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Inimitable   Listen
adjective
Inimitable  adj.  Not capable of being imitated, copied, or counterfeited; beyond imitation; surpassingly excellent; matchless; unrivaled; exceptional; unique; as, an inimitable style; inimitable eloquence. "Inimitable force." "Performing such inimitable feats."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inimitable" Quotes from Famous Books



... cafe. It was everyman's club, and everywoman's, too, where one went to relax and forget all the worries of existence, to look over papers and magazines from all parts of the world and printed in every known language, to play chess or skat or taracq, to chat with friends and to drink the inimitable Viennese coffee, the fragrance of which can no more be described than the perfume of last ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... and probably composed, during the reign of Charles II., Butler may justly, as well as Milton, be thought to belong to the foregoing period. No composition abounds so much as Hudibras in strokes of just and inimitable wit; yet are there many performances which give as great or greater entertainment on the whole perusal. The allusions in Butler are often dark and far-fetched; and though scarcely any author was ever able to express ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... artist, he was born, one might almost say, with a style; but his inclination was to put his art into life rather than into print. Even in our days (thank God for all His mercies!) everybody is not writing a book. There are people whose talk has inimitable touches, and whose lives are art, but who never sit down to a quire of foolscap. I believe that Congreve naturally was one of these, that his literary ambition was a result of accidental necessity, and that had he lived as a boy in the society he was of as a very young ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... conversation was delightful, and showed me at once that he was a man of brilliant gifts, yet an eccentric. I felt much as Mark Twain must have felt when he first met Rudyard Kipling; Twain has summed up, in that inimitable way of his, the feeling of being in the presence of an overwhelming personality. 'I believed that he knew more than any person I had met before, and I knew that he knew that I knew less than any person he had met before—though he did ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... were interpreted by his council as a laudable anxiety for the public safety; while in private, and perhaps in his own breast, he disguised, under the less odious appellation of fear, the sentiments of hatred and envy, which he had secretly conceived for the inimitable virtues of Julian. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... underbrush hid him from the speakers, and he was too far off to hear a word. It seemed to him that Elizabeth wished to shorten the interview, for soon Edmonson with another of his inimitable bows retired and she passed on. As Stephen caught sight of her face he saw that it was troubled. "He shall not persecute her," he said to himself. Nancy had gone on while Edmonson was speaking to her mistress, and now Elizabeth following was almost at the door of her temporary ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... next day they rested at their inn, and sauntered through the Duomo, and broke their necks looking up at the inimitable glories of the campanile. Such a one as Sir Marmaduke had of course not come to Florence without introductions. The Foreign Office is always very civil to its next-door neighbour of the colonies,—civil and cordial, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... he would confine himself to a simple statement of facts. That simplicity would tell with a double-knock on the hearts of a susceptible jury. The afflicted, the agonised plaintiff was a public man. He was, until lately, the happy possessor of a spotless wife and an inimitable spring-van. It was was a union assented to by reason, smiled on by prudence. Mr. Bonbon was the envied owner of a perambulating exhibition: he counted among his riches a Spotted Boy, a New Zealand Cannibal, and a Madagascar Cow. The crowning rose was, however, to be gathered, and he plucked, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various

... wild ducks so tame they seemed waiting to be picked up and caressed, eagles showed off their spiral curves in the sky above like daring aviators over some admiring field of spectators; everywhere the stilly hum of semi-tropical life was broken only by the countless and inimitable bird calls. ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... were wreaths of red roses. At least a half-dozen tall mirrors, framed in rococos, were placed about, the largest taking the space between the two high windows on the park side. And underneath it stood a gold cabinet, lacquered by Martin's inimitable hand, in the centre of which was set a medallion of porcelain, with the head in dark blue of his Majesty, Charles the First. The chairs and lounges were marquetry,—satin-wood and mahogany,—with seats and backs of blue brocade. The floor was polished to the degree of danger, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... dans l'original Espagnol. Mais M. Le Sage l'a traitee avec de grands changements, c'est sa maniere d'embellir extremement tout ce qu'il emprunte des Espagnols. C'est ainsi qu'il en a use envers Gil Blas, dont il a fait un chef-d'oeuvre inimitable."—(Pages 336-339, edition de 1757, dans les Passetemps Politiques, Historiques, et Critiques, tome ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... crept through the reins of Gerald, for too well did he fancy he could divine what was passing in the soul of that strange yet fascinating woman. For a moment a feeling of almost loathing came over his heart, but when, in the next moment, he saw her rise from the sofa, revealing the most inimitable grace, he burned with impatience to throw himself reckless of consequences at her feet, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... had been provided for the comfort of our country cousins of whom there were large contingents. Considerable amusement was caused by the favourite Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who sang The Night before Larry was stretched in their usual mirth-provoking fashion. Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade with their broadsheets among lovers of the comedy element and nobody who has a corner in his heart for real Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their hardearned pennies. The children of the Male and Female ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... highly of this great work, its author was bowed down by poverty and infirmities, and nothing was done for him by the king or his courtiers. The last glimpse of the life of Cervantes I have space for, is from his own inimitable pen, and is taken from the preface to the "Labors of Persiles and Sigismunda," which was published ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... and listened, and were soon under his sway, watching his every gesture and thawing under his spell, as they watched the fine head thrown back with its inimitable poise, the back straight and stiff, the eyes aglow with the light of the seer, and the hands gracefully rising and falling to emphasize ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... he finds it again. English boys are so skillful in imitating the Cuckoo's song, which they do to an exasperating extent, that the bird himself may often wish for that of the Nightingale, which is inimitable. ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various

... ask me that?" Grady began. His voice was weak at first, but as his giddiness passed away it arose again to its own inimitable oratorical level. "Do you dare pretend that you are treating these men right? Who gave you the right to decide that this man shall live and this man shall die, and that this poor fellow who asks no more than to be allowed to earn his honest living with his honest sweat shall be stricken down with ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster

... keeping very close, in art as in action, to the realities of the world as we find it. Swift is the most unromantic of any writer that possessed great imaginative faculty; Defoe was a master of minute life-like detail, an inimitable imitator of truth; Hogarth's paintings are like Wesley's or Whitefield's sermons, they are stern, unvarnished denunciations of vice and profligacy; Fielding was the easy, large-hearted moralist, who hated above all sins cant and knavery, loved to ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... last notice, which appeared in No. 396, of the MIRROR, I adverted to Miss Sharpe's water-colour drawing of the Holy Family, by Sir J. Reynolds; this is really an inimitable copy, possessing all the richness of tint, and even the boldness and texture, of the original. It is unquestionably the finest copy in water ever executed in the Institution, to which, as well as to the talented lady, it is a very high honour. From the numerous small ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various

... the inimitable Phiz, the complete edition, including his further Adventures, with Life of the Author. ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... Coleridge's character not to be passed by, although so overlaid by his genius as rarely to be noticed, namely, his love of humour and of wit, of which be possessed so large a share. As punsters, his dear friend Lamb and himself were inimitable. Lamb's puns had oftener more effect, from the impediment in his speech their force seemed to be increased by the pause of stuttering, and to shoot forth like an arrow from a strong bow—but being never poisoned nor envenomed, they ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... remember the old days when Paul Dashiell, the famous Umpire, used to come into our dressing room. Standing in the center of the room, he would make an appeal to us in his earnest, inimitable way, not to play off-side. He would explain just how he interpreted holding and the use of arms in the game. He would urge us to be thoroughbreds and to play the game fair; to make it a clean game, ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... I go on, for justice has never yet been done[66] to this noble Crede and William's Vision as pictures of the life of their times,—chiefly from the profound ignorance of us English of our own language; partly from the grace, the freshness, and the brilliance of Chaucer's easier and inimitable verse:— ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... the real discoverers of the treasures of the deep in the shape of trout and sewin. This latter fish, the sewin, we may add in passing, is a luxury of which the Usk has great reason to boast; for it is better than any thing we remember of the salmon kind, except the inimitable grilses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... exclaimed the colonel, with an inimitable shrug of his shoulders, and an indescribable expression of countenance, indicative of intense disgust. "I am a brave man; I fear nothing—mais c'est ce terrible mal de mer!" ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... La Salle knelt, and in solemn but unfaltering tones repeated the short but inimitable prayer which embodies the needs of every petitioner. Peter crossed himself at the close, and ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... give him sufficient advantage, without the additional momentum of rapid motion. Equally sensible and apprehensive of such a probable result, the Saracen cavalier, when he had approached towards the Christian within twice the length of his lance, wheeled his steed to the left with inimitable dexterity, and rode twice around his antagonist, who, turning without quitting his ground, and presenting his front constantly to his enemy, frustrated his attempts to attack him on an unguarded point; so that the Saracen, wheeling his horse, was fain to retreat to the distance ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... only five minutes from town, and tramlines pass the door. Nay more, they stop abruptly at the door—such are the improvements effected by R.E. Inside the cellar are three bits of chairs, a table-top on boxes, and an inimitable ancestral smell that no deodorizer known to modern warfare can cope with. And all this is called "Trenches!" Our servants do their best to support the official illusion by neglecting to clean our boots and regarding with surprise and some little sadness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various

... reading, rejected the Siege of Corinth, though the work of a Trinity man; would not take in the Thanksgiving Ode of Mr. Wordsworth, of St. John's College; declined Leigh Hunt's Story of Rimini; vetoed the Headlong Hall of the inimitable Peacock, and, most wonderful of all, would have nothing to say to Scott's Antiquary, being probably disgusted to find that a book with so promising a title ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... into so many rays, like sparks flying from the hammer. Many have reached, some boldly step, some have leaped on the rocky shore; here two arms emerging from the water, grapple with the rock, there two hands cry for help, and their companions bend over or rush on to assist them: often imitated, but inimitable, is the ardent feature of the grim veteran, whose every sinew labours to force over the dripping limbs his clothes, whilst gnashing, he pushes the foot through the rending garment. He is contrasted by the slender elegance of a half-averted youth, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... between him and the Assembly waxed positively ferocious. On the 20th of April he prorogued Parliament, making a speech on the occasion which must have occupied a full hour or more in delivery, and wherein he reviewed, in his own inimitable fashion, and from his own point of view, the various events by which his Administration had up to this time been characterized. Any attempt to analyze it here is altogether out of the question. It should be read in its entirety in the official ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... costly dresses, though, as he quietly remarked to Agias, the gifts meant no more of sacrifice to him than an obol to a rich spendthrift. He filled her ears with music all day long; he entertained her with inimitable narrations of his own adventurous voyages and battles. And only dimly could Cornelia realize that the gems she wore in her hair, her silken dress, nay, almost everything she touched, had come from earlier owners with scant ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... father, 'people will think you're Longfellow.' Down went the feet." That more Americano of Brookfield the younger is delicious with its fine insular flavor, but the holding up of Longfellow—the soul of gentleness, the prince of courtesy—as a bugaboo of bad manners is simply inimitable. It will take England years and years to detect the full unconscious humor ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... he was wont to say, with his inimitable lisp—"no, thuh, you can't keep a good man down. 'Tain't no use a-talkin', you jeth can't. It don't do me no harm to go back to rubbin' now an' then. It jeth nachully keepth me on ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... be damned!" said Sherlock Holmes, sharply. "We were the old women to be so taken in. It must have been a young man, and an active one, too, besides being an incomparable actor. The get-up was inimitable. He saw that he was followed, no doubt, and used this means of giving me the slip. It shows that the man we are after is not as lonely as I imagined he was, but has friends who are ready to risk something for him. Now, Doctor, ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... burlesquing their rubber stamp fustian; extolling Dussek and damning Wagner; swearing mighty oaths by Mozart, and after him, Strauss—not Richard, but Johann! The Old Fogy, of course, is the thinnest of disguises, a mere veil of gossamer for "Editor" Huneker. That Huneker in false whiskers is inimitable, incomparable, almost indescribable. On the one hand, he is a prodigy of learning, a veritable warehouse of musical information, true, half-true and apocryphal; on the other hand, he is a jester who delights in reducing all learning to absurdity. Reading ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... gods as animals, or in shapes half animal and half human. The Jews acknowledge one god only, of whom they have a purely spiritual conception. They think it impious to make images of gods in human shape out of perishable materials. Their god is almighty and inimitable, without beginning and without end. They therefore set up no statues in their temples, nor even in their cities, refusing this homage both to their own kings and to the Roman emperors. However, the fact that their priests intoned to the flute and cymbals and wore wreaths of ivy, and ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... great masters of the art are capable of divining, or think it worth while to enter into, the feelings of retrospective age. The two great poets whom we have so lately lost, Tennyson and Browning, have done this, each in his own inimitable way; the one in the Ulysses, from which I have borrowed; the other in that wonderful fragment "Childe Roland to the dark ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... was haughty in the extreme, and very fond of dress; his boots were so well varnished that the polish now in use could not surpass Kelly's blacking in brilliancy; his pantaloons were made of the finest leather, and his coats were inimitable; in short, his dress was ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... chide her for having told him a falsehood. She denied that she had told a falsehood. "Didn't you say," said he, "that there was somebody down stairs that would be glad to see me?"—"Well," she replied, with inimitable pertness, "is not Mrs. Mather always glad ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... our George's birthday, which comes as usual this year on February the twenty-second, the inimitable CCCs will hold one of their regular reunions in pumps, beginning punctually at nine. Full beer orchestra as usual. No flowers ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... brought down the house! Never before had they seen such an actor. He was inimitable, and the people made the usual demand for an encore with tremendous fervour, expecting that Signor Twittorini would repeat the scene, probably with variations, and finish off with the promised song. But poor ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... Women have an inimitable talent for giving utterance to strong feelings in colorless words; a woman's eloquence lies in tone and gesture, manner and glance. Lord Grenville hid his face in his hands, for his tears filled his ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... It is a dainty book—daintily illustrated."—New York Tribune. "A wholesome, bright, refreshing story, an ideal book to give a young girl."—Chicago Record-Herald. "An idyllic story, replete with pathos and inimitable humor. As story-telling it is perfection, and as portrait-painting it is true to ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... got over its disappointment in his personal appearance and antecedents. It knew him and revered him as the master-mind of the ages; and it loved him for himself, for his quizzical short-sighted eyes and the inimitable way in which he screwed up his face when he laughed; it loved him for his simplicity and comradeship and warm humanness, and for his fondness for salted pecans and his aversion to cats. And to-day, in the wonder-city of Asgard, rises ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... Seasons what an admirable description of Fly fishing! It is indeed inimitable: it charms an angler by its vivid and truthful deliniation, and after reading it, makes him long "to increase his tackle, and his rod retie." Of all the devices for taking Trout, fly fishing is decidedly the most pleasant, ingenious and amusing, and where ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland

... which, less fortunate than sailors, they could not escape. But did these adventurers complain of space? No, not since nature had given them the splendid sight of a cosmical meteor bursting from expansion, since this inimitable firework, which no Ruggieri could imitate, had lit up for some seconds the invisible glory of the moon. In that flash, continents, seas, and forests had become visible to them. Did an atmosphere, then, bring to this unknown face its life-giving atoms? Questions ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... porticoes, and amid the narrow tortuous streets of old Rome, involving in a common destruction the most magnificent works of ancient art, the choicest manuscripts of ancient literature, and the most venerable monuments of ancient superstition. In a few touches of inimitable compression, such as the stern genius of the Latin language permits, but which are too condensed for direct translation, Tacitus has depicted the horror of the scene,—wailing of panic-stricken women, the helplessness of the very aged and ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... contract, delivering the whole order in good condition; while the Slav was sometimes almost voiceless, sometimes inspired. She put you off with a hope, a promise, time after time. But she was quite as likely to put you off with a revelation,—with an interpretation that was inimitable, unrepeatable. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... without hesitation, and sat down by him, gave him her hand again, and replied with an arch smile, while a thousand inimitable coquetries played about her eyes and lips, "You speak now like ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... himself. Without it he was nothing, a mere machine! WITH it, he was king over worlds of his own. Poor man, he had little enough in this! At a manufacturing town in England there is a gravestone on which the epitaph records "one Claudius Phillips, whose absolute contempt for riches, and inimitable performance on the violin, made him the admiration of all that knew him!" Logical conjunction of opposite eulogies! In proportion, O Genius, to thy contempt for riches will be ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... request, the young girl changes tune and song, now pouring forth one of those inimitable lays for which the language ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... to be a great judge of paintings, but only admired those done a great way off, and a great while ago; he could not bear anything done by any of his own countrymen; and one day being in an auction-room where {27}there was a number of capital pictures, and, among the rest, an inimitable piece of painting of fruits and flowers, the Connoisseur would not give his opinion of the picture until he had examined his catalogue, and finding it was done by an Englishman, he pulled out his eye-glass [Takes the ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... "there has never been but one man on earth who could manage horses like that. I've seen him do it. I've been smuggled in to watch him, like many another servant supposed to be waiting for his master outside. I recognize the inimitable ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... more entertaining book than this is not often thrown in our way. His sketches of character are inimitable; and many of the prominent men of his time are hit off in the most ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... which a juggler has to put himself through, to overcome the more palpable difficulties of his profession. The execution of the best artists is always a splendid tour-de-force, and much that in painting is supposed to be dependent on material is indeed only a lovely and quite inimitable legerdemain. Now, when powers of fancy, stimulated by this triumphant precision of manual dexterity, descend uninterruptedly from generation to generation, you have at last, what is not so much a trained ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... came to give her a lesson, that, among all the dilettanti in Europe, there was not so great a singer as herself. The most famous of the public performers scarcely could equal her. In the bravura she astonished! in the cantabile she charmed; her maestoso was inimitable! and her adagios! Oh! they were ravishing! killing. She indeed openly accused him of flattering her; but Signor Gridarini appealed both to his honour and his friends; the best judges in Europe, who as she well ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... case in the vases of potters' clay which they carry—this fetching and carrying of the life-giving water is the one primordial occupation in this Egypt, which has no rain, nor any living spring, and subsists only by its river—these women walk and posture with an inimitable grace, draped in black veils, which even the poorest allow to trail behind them, like the train of a court dress. In this bright land, with its rose-coloured distances, it is strange to see them, all so sombrely clothed, spots of mourning, as it were, in the gay fields ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... circumstantiality than any authentic historian of Caesar's age. But real history, written simply in the interest of truth, never has the graphic character, artless simplicity, and circumstantiality of detail which belong to these inimitable narratives, unless the writer be either an eye-witness, or draw his ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... genteel, of a fine mien, valiant, generous, and all these qualities he possessed in a very uncommon degree; in short, if anyone could be compared to the Duke de Nemours, it was he. The Duke de Nemours was a masterpiece of Nature; the beauty of his person, inimitable as it was, was his least perfection; what placed him above other men, was a certain agreeableness in his discourse, his actions, his looks, which was observable in none beside himself: he had in his behaviour ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette

... pictures were done she would give them away or throw them away without the least compunction. She had a fine sense of the ludicrous and was all the time seeing funny things, which she described in a manner quite inimitable. She had grown up in New York, before her father's death, in the most select of Knickerbocker circles, but there was not a trace of aristocracy in her ways. She was sociable with the ostler and the office-boy, and agreeable to the neighboring farmers, talking with them with a spirit that ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous

... language, and the propriety of his pronunciation, rendered him very popular. In private he was exceedingly kind to the poor and to children, giving to the former a third part of his small income of L100 a-year, and writing for the other his inimitable hymns. Besides these, he published a well-known treatise on Logic, another on 'The Improvement of the Mind,' besides various theological productions, amongst which his 'World to Come' has been preeminently popular. In 1728, he received from Edinburgh ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... and heat of the day, and drink of the living streams of knowledge. There is a "daily beauty in his life," on which mankind may meditate, and grow better. It exhibits no lofty and almost useless, because inimitable, example of excellence; but presents a picture of active, yet simple and imitable virtues, which are within every man's reach, but which, unfortunately, are not exercised by many, or this world ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... 'Dombey and Son' was the outlet for that curious psychology of Dickens which could get the best out of a pathetic incident by approaching it from a grotesque angle. It came, as Chesterton points out in his own inimitable way, 'into the inner chamber by coming down the chimney.' Which demonstrates the ever nearness of pathos to humour, of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... part of the time, the road would be quite empty of passage and the hills of habitation. Hermiston parish is one of the least populous in Scotland; and, by the time you came that length, you would scarce be surprised at the inimitable smallness of the kirk, a dwarfish, ancient place seated for fifty, and standing in a green by the burn-side among two-score gravestones. The manse close by, although no more than a cottage, is surrounded by the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... public, social and domestic life. Particularly is this the case with the portraits of individuals and of civic and gild groups by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Van der Helst and their followers, which form an inimitable series that has rarely been equalled. To realise to what an extent in the midst of war the fine arts flourished in Holland, a mere list of the best-known painters of the period will suffice, it tells its own tale. They are given in the order of their dates: ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... story with inimitable gusto. But he tells it just as an episode, and he hurries on to the death of Richelieu in 1642, as though he were conscious that up to his thirtieth year his own life had not been of ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... paced back and forth upon the gravel, repeating without mistake and with gestures and accents inimitable the lines which Phoebe had dictated. She watched him, listening attentively, conscious that what she saw and heard, though given in a moment, were to be carried with her forever; convinced as well that she was for something in this, and thankful ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... followed her among the people going back to the village. Once she whirled with an inimitable movement, flinging her fingers toward Skag, in a gesture that seemed to focus the eyes of the whole world upon him. (And in that instant, the American men could not have spoken a word—for the richness of ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... June woods a host of grateful leaves wait and beckon. A voice comes from the garden bed; it is the complaint of the pansy. "Here I lie," it says, "with all my jewels low in the dust. Where is the purple of my amethysts, the yellow of my topaz, the inimitable sheen of my milk-white pearls? Alas and alack for pansies when the rain beats them earthward!" The marigold, like a yellow-haired boy with his straw hat well back from his flying mane, whistles softly to himself for joy, and buries his hands in the pockets ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... ant hill almost by the side of the high red granite administration buildin', that little cabin holds memories that soar up higher than the peakedest, highest ruffs on the Fair ground. The Home of Robert Burns, the Poet of the People. How his inimitable poetry come troopin' through my mind as I walked through the low rooms, there is only four on 'em, kitchen, settin' ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... perfect ecstasy of laughter, and offered to lay twenty pounds that it was that droll dog Griggins. He had no sooner said this, than the majority of the company and all the children of the house burst into a roar of laughter too, as if some inimitable joke flashed upon them simultaneously, and gave vent to various exclamations of—To be sure it must be Griggins, and How like him that was, and What spirits he was always in! with many other commendatory remarks of the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... Italian? Ah—I am glad you understand that language! My French is very failing, and as for Inglese—non lo conosco. It is too difficult at my age. If I were younger I should like to learn your tongue." He said this with inimitable grace, and added with a gentle inclination: "You are Americano, are you not? Your land has done much for my people! But tell me, Signore, in what way may I serve you? Sua Eccellenza il Principe Sansevero places you under our protection, but he ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... jolly cruise I shall have!—I have looked forward for it since the last time thou and I reduced the consistency of our corporations to the texture of souls, through which the moon might have shone, by the power of this inimitable liquor. Ho, man, had not we a jolly time of it last time ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... of time in which the stage was less polluted, owing to the inimitable Garrick, than the present: notwithstanding there is yet ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... herself out in her inimitable way for a broad interpretation of the visionary's very earthly mother; indeed once or twice she almost laid herself out of the picture; but she still remained irresistible. As a pair of light-hearted young lovers Miss ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various

... me!" said Frederic, as she twitched her face away again at the laugh he could not suppress. "But sadness and you should not be thought of in the same week. Honestly, now! is not the inimitable fabric you sported for five minutes last night, at the bottom of what appears to you a fathomless abyss of woe? Have you tried the efficacy of rational consolation in the thought of how many more parties there will be this winter to which you can wear ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... extras fluttered in the breeze as he ran to obey the summons, and gave occasion to his grandfather to present him to me as "Major Waddell;" [1] the pretty little fairy-looking girl he next introduced as "Whipperstowrie," and then (aware of my love for fairy lore) he related the tale, in his own inimitable manner, as he walked slowly and stopped frequently in our approach to the house. As soon as I could look round I was struck with the singular and picturesque appearance of the mansion and its environs. Yet I must own there was more of strangeness than of admiration ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... a magnificent production by Stanfield. The water is inimitable, possessing that beautiful greenish transparency so ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various

... sometimes be importunate. I had been most hospitably received and punctually served in my green caravansary. The room was airy, the water excellent, and the dawn had called me to a moment. I say nothing of the tapestries or the inimitable 30 ceiling, nor yet of the view which I commanded from the windows; but I felt I was in some one's debt for all this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in a half-laughing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as I went along, until I had ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... "It's inimitable," said Sin Saxon, wiping the moist merriment from her eyes. "And your cap, Leslie! And that bonnet! And this unutterable old oddity of a gown! Who did contrive it all? and where did they come from? You'll carry off the ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... remains Dickens's best book. "The glory of Charles Dickens," it has been said, "will always be in his Pickwick, his first, his best, his inimitable triumph."* ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... myrtle, whose blossoming branches bent down to her as if they would entwine that pure and tender brow with a bridal wreath. With her head thrown back upon these branches, she reposed with an inimitable grace her reclining form. A white transparent robe, held by a golden clasp, fell in waves to her feet, which were encased in gold-embroidered slippers of dark-red leather. A blushing rose was fastened by a diamond pin in the folds of her dress upon her budding bosom, finely ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... time ago - he was deserted by a great number of his Auditory in the midst of his reading. Thus every Art is practisd & every Tool employd to make it appear as if this people were easy in their Chains, & that this great revolution is brought about by the inimitable Address of Mr Hutchinson. There is one part of the proclamation which I think deserves Notice on your side the Water, & that relates to the Accommodation with the Spaniards in the Affair of Faulkland Island. This must have been referrd to under the Terms of the preservation of the peace ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... a man's handwriting, which is so seldom improved, even when admitted, perhaps, to be execrable. Every artist has his tricks of execution, every school its hereditary, irrational processes. These refractory habits are to blame for the rare and inimitable quality of genius; they impose excellence on one man and refuse it to a million. A happy physiological structure, by creating a mannerism under the special circumstances favourable to expression, may lift a man, perhaps inferior in intelligence, to heights which no ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... the scholastic school place their poets in a strange position. On the one hand they cry incessantly: "Copy the models!" On the other hand they have a habit of declaring that "the models are inimitable"! Now, if their craftsman, by dint of hard work, succeeds in forcing through this dangerous defile some colourless tracing of the masters, these ungrateful wretches, after examining the new refaccimiento, exclaim sometimes: "This doesn't resemble anything!" and sometimes: ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... the beauty of Safdar Jang's tomb will seem extravagant to most critics. In the editor's judgement the building is a very poor attempt to imitate the inimitable Taj. Fergusson (ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 324, pl. xxxiv) gives it the qualified praise that 'it looks grand and imposing at a distance, but it will not bear close inspection'. See Fanshawe, p. 246 and plate. In the original edition ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... had never pictured a first meeting such as this! A hag? Yes! And one as disreputable in appearance as he himself, as Larry the Bat, was disreputable! But he had seen her eyes! Inimitable as was her disguise, she could not hide her eyes, or hide the pledge they held of the beauty of form and feature beneath the tattered rags and the touch of a master in the make-up that brought haggard want and age into the face—and ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... Miss Herford's inimitable monologues, being each the apotheosis of some typical Bromide—a shopgirl, a country dressmaker, a bargain-hunter and so on—become, through her art, intensely sulphitic. They are excruciatingly funny, just because she represents types so common that we recognize ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess

... collection of papers entitled Stage-land, had caused him to laugh several times, and to smile frequently, for the subject has not been so well touched since GILBERT ABBOTT A BECKETT wrote his inimitable Quizziology of the Drama, which for genuine drollery has never been surpassed. Anticipating, then, some side-splitters from Three Men in a Boat, the Baron sent for the work. He opened it with a chuckle, which, instead of developing itself into a guffaw and then into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various

... supper-party was jovial? We think not. The "ticket-of-leave man" and the "tiger" were inimitable in their own lines, and Sam came out so strong on the "pirits" of the Philippine Islands that the tiger even declared himself to be satiated with blood! As for Susy—she would have been an amply sufficient audience for each of the party, had all ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne

... California and he is welcomed everywhere. His specialty is the customs, laws, religion, etc., of the Sioux. Witty, fluent, intellectual, trained in both methods of education, he is eminently fitted to explain, in an inimitable and attractive manner, the customs, beliefs and superstitions of the Indian. He describes not only the life and training of the boy, but the real Indian as no white man could possibly do. He brings out strongly the red man's wit, music, poetry and eloquence. He also explains graphically ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell

... our bulwarks and hedges, it mortifies me to the quick to contrast with our matchless stupidity and inimitable folly the conduct of Bonaparte upon the subject of religious persecution. At the moment when we are tearing the crucifixes from the necks of the Catholics, and washing pious mud from the foreheads of the Hindoos; at that moment this man is assembling the very ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... smoked. "Yes," said Dickens, "I generally take a cigar after dinner when I'm alone." Thereupon said the young lady, "I'll give you a good 'un when we go upstairs." But the sequel must be told in the novelist's own inimitable style. "Well, sir," he wrote, "in due course we went upstairs, and there we were joined by an American lady residing in the same hotel ... also a daughter ... American lady married at sixteen; American daughter sixteen now, often mistaken for sisters, &c. &c. &c. When ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... turned deadly white; and, although his lips trembled violently, not a word came from between them. But Mrs. Ginniss, raising hands and eyes to heaven, called down such a shower of blessings from so many and varied sources, in such an inimitable brogue, that the pen refuses to transcribe her rhapsody, as Mrs. Legrange failed to comprehend more ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... and a godlike name. Blind fool and vain! to think with brazen clash And hollow tramp of horn-hoofed steeds, to frame The dread Storm's counterfeit, the thunder's crash, The matchless bolts of Jove, the inimitable flash. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... common fertility and vigour, was of a different class. No man understood so well the art of polishing epigrams and repartees into the clearest effulgence, and setting them neatly in easy and familiar dialogue. In this sort of jewellery he attained to a mastery unprecedented and inimitable. But he was altogether rude in the art of controversy; and he had a cause to defend which scarcely any art ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... are relics of a former generation. We have squires as many by thousands, as accomplished by tens of thousands; but the inimitable union of simplicity and refinement, downrightness and dignity, disappeared with the last faint reflection of Sir Roger de Coverley. And charming Lady Betty departed also with early hours, pillions, and cosmetics—that blending of nature and art, knowledge of the corrupt ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... the point of view I speak of that would be fatal; I should kill the goose that supplies me with the material of my inimitable omelettes. I use that animal as the symbol of my insane illusions. What I mean is that I shall have the thrill of seeing what a young lady does who ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... which it can not be said they are entirely destitute. For to make themselves secure and commodious lodges, to interweave their nests with such art, to rear their young with such care, to teach them to shift for themselves when grown up, to hoard provisions for the winter, to produce such inimitable works as wax and honey, are instances perhaps of a glimmering of reason; but because destitute of speech, all the extraordinary things they do can not distinguish them from the brute part of creation. Let us consider ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... frenzied shower of gold; apples and nuts were steadily disappearing from a basket by the Doctor's chair and the Doctor himself was relating an original Christmas tale of adventure, born of uncommon inspiration and excitement, to a huddled group with circular eyes and contented stomachs. But Muggs—inimitable workman—his small face partially obscured by the biggest apple in the basket, had not yet spoken, and Jim, the shy, sullen little boy to whom Roger had taken a fancy because he was lame, had met the Doctor's eyes but once, and then with a ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple

... ones stand forth in more imposing grandeur, and several cities spread out their wealth of stores and palaces, and lift their church spires and domes of public edifices high to the blazing sun. Dame Nature lends enchantment to the view by the freshness and beauty of her inimitable landscape. Green and mossy meadow, rich, cultivated upland, luxurious gardens, sweet shady grottos and cozy dells, orchards, forests, farms, with almost every variety of natural scenery, enliven the prospect beyond description; and last, though not least of all, a beautiful river pursues ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... Sotheby's, which Coleridge describes with such anxious gravity in his apologetic preface to the republication of the lines. On the whole one may pretty safely accept De Quincey's view of the true character of this incident as related by him in his own inimitable fashion, namely, that it was in the nature of an elaborate hoax, played off at the poet's expense. [3] The malice of the piece is, as De Quincey puts it, quite obviously a "malice of the understanding and fancy," ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... With this inimitable sketch, we take leave of the Khan for the present, shortly to return to his ideas of men ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... Lisette," "Mon Habit," "L'Independant," "Vous vieillirez, O ma belle Maitresse," a gentle graceful sadness wins us. In "Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens," "Les Etoiles qui filent," "Les Conseils de Lise," "Treize a Table," a noble dignity is admired, while such as "La Fortune" and "La Metempsycose" are inimitable in their childlike playfulness. "Ma Vocation" I have had and admired for many years. He is of the pure ore, a darling fairy changling of great mother Nature; the poet of the people, and, therefore, of all in the upper classes sufficiently intelligent and refined to appreciate the wit and sentiment ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... story will retain any portion of its pristine character; but, as Zenobia told it wildly and rapidly, hesitating at no extravagance, and dashing at absurdities which I am too timorous to repeat,—giving it the varied emphasis of her inimitable voice, and the pictorial illustration of her mobile face, while through it all we caught the freshest aroma of the thoughts, as they came bubbling out of her mind,—thus narrated, and thus heard, the legend seemed quite a remarkable ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... this stepped forward with his candles, and, with an inimitable bow, requested the young officers to follow him. They bowing again to madame and her daughters, followed the maitre d'hotel, who led the way to a large room with two beds in it, as also a couple of cane sofas, several chairs, a table, and, what was ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... the great point of these imitations that there still shines beyond the student's reach his inimitable model. Let him try as he please, he is still sure of failure; and it is a very old and a very true saying that failure is the only highroad to success. I must have had some disposition to learn; for I clear- sightedly condemned my own performances. I liked doing them ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... swing. After that they adjourned to the small dormitory and spread out a repast of sweets and cakes, to which such of the younger masters as were brave enough to risk detection slipped away up the school staircase at intervals, to be more than rewarded by Lorraine's inimitable mimicry. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... have a tongue I'll abuse you, you most inimitable periphery. Look at her, boys! there she stands—a convicted perpendicular in petticoats. There's contamination in her circumference, and she trembles with guilt down to the extremities of her corollaries. Ah! you're found ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... of legendary lore, he inserted it in the shape of a note to Waverley, the first of his romantic offences. Had he then known, as he now does, the value of such a story, it is likely that, as directed in the inimitable receipt for making an epic poem, preserved in the Guardian, he would have kept ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... James McCosh, the late president of Princeton University,—stories too good, I fear, to get into a biography; but the best of them, in print, would not have the snap and vigour of the poorest of them, in talk, with his own inimitable Scotch-Irish ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... (up on the American Continent, not down as with us) and sat in the full draught of the night-air. A pleasant young Irishman named Martin, a near relative of the Miss Martin who collaborated with Miss Somerville in the inimitable Experiences of an Irish R.M. noticed this. "By Gad! that fellow will get fever if he sits in the draught from the swamps. I'll go and warn him." I told Martin that the South American spoke no English. "That's all right," cried Martin. "I speak a little Spanish ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... been so sadly mutilated!' Oh, my dear rustic, you're quite in the wrong box. The Frenchman means this as the very highest compliment. Beautiful, however, she must have been; and a Cinderella, I hope, not a Cinderellula, considering that she had the inimitable walk and step of the Andalusians, which cannot be accomplished without something of a proportionate basis to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... extravagant than ever; and he danced and capered, with despair in his heart; and the audience yelled, and shouted 'bravo, bravissimo!' Pulcinella was actually called before the curtain. He was pronounced inimitable. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... in describing, and giving Characters of these dissenting Nobility. Among them we could not escape the Prince de Rosymonte, a Person, for Blood and Birth, eminent in that Country, more for his own excellent and inimitable Virtues, Grave, Sober, Judicious, even from his Youth, of whom one of the Atalantick Poets ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe

... come, Mr. World," she added as she spoke more earnestly, "linger no longer, carry out the resolution which you have already broken repeatedly, and you will never regret so wise an action." Thus did Miss Church-Member urge upon him a course which, in her inimitable missionary spirit, she made really attractive to him. Although he appreciated her genuine earnestness, yet he could not be ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... Washington in reply, "that my mind is deeply impressed with the present situation of public affairs and not a little agitated by the outrageous conduct of France toward the United States, and at the inimitable conduct of those partisans who aid and abet her measures. You may believe further, from assurances equally sincere, that if there was anything in my power to be done consistently to avert or lessen the danger of the crisis, it should be ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... examination of the copies hanging beside it representing it in a restored state, when he turns to the ruined picture the fact is suddenly revealed to the eye of his soul that the contents of the original are absolutely inimitable. In the evening I made all haste to get to the Italian comedy again. I grew very fond of it, and found it had installed itself here in the tiny Teatro Re for the benefit of a small audience of the lower orders. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... advise you on points of etiquette? A kindly benevolent man who never forgets that he himself was once a regimental officer. He will tell you whether or not you may arm your aged grandmother across a busy London street without risking your commission. If you favour whiskers, call and see his inimitable museum of permissible patterns. Always ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various

... done; but now came the question whom to intrust with the execution of the portrait. I thought it would be impossible to induce the ladies to take Paris on their way; there I should have the choice between the accuracy and objectivism of Bonnat, the bold breadth of Carolus Duran, and the inimitable sweetness of Chaplin. Shutting my eyes, I imagined how each of them would acquit himself of the task, and I was pleased with the fancy. But I saw it was impracticable; I foresaw that my aunt would insist upon a Polish painter. I should have no objection ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... inimitable mimic. At that very moment it seemed to Miss Symes that she heard her own voice speaking—her own very gentle, cultivated, high-bred voice. Amongst the girls who listened and roared with laughter might have been seen Sarah Butt, Sibyl Ray, and several more who had only recently been moved ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... all title to the English possessions in the fair realm of France. It is also improbable either that Henry IV. would have uttered this sentiment in the presence of a witness, or that his son would have made it known to others. Monstrelet's anecdote, nevertheless, being the source of so inimitable a (p. 311) scene as Shakspeare has drawn from it, deserves a place here: "The King's attendant, not perceiving him to breathe, concluded he was dead, and covered his face with a cloth. The crown was then upon a cushion near the bed. The Prince, believing his father to be dead, took away the crown. ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... what I meant to say, any of it;" he sighed angrily. "It's just what I meant not to say—confound it! You've done gloriously; you've played the thing through to perfection; you've made an inimitable success of it; but Wallencamp doesn't offer scope wide enough for your powers. I offer you a field hitherto untilled, left to the wandering winds and the birds of the air, extensive enough in its forlorn iniquity, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... sparsely clothed with trees; to the north, a receding line of mountains; elsewhere infinite space and blazing light. Our "tonga," its pair of wheels and its white awning rolling and jolting behind two good horses, passes long lines of bullock-carts. Indians, walking beside them with their inimitable gait, make exquisite gestures of abjection to the clumsy white Sahibs huddled uncomfortably on the back seat. Their robes of vivid colour, always harmoniously blent, leave bare the slender brown legs and often the breast and back. Children stark naked ride on their mothers' hips ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... heraldry, "within a double tressure-fleury and counter-fleury" of wit and fancy,—such is a Jerroldian paper of the best class in "Punch." It stands out by itself from all the others,—the sharp, critical knowingness, sparkling with puns, of a Beckett,—the inimitable, wise, easy, playful, worldly, social sketch of Thackeray. In imagery he had no rivals there; for his mind had a very marked tendency to the ornamental and illustrative,—even to the grotesque. In satire, again, he had fewer competitors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... 147: Our Bard remarks upon it, "I could easily throw this into an English mould; but, to my taste, in the simple and the tender of the pastoral song, a sprinkling of the old Scottish has an inimitable effect."] ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... walls, under the inquisition of the crudest daylight, the fragments of Melozzo da Forli's masterpiece are masterpieces still; the angelic faces, imprisoned in a place not theirs, reflect the sadness of art's captivity; and the irretrievable destruction of an inimitable past excites the pity and resentment of thoughtful men. The attempt to outdo the works of the great has exhibited the contemptible imbecility of the little, and the coarse-grained vanity of Clement the Eleventh ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... the Duke to repaint some portraits of the Cornaro family by Titian, is said to have been one of the finest things on record. The sly and pungent humour, and the banter with which the counsel derided and laughed down this witness, were inimitable. The printer won his case; but he eventually consented to remove his steam presses from the neighbourhood, on the Duke paying him a certain sum to be determined by the award ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... scarcely looked at Florence, for their eyes were attracted by the sweet expression, the inimitable grace of Kitty Sharston. ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... — N. no imitation; originality; creativeness. invention, creation. Adj. unimitated^, uncopied^; unmatched, unparalleled; inimitable &c 13; unique, original; creative, inventive, untranslated; exceptional, rare, sui ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... knew just how expensive Mary's clothes were, yet he could not blind himself to the fact that Polly's vagabond makeshifts, cheap and apparently haphazard, were always all right and far more successful. Her taste was unerring. Her ways with a shawl were inimitable. With a ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne compagnie. Il n'a pas, a la verite, la gaite du premier, mais il a toute la finesse, la raison, le choix, le bon gout qui manquent a notre cure de Meudon. Ses vers sont d'un gout singulier, et presque inimitable; la bonne plaisanterie est son partage en vers et en prose; mais pour le bien entendre il faut faire un petit voyage dans son pays."—VOLTAIRE, Lettres sur ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... some compensation for our sisters' absence in their sprightly letters, which arrive while we are at the tea-table. Marguerite writes every day, and her letters are inimitable in their humor and esprit, for she writes exactly as she talks. She is visiting some friends whose acquaintance we made in Paris, and who have a beautiful country-seat upon Long Island. Her letters are filled with accounts of drives, fishing-parties, and excursions in yachts ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... day in Flosston. True Tred Troop and Venture Troop Girl Scouts seemed to comprise a veritable army, as the girls in their brown uniforms congregated and scattered, then scattered and congregated, in that way girls have of imitating the "inimitable" bee. ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... Day thus far pleasingly was spent, And every Hour admin'stred Content, Then would I range the Fields, and flow'ry Meads, Where Nature her exub'rant Bounty spreads, In whose delightful Products does appear Inimitable Beauty ev'ry where; Contemplate on each Plant, and useful Weed, And how its Form first lay involved in Seed, How they're preserv'd by Providential Care, For what design'd, and what their Virtues ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous

... magistrate and legislator, whose reputation as man of letters rests mainly upon a single volume, his inimitable 'Physiologie du Gout'. Although writing in the present century, he was essentially a Frenchman of the old regime, having been born in 1755 at Belley, almost on the border-line of Savoy, where he afterwards ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... tends to make the nation which has it superior to the nation which has it not; that many of these advantages can be imparted to subjugated races, or imitated by competing races; and that, though some of these advantages may be perishable or inimitable, yet, on the whole, the energy of civilisation grows by the coalescence of strengths and by the ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... down to my miserable berth, and vainly tried to sleep, the discomfort and mismanagement which prevailed leading my thoughts by force of contrast to the order, cleanliness, and regularity of the inimitable line of steamers on the West Highland coast. Wherever the means of locomotion are concerned, these colonies are very far behind either the "old country" or their enterprising neighbours in Canada; and at present they do not appear conscious of the deficiencies which are sternly ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... The inimitable Dickens, in his best production, says, with all the shrewdness and point of a practical philosopher, "There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... stage Jew of Marlowe and the rest out of the gutter, and gave the world in "The Merchant of Venice" a figure that commands keen interest not untouched with sympathy. "King John," bearing date 1594, is another piece of inimitable adaptation. By this time the "Venus and Adonis" had been published with a dedication to the third Earl of Southampton, and the poet followed it a year later with "The Rape of Lucrece," dedicated to ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan

... he had no peer. The Institute awarded him one of its Montyon prizes (4/11.), "an honour of which, needless to say, he had never dreamed." (4/12.) Darwin, in his celebrated work on the "Origin of Species," which appeared precisely at this moment, speaks of Fabre somewhere as "the inimitable ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... the man sat up, quivering with a sensation that rippled at his hair-roots and sent the blood singing to finger and toe-tips. And Dolores, with one forefinger at her scarlet lips to enjoin silence, glided toward him with her inimitable grace, and knelt before him shaking her head and starting him on the way to intoxication with the touch of ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... are "The Discipline of Christine" and "The Unequal Yoke," by Mrs. Barre Goldie and Mrs. H.H. Penrose respectively. In the former the ways and moods of childhood are depicted in original and inimitable fashion, which makes it safe to predict that the author will go far beyond her first effort as a novelist. In "The Unequal Yoke" Mrs. Penrose has taken for her theme the love story of a clergyman whose benefice is an Irish ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale

... rathole," snarled Denver to his companion in that inimitable, guarded whisper. "How we ever coming back ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... sat down with them in the cool trellised room, where the wine shone on the lamp-lighted tablecloth; tasted of their exotic food—the raw fish, the bread-fruit, the cooked bananas, the roast pig served with the inimitable miti, and that king of delicacies, palm-tree salad; seen and heard by fits and starts, now peering round the corner of the door, now railing within against invisible assistants, a certain comely young native lady in a sacque, who seemed too modest to be a member of the family, and too imperious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the aesthetic, which is closely akin to religious feeling, the American Indian stands alone. In accord with his nature and beliefs, he does not pretend to imitate the inimitable, or to reproduce exactly the work of the Great Artist. That which is beautiful must not be trafficked with, but must only be reverenced and adored. It must appear in speech and action. The symmetrical and graceful body must express something of it. Beauty, in our eyes, ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman

... in the play, since what follows is necessarily inferior in force. Dryden, while writing this scene, had unquestionably in his recollection the quarrel betwixt Brutus and Cassius, which was justly so great a favourite in his time, and to which he had referred as inimitable in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... priceless treasures, but simply to provide equitably and properly for their preservation and due increase. Here, as we all see, have immense sums been already spent by this Government in excavating, preserving, and in some cases partially restoring such decayed but inimitable structures as the Coliseum, the Capitol, the various Triumphal Arches, the Baths of Titus, Caracalla, &c., all of which labors and expenditures we who visit Rome share the benefit, and it is but the simplest justice that we should contribute ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... Men and Manners compleatly drawn to the Life.—If the great Authors, who were concerned in the Composition of those Papers, would have join'd their Abilities to form a Work of this Kind, I doubt not but it would have been inimitable, and deserv'd the next Place, in Point of Fame, to that of Theophrastus: For this is the highest Pitch to which Moderns can aspire. A greater Design would be Presumption, and would only serve to shew the greater Vanity of the Attempt. ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally

... Jimmy's next neighbor, taking advantage of a general burst of laughter, as the inimitable little bumboat woman advertised ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... pretty trade in sculpture of the ornamental and fantastic sort. In his youth he had had money; but he had spent it recklessly, much of it scandalously, and at twenty-six had found himself obliged to make capital of his talent. This was quite inimitable, and fifteen years of indefatigable exercise had brought it to perfection. Rowland admitted its power, though it gave him very little pleasure; what he relished in the man was the extraordinary vivacity and frankness, not to ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James



Words linked to "Inimitable" :   irreproducible, unreproducible



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