"Graceful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... approached this improvised palace. First appeared two riders, whose gold-embroidered mantles fell below their feet and concealed the well-shaped bodies of the small Arabian horses on which they were mounted, only displaying their slender necks, with their flowing manes and their graceful legs. It was evident from their dark complexions and flashing eyes that these men were foreigners, the sons of the South. On each appeared the diamond-headed hilt of a sword, glittering amid the folds of the costly Turkish shawls which encircled their slender waists; and at ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... in ecstasy, and there was a continual mounting, attempting and nearly falling, or turning anywhere but the right, little screams, and much laughter, Jasper attending upon Vera, who, in spite of her failures, looked remarkably pretty and graceful upon Valetta's machine; while Paula, whom Mysie and Valetta were both assisting, learnt more easily and steadily, but looked on with a few qualms as to the entire crystal rock constancy that Vera had professed, more especially when Jasper volunteered to come ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... underlying tenderness and generosity concealed beneath Owen's external shyness, irresolution, and occasional reserve; and, from first to last, even in her gayest moments, there was always a certain quietly-implied consideration—an easy, graceful, delicate deference—in her manner toward my eldest brother, which won upon me and upon him every hour ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... the impartial spectator, is, of course, chiefly played in Canada, but there is a Lacrosse League in the Atlantic cities of the United States. The visitor to Canada should certainly make a point of seeing a good exposition of this most agile and graceful game, which is seen at its best in Montreal, Toronto, or Ottawa. Unfortunately it seems to be most trying to the temper, and I have more than once seen players in representative matches neglect the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... artificial ornament about the place, but much of the rough, heart-stirring wildness of nature, as it appeared in a strong, vigorous district, well cultivated, but without being tamed down by those finer and more graceful touches, which nowadays mark the skilful hand of ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... are some graceful lines by Mr. Watts to his son; but our extract must be "The Spider and the Fly, a new version of an old story," by Mrs. Howitt. It is a lesson for all folks—great and small—from the infant in the nursery to the emperor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... had been allowed to develop themselves; Mrs. Brownlow having been always housekeeper, she had been fain to go on with the studies that even her preparation for governess-ship had not rendered wearisome, and thus had become a very graceful modeller in clay-her favourite pursuit-when her children's lessons and other occupations left her free to indulge in it. The history of the travels, and the account of the discovery, were given and heard with all zest, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you enter the room at the neatness of the table, dazzling by reason of its silver and crystal and linen damask. Life is here in full bloom; the young fellows are graceful to behold; they smile and talk in low, demure voices like so many brides; everything about them looks girlish. Two hours later you might take the room for a battlefield after the fight. Broken glasses, serviettes crumpled and torn to rags lie ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... her words seemed to him curiously eloquent of her state of mind. She did not move on. She seemed, indeed, to have the air of one anxious to say more. In that ruthless light, the advantages of her elegant clothes and graceful carriage were suddenly stripped away from her. She was the abject wreck of a beautiful woman, wizened, prematurely aged. Nothing remained but the eyes, which seemed somehow to ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unum est necessarium." We ask questions perhaps about diction, elocution, rhetorical power; but does the commander of a besieging force dream of holiday displays, reviews, mock engagements, feats of strength, or trials of skill, such as would be graceful and suitable on a parade ground when a foreigner of rank was to be received and feted; or does he aim at one and one thing only, viz., to take the strong place? Display dissipates the energy, which for the object in view needs to be concentrated and condensed. We have ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... you for that pretty thought," she said with a pleasant smile. "You are too flattering. The 'queen of flowers' is very true, but the 'queen of women!' Oh, no!" She made a graceful gesture of dissent, and passed ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... most labor to beautify its fictions with variety and multiplicity of contrivance. For variety bestows upon fable all that is pathetical, unusual, and surprising, and thereby makes it more taking and graceful; whereas what is void of variety is unsuitable to the nature of fable, and so raiseth no passions at all. Upon which design of variety it is, that the poets never represent the same persons always victorious ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... a fore-and-aft schooner, ninety-five feet in length, of seventy tons' burden. "She had most graceful lines and with her lofty masts, white sails and decks, and glittering brass work, was a lovely craft to the eye as she ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... for us poor devils, that we have a little resting-place between the camp and the grave, if we can manage to escape disease, and steel, and lead, and the effects of hard living. A retired old soldier is always a graceful and respected character. He grumbles a little now and then, but then his is licensed murmuring; were a lawyer, or a physician, or a clergyman to breathe a complaint of hard luck or want of preferment, a hundred ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... It was graceful and generous for the wife thus to guard, as far as in her lay, her husband's time and thoughts from interruption. For, in addition to his pastoral labors, in which he never spared himself, were his missionary toils among the heathen. His poor Indian people ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... about the lazo: the rope was no longer an object of prime interest. Trimmed and embellished with the graceful excuse of "duty," I should now ride boldly up to the hacienda, and enter its gates with the confident air of a welcome guest. Welcome, indeed! A contract for five thousand beeves, and at war-prices! A good stroke of business on the part of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... believe she loved me? Could I hear wisdom urge me to marry her, and disregard every dear advantage, disbelieve every flattering suggestion, disdain every well-weighed counsel, turn and leave her? Young, graceful, gracious—my benefactress, attached to me, enamoured of me. I used to say so to myself; dwell on the word; mouth it over and over again; swell over it with a pleasant, pompous complacency, with an admiration dedicated entirely to myself, and unimpaired even by esteem for her; indeed ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... hand, nor showed the least shame of the hard, brown, tarry-seamed, strong, though rather small prehensile member, with its worn and blackened nails, but let it calmly remain outspread, side by side with the white, shapely, spotless, gracious and graceful thing, adorned, in sign of the honour it possessed in being the hand of Mrs. Sclater,—it was her favourite hand,—with a half hoop of fine blue-green turkises, and a limpid activity of many diamonds. She laughed also—who could have helped it? that ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... sorter turned round and backed up graceful into Alexandria Bay, and we hitched it there and lay off agin the harbor real neighborly. There wuz two hotels there in plain sight, each one on 'em as long as from our house to Miss Derias Bobbettses, all fixed off with piazzas and porticos ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere, and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole." ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... used) at their waists, they look a very different race of men from what might be expected from their name of Gauchos, or simple countrymen. Their politeness is excessive; they never drink their spirits without expecting you to taste it; but whilst making their exceedingly graceful bow, they seem quite as ready, if occasion offered, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... lady is in harmony with the splendor of the apartment. Rather tall and graceful of figure, her complexion pale, yet soft and delicate, her features as fine and regular as ever sculptor chiselled, her manner gentle and womanly. In her face, nevertheless, there is an expression of thoughtfulness, perhaps melancholy, to which her large, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... His action was not understood as a simple-hearted expression of pure good-will. People were used to a very different bearing on the part of their King. With all his faults and foibles, Frederik VII was always in manner the Father of his people; always the graceful superior; head up and shoulders well back, patronisingly and affectionately waving his hand: "Thank you, my children, thank you! And now go home and say 'Good-morning' to your wives and children from the King!" One could not imagine Frederik VII bowing ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... lofty belfry, one of the most graceful seventeenth-century buildings now to be anywhere seen, a few arches of one of the cloisters and one of the great abbatial gatehouses converted into a town-hall! The Vandal Directory of Chauny dealt more rationally with Premontre than the 'patriots' of St.-Amand ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... over the water. One was an old man seated upon the ground, with a young girl by his side. He could not distinguish their faces, but they were evidently listening with rapt attention to a young woman who was standing nearby playing upon a violin. Douglas noted with admiration her lithe form, and the graceful poise of her head. So the musician was a woman! It came to him as a surprise, for in his mind he had pictured a man alone on the shore, giving expression to his feelings. He longed to draw nearer, that he might see her better and look into her eyes. A soul and a hand that could produce such music ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... and proceeded to promenade the environs. One of the first things that attracted their attention was a colossal bronze bust of Lieutenant Waghorn, who had been presented to them by Captain Ringgold in one of his talks. It was erected to his memory by the canal company, and is a graceful tribute of the French to the originator of the overland route. The inscription was in French, and Louis translated it for the benefit ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... rippled the long grass of the prairie and fluttered the flaps of the graceful tepee, waved also the corn, sent by Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies, the ever returning life of the green thing growing. In the ravines and on the lower slopes of the grassy waves of the prairie bellowed the buffalo, or grazed in silence, having ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... poor influence may yet extend, provided the fellow be not named in any act of outlawry. I would gladly enough Mr. Skimmer end my deeds in this hemisphere, with some act of graceful mercy, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... them is otherwise remarkable than as being the first of a long line of indifferent dramas. There is, in fact, no American dramatic literature worth speaking of; not a single American play of even the second rank, unless we except a few graceful parlor comedies, like Mr. Howell's Elevator and Sleeping-Car. Royall Tyler, the author of The Contrast, cut quite a figure in his day as a wit and journalist, and eventually became chief-justice of Vermont. His comedy, The Georgia Spec, 1797, had a great run ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... the household was the only daughter, Mary, a tall, graceful girl, who had inherited many of her father's qualities, together with her mother's sweetness. In Bert's eyes she was just simply perfect. She was twice as old as he when he had six years to his credit, ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... the wild burst of joy. They held the flag over the heads of the chief officer while the band played "Hail, Columbia!" Then it was laid at the feet of Mrs. Madison, who accepted it in the name of the country with a charming and graceful speech. Afterward it was festooned on the wall with the flag ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... broken bits grown over with catnip showed the place of the great brick chimney the first time I visited the farm; and the second time these, too, were gone. Now a plain, graceful shaft, bearing the simple inscription, "Washington's Birthplace," and below, "Erected by the United States, A.D. ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... went by in silence, and then another. No glad shout of welcome rang out from the trees. No graceful canoe parted the fringe of bushes that concealed the mouth ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... how she rises, for all the world like a graceful bird!" exclaimed Ralph. "I've never been so close to an aeroplane before, and I tell you, Hugh, I can mighty easily see how it makes a fellow wild to embark in ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... architecture could have contributed better to such gayety than the Spanish-Renaissance, light, ornate, and infinitely varied, lending itself to endless decoration in color and relief, and no more delicate compliment could have been paid our southern neighbors than this choice of their graceful and attractive designs. Each building was unique and original in plan. Domes, pinnacles, colonnades, balconies, towers, and low-tiled roofs afforded endless variety. The Electric Tower, designed ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Alcibiades, a name closely connected with those events which resulted in the ruin of the Athenian empire, was perhaps the most variously accomplished of all those young men of genius who have squandered their genius in the attempt to make it insolently dominant over justice and reason. Graceful, beautiful, brave, eloquent, and affluent, the pupil of Socrates, the darling of the Athenian democracy, lavishly endowed by Nature with the faculties of the great statesman and the great captain, with every power and every opportunity to make himself the pride and glory ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... eye swept onward across the burnished domes and graceful minarets, down into court and park and garden to pause at last upon the ersite bench and the girl standing there beside it, her face upturned full ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... this give me leave to say, That you have more wit, sense, learning, honour, and humanity, than all mankind put together; and your person comprehends in it everything that is beautiful; your air is everything that is graceful, your look everything that is majestic, and your mind is a storehouse where every virtue and every perfection are lodged: to pass by your generosity, which is so great, so glorious, so diffusive, that ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... were three of them—Laura, the eldest, beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished, with a strong leaning toward Ritualism; Juna, innocent, childish, and kitten-like; and Louie, the universal favorite, absurd, whimsical, fantastic, a desperate tease, and as pretty and graceful as it is possible for any girl to be. An aunt did the maternal for them, kept house, chaperoned, duennaed, and generally overlooked them. The colonel himself was a fine specimen of the vieux militaire. He loved to talk of the life which he had left behind, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... lofty brow, and bearing high, dark "Ravenswood" advanced, Who on the false "Lord Keeper's" mien with eye indignant glanced; Whilst graceful as a lonely fawn, 'neath covert close and sure, Approached the beauty of all hearts—the "Bride ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... side of the tree stood a graceful figure clad in a white robe that glittered and sparkled as though covered with diamonds. She wore a gilt crown on her head and carried a scepter, while over her shoulder trailed a long garland of holly fastened ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... her to the trunk of the cottonwood whose branches she had been chopping into fuel, with graceful and unspoken invitation to sit down and hear the tale ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... as it was, it was almost beautiful in the springtime, when the dandelion-dotted turf grew close to the great stone steps; or in the summer, when the famous Bascom elm cast its graceful shadow over the front door. The elm, indeed, was the only object that ever did cast its shadow there. Lucinda Bascom said her "front door 'n' entry never hed ben used except for fun'rals, 'n' she was goin' ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not worry about that. We know it does. That's all that matters." But he could not help being impressed, too, by the enormous size and the graceful lines of the luxury ship. Unlike Alice, he was not seeing it at close range for the first time. He had met the ship scores of times in his reporting job, interviewing famous and well-known personages as they departed or arrived from the fabulous ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... which such numbers think themselves qualified as for theatrical exhibition. Every human being has an action graceful to his own eye, a voice musical to his own ear, and a sensibility which nature forbids him to know that any other bosom can excel. An art in which such numbers fancy themselves excellent, and which the publick liberally rewards, will excite many ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... later to show herself to her mother before she stepped into the hated jampan. Her dress was a delicate creation of white lace and chiffon, with illusive shimmerings of silver in its folds that came and went with every one of her graceful movements. She was a tall and slender girl, with a beautiful long white throat, smooth and round, that took on entrancing curves of pride and gentleness, of humility and nobleness. She had splendid rippling hair of a deep bronze, that had been red a few years earlier; and dark blue dreamy ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... dissipated man of the night before. It was Hillars as I had seen him in the old days. But for his 19th century garb, he might have just stepped down from a frame—a gallant by Fortuny, who loved the awakened animal in man. The poise was careless, but graceful, and the smile was debonair. His eyes were holding Gretchen's. A ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... girl had come up to them. It was a very graceful girl of eight or nine years, light haired, with large blue eyes, tall for her age, and displaying all the intelligence of a young girl, without ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... Caesar, in the kindliness of his heart, was touched by Doe's graceful action, and grasped the proffered hand, saying: "Good morning, Doe." By this time the whole class was arranged in a tolerably straight line behind Doe, and waiting to go through the ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... have sighted it in the distance, for she slanted away from it with a perilous and graceful sweep. She had heard so much about me from her daughter. She had wanted to make my acquaintance. She was ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... over King. Tall, lean, graceful, easy, with his flushed ruddy face and his flashing blue eyes and the upstanding red hair, he looked exactly what he was—a handsome red devil, fearing no man or thing, hell-bent in his cool, ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... floating down the flower-bordered river that wound so gracefully through the beautiful village of Wimbledon, and a smiling little lady, in a neat gingham sun-bonnet, sat coseyly in the stern, beneath the shady wing of the snow-white sail. A noble-looking lad plied the oar with graceful ease, chatting merrily the while with the little girl, and laughing at her constant and matronly care of a large basket which was placed beside her, neatly covered with a snowy napkin. "One would think that there were diamonds in that basket, Nell, you guard ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... and delight of the children and of the whole family. You would hardly have known her for the rough, shaggy, half-starved little beast that had arrived a few weeks before. Her coat was so silky, her limbs so graceful, and her head so full of intelligence, that every body admired her. Then even Gardener began to ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... his head. "I can navigate after a fashion," he said, grimly. "I get along about as graceful as a brick sloop in a head tide, but, by the Lord Harry, I'll get along somehow.... No, don't, please. I'd rather you didn't help ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... in its habits, so graceful in its carriage, so nimble and daring in its movements, excites feelings of admiration akin to those awakened by the birds and the fairer forms of nature. His passage through the trees is almost a flight. Indeed, the flying squirrel has little or no advantage over him, and in speed and ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... congratulatory way on the tip of his black nose. "Not counting bell-boys, of course," she added. And then she was swept from him in the crowd and he was left thinking of all the things he might have said—all those graceful, witty, ingratiating things which just make a bit of difference on ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... off—which it did at the country residence of the French consul. The mansion, which was Mauresque in style, was splendidly decorated with flags of various nations, and the skiffa, with its sparkling fountain and graceful palmettas, was a perfect blaze of variegated lamps. These hung amid the foliage of the creepers that twined round the curved marble pillars, and their red garish light contrasted powerfully with the clear purity of the star-lit sky, which formed the ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... already well-advanced in years. He had entered upon the winter of life, that sprinkles the head with snow that never melts, but he was still hale, ruddy, and active. Nature had, indeed, moulded him in an unpropitious hour for personal comeliness, but in compensation had seated a great heart and a graceful mind in a body low of stature, and marked by a slight deformity. His piercing eyes, luminous with intelligence and full of sympathy for everything noble and elevated, overpowered with their fascination the blemishes that a too curious scrutiny might discover upon his figure; while his mobile, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... (A graceful march played. Enter Princess Fadeaway, attended by Greening and Sweeting. The Princess is a sweet-voiced, gentle little girl. Her ladies are gorgeously attired, and walk and talk in ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... purple lilac nodded over her, a dress of yellow calico, richly trimmed with red-flannel scallops, shrouded her slender form, a garland of small flowers crowned her glossy curls, and a pair of blue boots touched toes in the friendliest, if not the most graceful, manner. An emotion of grief, as well as of surprise, might well have thrilled any youthful breast at such a spectacle; for why, oh! why, was this resplendent dolly hung up there to be stared at by thirteen of her kindred? ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... the despair of her circle. Why, argued the other birds, why fly in the face of luck? To be sure, she was still young, still beautiful, with that sort of metallic beauty which reminded Ambroise of some priceless bronze blackened in the sun. She was meagre, diabolically graceful, dark, with huge saucer-like eyes that greedily drank in her surroundings. But her lashes were long, and she could veil her glance so that her brilliant face looked as if the shutters had been closed on her soul. Across her brows a bar of blue-black ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... appropriation was shamefully rewarded with accommodation gratis on board one of Her Majesty's transport-ships? The disciples of Ude have left us the literary results of their studies, and one at least, the graceful Alexis Soyer, is numbered among our public benefactors. We have little doubt that as the art, vulgarly called 'embezzlement,' becomes more and more fashionable, as it does every day, we shall have a work on the 'Art of Appropriation.' It is a pity that Brummell looked down upon literature: poor ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... those twelve men, if he had opened the case himself, had been quietly, simply, and sympathetically led into a knowledge of its facts in connection with its actors and their motives; they had seen how calmly and with what tact he had examined his witnesses, how ready, graceful, and unheated had been his arguments to the court, and how complete throughout had been his self-possession and self-control; they had, moreover, learned and become interested in the case, and were no longer the same hard and dispassionate men with whom he had begun, and they knew, as the casual ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... countess had come with her husband. I was just twenty years old; she was twenty-six. When I saw her, I was overcome. It seemed to me that I had never in all my life met a woman so perfectly beautiful and graceful; that I had never seen so charming a face, such beautiful eyes, ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... he turned to scan the little plain. First to catch his eye were a dozen or more graceful animals dashing away from the shore in panic-stricken flight. He turned his glasses upon them and saw that they were antelope. This was not encouraging. That the timid animals had been feeding in the vicinity of a human habitation a full hour after dawn was not probable. Nor did a careful ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... from the first tender awaking of a sweet desire through the warmer and warmer courtship to the raptures of sensual delight. Civilized society has more or less covered the naked passion, but from the graceful play of the minuet to the graceless movements of the turkey trot the sensual, not to say the sexual, element can easily be recognized by the sociologist. Here again cause and effect move in a circle. Love ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... the door gently and stood in the light for a second. He saw before him a graceful figure in trailing white, and then he saw her ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... deserted, and she herself was changed. She was no longer the graceful, enchanting prima donna, the floating sylph; she was a calm, proud woman, almost imposing in her grave, pale beauty; her melancholy smile touched the heart, while it contrasted strangely with her ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... of flush, or glow, or tender coldness, these qualities being exhibited only by slight and subtle use of contrast. Similarly as to form; some compositions associate massive and rugged forms, others slight and graceful ones, each with few interruptions by lines of contrary character. And, in general, such compositions possess higher sublimity than those which are more mingled in their elements. They tell a special tale, and summon ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... Their outline presents every possible variety of the line of beauty; their colours are brilliant and varied; their notes amorous and soothing; their manners gentle and affectionate; their flight both rapid and graceful; and, in all times and nations, they have been emblems of peace, love, and fidelity. They have moreover, many qualities and habits exclusively peculiar to their tribe; they drink differently (by immersion), and have no gall." The "peace, fidelity, and love" of the Dove have, however, been ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... palm-trees raised their heads, heavy with clusters of nuts resembling dates in size and form, but fit only for wild pigs. Clumps of bamboo were scattered about, their shoots springing from a common centre like the streams from a fountain, and sweeping through graceful curves to a spray of shimmering green. He had never seen such varieties of growth. There were thick trees with bulbous swellings; tall trees with buttressed roots that ran high up the trunks; slender trees propped up head-high above the earth on tripod-like ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... the Abbey next received the attention of these architect-abbots. Commencing at the second bay E. from the tower, John de Hertford (1235-60) almost entirely replaced the Norman and E.E. work of his predecessors by work which merged into a graceful E. Dec. The work was carried on by his immediate successors, doubtless sadly hindered by the turbulent state of the times. John de Norton (1260-90) built the S. aisle of the Retro-choir, and part ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... that this man has been very handsome; but it is a peculiar sort of beauty. How delicate and graceful all the lines in his face are!—he is a gentleman of God's own making, and not of the tailor's making. He is such a gentleman as I have seen among working men and nine- shilling-a-week labourers, often and often; his nobleness is in his heart—it is God's gift, therefore it shows in his ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... constantly bounding up into the air full ten feet high, and leaping on top of each other. I assure you all it was one of the strangest sights I ever beheld, and one of the pleasantest too; for I knew that the creatures that covered the plain, instead of being fierce wild beasts, were nothing but graceful and beautiful ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... fairy land, making splendid the scene. The dashing New Yorker, her smiles, unerring arrows, piercing whither she shot them; the vivacious and intelligent daughter of Massachusetts, all sensitive, modest, and graceful; the placid belle of Pennsylvania, whose fair complexion drew upon her all admiration; the bright-eyed Buckeye, with face so oval, than whom none was more coy, nor ever shot a glance or stole a heart so well; the rustic daughter ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... This place is mostly patronized by motorists and equestrians and is more fortunate than the others in its location. The little rustic hotel is built in the cosiest nook, just at the bend of the river; the fine old trees bend their graceful branches over the rushing waters in which the majestic mountains reflect their wondrous beauty. Here one may obtain private dressing rooms and bathing pools, or a party of two or more may have a number of dressings rooms ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... in the spring. Afterwards we saw many laburnums in the woods, which we were told had been 'planted;' though I remember that Withering speaks of the laburnum as one of the British plants, and growing in Scotland. The twigs and branches being stiff, were not so graceful as those of our garden laburnums, but I do not think I ever before saw any that were of so brilliant colours in their autumnal decay. In our way to and from Moness we crossed the Tay by a bridge of ambitious and ugly architecture. Many of the bridges ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... the prey, that its rider seemed to have some difficulty in restraining it. The girl herself was a perfect picture. Her face was the loveliest that Chan had ever looked upon, and her figure, which her trim hunting dress showed off to the utmost advantage, was graceful in the extreme. As she swept by him with her face flushed with excitement and her features all aglow with health, Chan felt at once that he had lost his heart and that he was deeply and profoundly in ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... advancing toward him. He was richly and gayly dressed, having on a great many garments of green and yellow colours, but differing in their deeper or lighter shades. He had a plume of waving feathers on his head, and all his motions were graceful. ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... interior of the church seemed, as a whole, to impress the same idea and complete the symbolical images of the details by its vaulted nave, of which the groined roof was so like the reversed hull of a vessel, suggesting the graceful form of the ships that made sail ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the hull. This is made according to the Sharpie type, but the lines are changed to give the boat a more graceful appearance. This is done by changing the shape of the deck and the bottom pieces. Fig. 89 shows the various pieces necessary to construct the hull. It will be seen that the forward portion of the bottom piece is narrower than the deck piece, and broadens out so that it is wider at ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... in the forenoon bevies of lovely girls and graceful cavaliers began to arrive, and the various parties scattered themselves over the lawn, the garden, through the grove and the forest, with ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... of Concessions, of Capitalists, and of Limited Liabilities, has largely produced the female financier, who thinks with M. de Camors, that "l'humanite est composee des actionnaires." Other centuries have had their especial type of womanhood; the learned and graceful hetaira, the saintly and ascetic recluse, the warrior of Oriflamme or Red Rose, the dame de beaute, all loveliness and light, like a dewdrop, the philosophic precieuse, with sesquipedalian phrase, the revolutionist, half nude of body and wholly ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... boulder sitting, Watching the graceful swallows flitting, Hearing the cuckoo's note. Sheep on the hills around me feeding, While in their piteous accents pleading, The lambkins' bleatings float. —Oh, dear! a ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... incident has happened. A young woman is brought before the court for delinquency, and the psychologist who has tested her testifies that she is of low intelligence. But the young woman is good-looking and graceful in her speech and manners, and so impresses the judge that he dismisses as "absurd" the notion of her being feeble-minded. He sets her free, on which she promptly gets into trouble again. Apparently the only way to perceive intelligence ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... chasing one another in mad glee. The sailing vessels, as they tacked to and fro across the river under the stiff western breeze, made the water foam about their blunt prows, and the white-winged gulls wheeled in graceful circles overhead. There was a sense of movement and life that was contagious. Gregory's dull eyes kindled with something like interest, and then he thought: "The storm lowered over these sunny shores yesterday. The gloom of night rested upon these ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... and have no odour. They were commonly stated to be pollinated by thrips and other insects. Dr. von Faber of Java has recently shown that whilst self-pollination is the rule, cross fertilisation occurs between the flowers on adjacent or interlocking trees. These graceful flowers are so small that one can walk through a plantation without observing them, although an average tree will produce six thousand blossoms in a year. Not more than one per cent. of these will become fruit. Usually it takes six months for the bud to develop into the mature fruit. ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... her, and, having once more assured her of my unswerving loyalty to her interests, I accompanied her to the door, and anon saw her graceful figure slowly descend the stairs and then ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... wild beasts and cattle. For he was not only well versed in all the affairs of men, but he could interpret the particular feelings which brutes experienced from the sounds which expressed them. He was also gifted with an eloquence so courteous and graceful, that he adorned whatsoever he desired to expound with a flow of witty adages. But when Kraka came up, and found that the dish had been turned round, and that Erik had eaten the stronger share of the meal, she lamented that the good luck she had bred for her son should have passed to her stepson. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... beautiful girl approaching them with a rarely graceful walk. She was tall, slender, round-bosomed, narrow-hipped, and she held her lovely body in the erect poise of splendid health. Northwood had a confused realization of uncovered bronzy hair, drawn to the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... chairman (who is usually the president of the society) rises, and by touching a bell, rapping on the table, or in some other suitable manner, attracts all eyes to himself. He then asks the meeting to come to order, or if he prefers the form, to give attention. Then he utters a few graceful commonplaces, and calls upon a guest to offer the leading toast—not always the chief or most interesting one. When one is reached in which there is a lively interest, some distinguished person such as ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... feeling when moved by emotion. In conversation he looks you full in the face, is deliberate, deferential and engaging. His voice is agreeable rather than strong. His demeanor at all times composed and dignified. His movements and gestures are graceful, his walk majestic, and he is ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... L.) or betel-nut-tree (as it is usually, but improperly, called, the betel being a different plant) is in its mode of growth and appearance not unlike the coconut. It is however straighter in the stem, smaller in proportion to the height, and more graceful. The fruit, of which the varieties are numerous (such as pinang betul, pinang ambun, and pinang wangi), is in its outer coat about the size of a plum; the nut something less than that of the nutmeg ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... decoy handsome young officials of the Foreign Office to these villas, and rob them, in dim-lit, scented bedrooms, of important documents. But I at least have never too harshly blamed these young diplomatists. Silent is the street as the mysterious brougham pauses, lovely the eyes that flash, and graceful the white-gloved hand that beckons from the carriage window; and how can they resist (for they are only human) the lure of so adventurous, so enchanting ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... with a beautiful tree. Whereas the laborious paste-and-scissors man goes hunting up and down for oddities, sticks one in here and another there, and tries to connect them with commonplace; and when it is all done, the oddities are not more inventive than the commonplace, nor the commonplace more graceful than the oddities. ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... active as themselves, taking up her loads and returning for more; her tiny feet pattering up and down the long, stone staircase, flitting back and forth between her mother and Anna, with her own peculiar, light, swift, graceful movement, which was like ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... and concentration of thought, resented anything which distracted his attention from the matter in hand. And yet, without a harshness which was foreign to his nature, it was impossible to refuse to listen to the story of the young and beautiful woman, tall, graceful, and queenly, who presented herself at Baker Street late in the evening, and implored his assistance and advice. It was vain to urge that his time was already fully occupied, for the young lady had come with the determination to tell her story, and ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... merchant whispered to us that this gentleman was a certain Captain Manuel Nunez, who came trading to Scarborough from Seville. He further informed us that his ship now lay outside in the harbor, and was a fine vessel, of very graceful proportions, and much more beautiful to look at than our English ships, which are somewhat squat and ugly, though ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... follow the king to whom he is devoted, but whose pious fanaticism and warlike illusions he does not share; his narrative is at one and the same time very full of himself without any pretension, and very spirited without any show of passion, and fraught with a graceful and easy carelessness which charms the reader and all the while inspires confidence in the author's veracity. Froissart is an insatiable Fry, who revels in all the sights of his day, events and personages, wars and galas, adventures of heroism ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... by the side of our boat; of a sudden rush of blackbird wings; and of the evening breeze as it freshened in the bending blades. We could see the many rivulets, wine-red now in the sunset light; and the graceful swaying of great grasses, pale green and silver and tan; and the red and golden sky above: ebbing rivulets, rippling reeds, drifting clouds, and sunset shades. And that was all. Nor had we guessed the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... blossoms of which, large and pink-veined, rise everywhere above the moss, a rufous-colored bird flies quickly past, and, alighting on a low limb a few rods off, salutes me with "Whew! Whew!" or "Whoit! Whoit!" almost as you would whistle for your dog. I see by his impulsive, graceful movement, and his dimly speckled breast, that it is a thrush. Presently he utters a few soft, mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the veery, or Wilson's thrush. He is the least of ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... a chieftain's son, and wealthy," said the man. "I must find the wearer of this shoe. Only a graceful and beautiful girl can wear ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... looking at the people on the quarter-deck of the Penobscot, rather than at the symmetrical hull and the graceful spars. There were two ladies and two gentlemen. The old gentleman, seated near the wheel, with long silver locks, and of grave and dignified mien, was the Hon. Mr. Montague. His son, Colonel Montague, who had commanded a Maine regiment during a portion of the war of the rebellion, was planking the ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... dividing the two acts of the opera with a ballet, the pauses between the performances are very short, the singers in the opera having time to repose themselves and change their costume, when necessary, while the dancers are executing their pirouettes and exhibiting their graceful steps. The overture to the second act began; and, at the first sound of the leader's bow across his violin, Franz observed the sleeper slowly arise and approach the Greek girl, who turned around to say a few words to him, and then, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... my life (often at infinite risk) through four and a-half years of high-pressure warfare to be mauled to death by a tin car at the finish. Not I. I got out. As I trundled into the gutter I saw the car take the parapet in its stride, describe a graceful curve in the blue, and plunge downwards out of sight. The child and I reached the parapet together and peered over. Seventy feet below us the waters of the river spouted for a moment as with the force of some violent submarine explosion and then subsided. A patch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... a short time with a charming figure; but never did beauty so quickly vanish. Madame Victoire was handsome and very graceful; her address, mien, and smile were in perfect accordance with the goodness of her heart. Madame Sophie was remarkably ugly; never did I behold a person with so unprepossessing an appearance; she walked with the greatest rapidity; and, in order to recognise the people ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... that faced the house in which he lived. A hard rain was driving, he fell at every step up the slippery steepness, but at every step the beauty of it became more and more wondrous, hardly bearable. The little village sank lower and lower, and about him were soft hills, graceful and verdant, a stretch of water lying dark under the clouded sky, and the mountain gray and watchful in the distance. It was then, in the chill of a January rain, on an oak-clad hill of a western spot, that he recognised the dear features of the Mother, knew her his as hers he was, ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... from nature, and which, copied and multiplied in plaster casts, have been long familiar to the public, without many of those who know and admire them being aware who was their author. It is hardly possible to see anything more graceful and spirited, truer at once to nature and the finest art, than these compositions, faithful in the minutest details of execution, and highly poetical in their entire conception. Lady Dacre was the finest female rider ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... thousands who boat on the Thames during the summer few know or notice the beauty of the river shells. They are among the most delicate objects of natural ornament and design in this country. Exquisite pattern, graceful shapes, and in some cases lovely tints of colour adorn them. Nature has for once relaxed in their favour her rigid rules, by which she turns out things of this kind not only alike in shape, but with identical colour and ornament. Among humming-birds, for instance, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... language of Dame Dermody) taking the way to reunion with my kindred spirit in the time to come. For the first two or three months of our travels I was haunted by dreams of the woman who had so resolutely left me. Seeing her in my sleep, always graceful, always charming, always modestly tender toward me, I waited in the ardent hope of again beholding the apparition of her in my waking hours—of again being summoned to meet her at a given place and time. My anticipations ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... remarkable for its graceful simplicity, our poet tells us, that "He entered on his subjects occasionally, as particular incidents in life suggested, or dispositions of mind recommended them to his choice." He shows that "He drew his pictures from the spot, and, he felt very sensibly the affections he communicates." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... dress of a less conventional character, than when in the elaborate and regulated attire of ceremonies. As might have been expected, there was most of soul and feeling in Eve's countenance, though Grace wore an air of charming modesty and nature. Both were unaffected, simple and graceful, and we may add that both trembled as Mr. ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... graceful and exhilarating; but, to say nothing of the injury which not unfrequently attends the sudden change from the stagnant heat of our furnaced dwellings to the bleak winds of the icy lake, is it not true that the chest-muscles are so little moved that the finest skating may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... requires more careful planning than plain material. It may be beautiful when used properly, but it will appear hideous if distorted in the making. A conventional fleur-de-lis pattern, or a long dash which appears and disappears when used in long, graceful folds, adds to the apparent height. These same figures wrongly used spread out awkwardly ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... often to exceed forty thousand in number. I can not give an estimate of their numbers, for they appear spread over a vast expanse of country, and make a quivering motion as they feed, and move, and toss their graceful horns. They feed chiefly on grass; and as they come from the north about the time when the grass most abounds, it can not be want of food that prompts the movement. Nor is it want of water, for this antelope is one of the most abstemious in that respect. Their nature prompts them to seek ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... been graceful, nor the diction, yet she knew that Ace had struck the mark fairly, for woman indeed needed no tutor to teach her to understand man—woman had always ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... reign of Louis XIV like a graceful plant in its proper soil. Splendor seemed to be her element. That Ninon might appear in the sphere that became her, it was necessary that Turenne and Conde should sigh at her feet, that Voltaire should receive from her his first lessons, in a word, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... little village, grouped around a dear old church, with a graceful square tower supporting a spire. The little church faced a small square, from which the principal street runs down the hill to the open country across which the French "push" advanced. No house on this street ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... are looking for!" cried a tall, dark, graceful young fellow, "We are all 'specially needful of wisdom. The drinks are on some one, and ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Despair, and so, too, there are many other Virtues that have subjugated the Vice that is their opposite. In a disputation is S. Thomas defending the Church "ex cathedra" against a school of heretics, and holding vanquished beneath him Sabellius, Arius, Averroes, and others, all clothed in graceful garments; of which scene we have in our book of drawings the original design by Filippo's own hand, with certain others by the same man, wrought with such mastery that they could not be bettered. There, too, is the scene when, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... opened as she spoke; a tall and graceful figure entered, and turning suddenly round, showed me the features of Lucy Dashwood. We both stood opposite each other, each mute with amazement. My feelings let me not attempt to convey; shame, for ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... tiresome truths; the compliments are all ready made, and people only differ in their mode of speaking them. From this general rule I must except the prince royal; his language has another coloring, and his graceful speeches have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... of the upper classes takes her revenge by knowing how to dress. In German cities, when you see a woman who is "exquisite," slim that is and graceful, dainty from head to foot and finely clad, then you may vow by all the gods that she has ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... and well shaped, not small, but competent looking, a great contrast to her mother's, as well as to Miss Lavinia's, that could slip easily into a five-and-a-half glove. She wore a graceful afternoon gown of pale blue with lace butterflies on the blouse and skirt, held in at waist and neck by enamelled butterfly buckles. She moved gracefully, and had a strong individuality, a warmth of nature that contrasted keenly with the statuesque perfection of her mother, and I fell to wondering ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... large of greenish hue and robe of tartan shone, And round its mystic border seen was Luger, Ayr, and Doon; A leaf-clad holly bough was twined so graceful round her brow, She was the darling native muse of Scotia then, as now: So grand old Coila's genius on this January morn, Appeared in all her splendour ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... is a monument of stone, without inscription or statue. It is that of Peter de Breze, count of Maulevrier, grand senechal of Anjou, Poitou and Normandy. He was killed at the battle of Montlhery, the 16th july 1465. This monument is remarkable by its graceful proportions, its elegance and the delicacy of its architecture. It is composed of two pilasters of the arabesque style, supporting a pointed arcade, surmounted by a pediment; the whole of it is in open work and decorated on all sides with the initials PB, in gothic letters. ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... panorama spread out far beneath him, the chief feature of which is a valley, surpassing in beauty and fertility any that that summer's sun will shine on ere reaching his golden gateway in the west. Through this valley, glimmering, half seen, half hid among the waving woods, runs a river, with many a graceful bend, so beautiful, that, in the far-away years of the past, some long-forgotten tribe of Indians called it Shenandoah, or Shining Daughter of the Stars; a name that still lingers like a sweet echo among the ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... attention was attracted from Homans to another new player in uniform now walking up to Arthurs. He was tall, graceful, powerful, had red hair, keen dark eyes, a clean-cut profile ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... exquisite beauty. Bordered with the olive-colored Rock-Weed, fronds of purple and green Laver rise from its limpid depths. Amphipods of varied hue emerge from the clustering weeds, cleave the clear water with easy swiftness, and hide beneath the opposite bank. Here a graceful Annelid describes Hogarth's line of beauty upon the sandy bottom. There another glides over the surface with sinuous course, rowed by more oars than a Venetian galley, more brilliant in its iridescence than the barge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... such splendid dyes produce? Can he such colours blend? Can he the tendril graceful twine, Or ...
— A Little Girl to her Flowers in Verse • Anonymous
... and then took a seat. The gentleman made a graceful bow, as if to ask permission to break the seal, and then ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... acquaintance with life and society; with the manifold diversities of motive and aspiration by which men are actuated; with everything, in short, that interests, degrades, or elevates humanity. Only from an extensive quarry of experience could this strong and graceful pillar of wit, sagacity, and judgment, have been built up. From this, too, has been acquired that broad liberality of opinion which must be welcome to every candid mind—the enlarged tolerance, and generous appreciation of all degrees of difference in men's ways of thinking ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... I perceive an attack upon the then Committee of D.L. Theatre for acting Bertram, and an attack upon Maturin's Bertram for being acted. Considering all things, this is not very grateful nor graceful on the part of the worthy autobiographer; and I would answer, if I had not obliged him. Putting my own pains to forward the views of * * out of the question, I know that there was every disposition, on the part of the Sub-Committee, to bring forward any production of his, were ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of different exercises includes many for reducing flesh; and others bound to result in the securing and preservation of a full, rounded, graceful figure. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... adore. Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those: Favours to none, to all she smiles extends; Oft she rejects, but never once offends. Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike, And, like the sun, they shine on all alike, Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: If to her share some female errors fall, Look on her face, and you'll ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... such circumstances go into a lottery where there are twenty blanks to one prize. In the severe tug of life you want more than glitter and splash. Life is not a ball-room where the music decides the step, and bow and prance and graceful swing of long trail can make up for strong common sense. You might as well go among the gayly painted yachts of a summer regatta to find war vessels as to go among the light spray of the summer watering-place to find character ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... up the cliff by a hitherto wasted human energy, and as readily lowered. It sounded feasible and I instructed him to have the extraordinary railway built, but to be sure that the safety device clutches in the cog wheels were sound and trusty. It would prove to be an infinitely more graceful mode of ascending the peak than riding up on the donkeys I had been persuaded to buy, especially for Poopendyke and me, whose legs were so long that when we sat in the saddles our knees either touched our chins or were spread out so far that ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... no more they met: her life was pass'd In constant round of pomp and proud display. But when he went, and never more there came The love-sad eyes to question and entreat, The voice of music praising noble deeds, The graceful presence and the golden hair, She miss'd the boy; but scoff'd at first and said: "One misses all things, common pets one spurn'd, Good slaves and bad alike when both are gone,— A small thing makes the habit of a life!" But days wore ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... courage—but he had in full measure a sailor's caution and knowledge of conditions; he had been trained by that master of caution, Captain Zoradus Wass. He was really frightened as he stared up at the towering bow, the mighty flanks, the graceful sweep of superstructure, and realized that he must guide this giant and her freightage of human beings into the white void of the fog. In his honesty he acknowledged to himself that ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... passed through forests of vast pines stretching along with savage magnificence. Forests that only exhibited the slow decay of time or the devastation produced by warring elements. No; oaks, ashes, beech, and all the light and graceful tenants of our woods here sported luxuriantly. I had not observed many oaks before, for the greater part of the oak-planks, I am informed, come from ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... visiting your mother when your letter arrived; hence my knowledge of its contents. Mrs Leather and her daughter May were then as usual. By the way, what a pretty girl May has become! I remember her such a rumpled up, dress-anyhow, harum-scarum sort of a girl, that I find it hard to believe the tall, graceful, modest creature I meet with now is the same person! Captain Stride says she is the finest craft he ever saw, except that wonderful 'Maggie,' about whose opinions and sayings he ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... other furniture was rather scholastic, it is true, being a series of stools and a table, set upon rushen matting of Indian make; the beams overhead were unceiled, and the hearth necessarily devoid of a grate. But the chimney space—huge in proportion to the room—was filled with fragrant and graceful forest boughs; and through the open casement window (Arthur had fitted the single sash on hinges, doorwise) looked in stray sprays of roses, breathing perfume. Mrs. Wynn was well satisfied with her exile at that moment, when she saw the loving faces of her sons about her ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... the only mode in which public eating is essentially agreeable. A banqueting-hall is often the scene of exquisite pleasure; but that is not so much excited by the gratification of a delicate palate as by the magnificent effect of light and shade; by the beautiful women, the radiant jewels, the graceful costume, the rainbow glass, the glowing wines, the glorious plate. For the rest, all is too hot, too crowded, and too noisy, to catch a flavour; to analyse a combination, to dwell upon a gust. To eat, really to eat, one must eat alone, with a soft light, with simple furniture, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... girls, by name Esther Ryland, was noticed by many who frequented M——'s store on account of her unusually attractive person and elegance of manners; she was a little above the average height, yet graceful and well-formed, with remarkably handsome features, and eyes that sparkled like a pair of diamonds. Esther had not been long in Messrs. M——'s service, yet she had become so popular as a saleswoman ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... thick jungle on the hillside when on the narrow path we saw a little procession wending its way toward us. In front walked a big, hardened-looking man, in the prime of life; behind him came a child, a slim, wonderfully fair girl of about ten years, lithe and graceful, with large, expressive dark eyes. After her came a woman prematurely old, her face lined and seamed in ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... dash by in chariots! who will care For steeds or footmen now? ye cannot show Fair face, and dazzling dress, and graceful air, And last edition of the shape! Ah no, These sights are for the earth and open sky, And your loud ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... one, two, three!" Mr. Price ejaculated; "how it wearies the mind! Society has sacrificed its most varied, wholesome, and graceful recreation—dancing—to this monotonous ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... rising,—rigid or dignified or joyously expanding; they may be horizontal and lie down and rest; they may be falling and sorrowful; or the shapes whose outlines they form may be heavy or light, delicate or ungainly or graceful, as bodies are. Finally, the interpretation of lines may be further enriched as follows: The sight of a line suggests the drawing of it, the sweep of the brush that made it; we ourselves, in the imagination once more, may re-create the line after the artist, and feel, just as he must have felt, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... gifts I knew that I possessed. I had a ready pen and a facile invention. Something had stirred in me a late-awakened but irresistible desire to apply them to a different purpose than ever before. As I sat there the creations of my fancy flitted before me one by one—delicate, perhaps, and graceful, thoughtfully conceived, adequately completed. Yet I knew very well that they were like ripples upon the water, creatures without lasting forms or shape, images passing as easily as they had come into the mists of oblivion. The human touch, the transforming ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... better-looking than those of France or Germany, but beauty, or even extreme prettiness, is rare. Light, flexible, graceful forms are quite uncommon. Large hands and feet are met with everywhere, those of our women being miraculous in comparison. But the same thing is true nearly all over the north of Europe. Even our men—meaning ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a beaver-dam is astounding. As soon as completed, it becomes a highway for the folk of the wild. It is used day and night. Mice and porcupines, bears and rabbits, lions and wolves, make a bridge of it. From it, in the evening, the graceful deer cast their reflections in the quiet pond. Over it dash pursuer and pursued; and on it take place battles and courtships. It is often torn by hoof and claw of animals locked in death-struggles, and often, very often, it is stained ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... have several square miles to himself does not prove that a man can avoid the crowd—that it is not a crowded world. If what a man could be were determined by the square mile, it would indeed be a gentle and graceful earth to live on. But an acre of Nowhere satisfies no one; and how many square miles does a man want to be a nobody in? He can do it better in a crowd, where every one ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee |
