicating poetry, delight and fascination. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... 1783. Few properly reared boys of a generation ago escaped this literary indiscretion: its Sunday School solemnity, its distribution of life's prizes according to the strictest moral tests, had a sort of bogey fascination; it was much in vogue long after Day's time, indeed down to within our own memories. Perhaps it is still read and relished in innocent corners of the earth.. In any case it is one of the outcomes of the ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Although perfectly feminine, she was an excellent horsewoman, and an ardent admirer of feats of address and courage, and she had heard me tell her brother of Ashley's perfection in such matters. On his part, Ashley, like every one else who saw her, was evidently greatly struck with her beauty and fascination of manner. I cannot say that I was jealous; I had no right to be so, for Dora had never given me encouragement; but I certainly more than once regretted having introduced a third person into what—honest Jack M'Dermot counting, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... story, the whole miserable story, that I'd heard enough of to suspect. Why she'd married the other man she couldn't explain herself, except that it was a woman's whim—I had stayed away and he had come the oftener—part pique and part the man's dare-devil fascination, I reckon; but a month had shown her how she really stood, and had shown him, too. Likewise, she saw the sort of man he was and the kind of life he lived. At last he got rough and cruel to her, trying every way to break her spirit; and even the baby didn't stop him—it made him worse, if anything—till ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... been written to show that he could write a grave tale, and it was so grave that no one would read it; the second was written to overcome if possible the neglect of the public; but the third was written exclusively to please himself. The story as a story suffered in consequence from the very fascination which the subject had for his mind. So subordinate was it made, especially in the first half, to the description of the scenes, that the details at times become wearisome ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... feeling of nausea and powerlessness possessed Dermot, as from the open mouth, in which the fatal fangs showed plainly while the protruding forked tongue darting in and out seemed to feel for him, came a fetid effluvia that had a paralysing effect on him. He was experiencing the extraordinary fascination that a snake exercises over its victims. His muscles seemed benumbed, as the huge head swayed from side to side and mesmerised him with its uncanny power. The gun almost dropped from his nerveless fingers. But with a fierce effort ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... The fascination of your remarks has unduly delayed us from joining our friend outside. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... portraitist—we are dealing, be it remembered, with Italian art only—there must be conceded to him the first place, as a limner both of men and women, though each of us may reserve a corner in his secret heart for some other master. One will remember the disquieting power, the fascination in the true sense of the word, of Leonardo; the majesty, the penetration, the uncompromising realism on occasion, of Raphael; the happy mixture of the Giorgionesque, the Raphaelesque, and later on the Michelangelesque, in Sebastiano del Piombo. Another will yearn for the ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... Life; and I heard him a great many times at the Bar, both before juries and the full Court. He is the only advocate I ever heard who had the imperial power which would subdue an unwilling and hostile jury. His power over them seemed like the fascination of a bird by a snake. Of course, he couldn't do this with able Judges, although all Judges who listened to him would, I think, agree that he was as persuasive a reasoner as ever lived. But with inferior magistrates and juries, however intelligent, however ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... is to conform to the subject and the metre to the style.' Notwithstanding the fascination which the word 'classical' exercises over us, we can hardly maintain that this rule is observed in all the Greek poetry which has come down to us. We cannot deny that the thought often exceeds the power of lucid ...
— The Republic • Plato
... had coyly saluted; the "Beany," whom the pale young editor had bluntly bidden to leave town; and the literary celebrity whom Miss Mary Carstairs so evidently and so warmly admired. Varney stared at the portrait with a kind of fascination. Now he saw many points of difference between the face of "the popular author" and his own. The resemblance was only general, after all. Still it was undoubtedly strong enough to ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... opportunities of so perilously distinguishing herself. She possessed one of those fearless and incautious dispositions that find gratification in an excess of sensitiveness of feeling, and for whom, also, danger has a certain fascination. And so her glances, her smiles, her toilette, an inexhaustible armory of weapons of offense, were showered on the three young men with overwhelming force; and, from her well-stored arsenal issued glances, kindly recognitions, and a thousand other little charming attentions which were intended to ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... type—it was something else, a personality which attracted all who met her. The handsome Spaniard had had many love affairs of a more or less perfunctory kind, but here was something different, something he had not known. He began by exerting his powers of fascination in a lazy, careless way. To his astonishment the said powers were not overwhelming. If Jane was fascinated she was not conquered. She remained sweet, simple, ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... me as I saw these ominous preparations, and yet I was held by the fascination of horror, and I could not take my eyes from the strange spectacle. A man had entered the room with a bucket of water in either hand. Another followed with a third bucket. They were laid beside the wooden horse. The second man had a wooden dipper—a bowl with a straight handle—in ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle |
