"Massiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plate I had seen—a portion of which at this moment felt preternaturally heavy in my pockets—must have been three times greater than any the governor ever possessed, and that various pieces were of a size and massiveness I had never before seen in the establishment. In vain I bethought myself that I had seen and recognised the well-known door-plate, and that the area from which I entered was immediately under; in vain I argued that since ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... wall opposite us, astonishment soon swallowed up, for the time, all other emotions. Astonishment, not at the vast size of anything, for the scrub was not thirty feet high; nor at the gorgeous colours, for very few plants or trees were in flower; but at the wonderful wealth of life. The massiveness, the strangeness, the variety, the very length of the young and still growing shoots was a wonder. We tried, at first in vain, to fix our eyes on some one dominant or typical form, while every form was clamouring, as it were, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... false, not to any of the particular schools of architecture about which professors can read in libraries, but to the inmost instinctive idea of architecture itself. A Norman capital can be heavy because the Norman column is thick, and the whole thing expresses an elephantine massiveness and repose. And a Gothic column can be slender, because its strength is energy; and is expressed in its line, which shoots upwards like the life of a tree, like the jet of a fountain or even like the rush of a rocket. But a slender thing beneath, obviously oppressed ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... like a fatalistic man. The great court of it, three hundred feet square, with pointed arches supported by piers, double, and on the side looking toward Mecca quintuple arcades, has a great dignity of sombre simplicity. Not grace, not a light elegance of soaring beauty, but massiveness and heavy strength are distinguishing features of this mosque. Even the octagonal basin and its protecting cupola that stands in the middle of the court lack the charm that belongs to so many of the fountains of Cairo. There are two minarets, the minaret of the bird, and a larger ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... brotherhoods rising one above another at a long distance. Ben Lomond stood alone, opposite to us, majestically overlooking the lake; yet there was something in this mountain which disappointed me,—a want of massiveness and simplicity, perhaps from the top being broken into three distinct stages. The road carried us over a bold promontory by a steep and high ascent, and we had a long view of the lake pushing itself up in a narrow line through an avenue of mountains, terminated by the ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... "changing" is as familiar as may be; "foam that passed away," strictly literal; and the whole line descriptive of the reality with a degree of accuracy which I know not any other verse, in the range of poetry, that altogether equals. For most people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness and massiveness of a large wave. The word "wave" is used too generally of ripples and breakers, and bendings in light drapery or grass: it does not by itself convey a perfect image. But the word "mound" is heavy, large, dark, definite; there is no mistaking the kind of wave meant, nor missing the sight of it. Then ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... dome of St. Paul's rising over all, possibly the massiveness of the Tower, or the twin towers of Westminster, of those of the "New Houses of Parliament," as ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... went away a while ago upon the brave, and, as some people thought, desperate task of finding the North Pole—any one that looked upon them as they lay in Portsmouth Roads, might know that it was no holiday cruise they were meant for. The thickness of the sides, the strength of the cordage, the massiveness of the equipment, did not look ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... necessary to make them pretty massive. The number of the vibrations depends upon such massiveness, and it is necessity to know the relation which exists between these two quantities in order to be able to construct an instrument under determinate conditions. I made in former years such a research ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... skilfully that she seemed to be letting bandits into the house; and when she saw that Sylvia was following with deep appreciation she passed on to the Tower Scene, giving to the minor chords a quality of massiveness. Her expression changed oddly. There was color in her cheeks and a stancher adjustment of the lines of her face. She suggested a good woman struggling through flames to achieve safety. When she played from Il Trovatore you ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... the 'Rock of thy strength' and the 'God of thy salvation.' Rock is the grand Old Testament name of God, expressing in a pregnant metaphor both what He is in Himself and what in relation to those who trust Him. It speaks of stability, elevation, massiveness, and of defence and security. The parallel title sets Him forth as the Giver of salvation; and both names set in clear light the sinful ingratitude of forgetting God, and force home the question: 'Do ye thus requite the Lord, oh foolish people ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... through a new wood conduit of to-day as through the polished golden channel which lay there for it. She must love, and love the best, and if only the best had been younger, fitter! Would not the steady massiveness of Goethe's nature have been splendidly adorned by the arabesques and intricately graceful woof of Bettine's? Now it was spring flowers on an old brow, with all the sweetness, but not the freshness, of youth. The imperial Goethe, supreme in wisdom and age, smelling a violet! ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... Amenemhat II, which lies between the two brick pyramids, was built entirely of stone. Nothing of it remains above ground, but the investigation of the subterranean portions showed that it was remarkable for the massiveness of its stones and the care with which the masonry was executed. The same characteristics are found in the dependent tombs of the princesses Ha and Khnumet, in which more jewelry was found. This splendid stonework is characteristic ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... cathedral roof, where the eaves have for their immediate background the pavement of the streets below; only this cathedral was 9,000 feet high. Now, any one standing at the foot of the Wetterhorn may admire their stupendous massiveness and steepness; but, to feel their influence enter in the very marrow of one's bones, it is necessary to stand at the summit, and to fancy the one little slide down the short ice-slope, to be followed apparently by a bound into clear air and a fall down ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... heaven, quaintly situated valleys so masked by timber and brushwood that one came across them only by accident. There is something in the naked face of Nature, in the sheer magnificence of incredible heights and the marvellous massiveness of big timber that somehow dwarfs man into insignificance and makes him realise the puniness of his strength. There was something in the scenes now opening up before the rangers that subdued them and beat them into silence. There was beauty in the sight, the soft eternal beauty of ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... was erected by Peter de Rupibus in the early part of the thirteenth century. In its more mature and elaborate work it shows a considerable advance on the simplest form of Early English, though the apparently low elevation, and massiveness of the piers and lower arcading, are obviously not free from Norman influences. It is divided into five bays by alternate circular and octagonal piers, the dwarfed appearance of which is relieved by triple ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... natural cliff (say of the Vaucluse order) rather than an effort of human or even of Roman labour. It is the biggest thing at Orange—it is bigger than all Orange put together—and its permanent massiveness makes light of the shrunken city. The face it presents to the town—the top of it garnished with two rows of brackets perforated with holes to receive the staves of the velarium—bears the traces of more than one tier of ornamental arches; though how these flat arches were applied, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... whom the matron was preparing to devote to him stood shrinking with a trepidation which she could not conceal at sight of his strange massiveness, with his rust-gold hair coming down toward his thick yellow brows and mocking blue eyes in a dense bang, and his jaw squaring itself under the rather insolent smile of his full mouth. The matron felt that her victim teas perhaps ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Durham is in any way disappointing, the interior more than compensates for its shortcomings. The general impression on entering the church is one of simple dignity and solemnity. The great massiveness of the structure and absence of elaborate ornament no doubt contribute to this feeling. The pious builders of old have certainly contrived to stamp on their work their own feeling of awe in the presence of the All-Powerful and Eternal God. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... at the wheel was seen in all his great beauty—a man of lofty stature perfectly formed and full of power and grace in every movement. His head had an antique massiveness and was crowned with bright brown hair thrown backward. His forehead was wide and contemplative, his eyes large and gray and thickly fringed, lustrous but not piercing. His loving and vehement soul was not always at their windows, but when there, it ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... material of these figures is marble, its coolness and massiveness suiting the growing severity of Greek thought, yet they have their reminiscences of work in bronze, in a certain slimness and tenuity, a certain dainty lightness of poise in their grouping, which [264] remains in the memory as a peculiar note ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the place was papered in olive and bronze tints of imitation leather. A shining bar of counterfeit massiveness extended down the side of the room. Behind it a great mahogany-appearing sideboard reached the ceiling. Upon its shelves rested pyramids of shimmering glasses that were never disturbed. Mirrors set in the face of the sideboard multiplied them. Lemons, oranges and paper ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... noticed the ease with which he got the big trunk to his shoulder, and her eyes glowed as they glanced over the graceful massiveness of the man. But Bill did not see that. He was too busy with ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... justify the most extravagant tales of pioneer and huntsman. His hind-quarters were trim and fine-lined, built apparently for speed, smooth-haired, and of a grayish lion-color. But his fore-shoulders, mounting to an enormous hump, were of an elephantine massiveness, and clothed in a dense, curling, golden-brown growth of matted hair. His mighty head was carried low, almost to the level of his knees, on a neck of colossal strength, which was draped, together with the forelegs down to the knees, in a flowing brown ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... bubbling wake he could see the whole head of the Inlet deep in winter snows,—a white world, coldly aloof in its grandeur. It was beautiful, full of the majesty of serene distances, of great heights. It stood forth clothed with the dignity of massiveness, of permanence. It was as it had been for centuries, calm and untroubled, unmoved by floods and slides, by fires and slow glacial changes. Yes, it was beautiful and Hollister looked a long time, for he was not sure he would see it again. He had a canoe and a tent cached ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... no vest, and the loosely-tied black ribbon suffered the snowy white collar to fall away from the throat and expose its well-turned outline. The head was large, but faultlessly proportioned, and the thick black hair, cut short and clinging to the temples, added to its massiveness. The lofty forehead, white and smooth, the somewhat heavy brows matching the hue of the hair, the straight, finely-formed nose with its delicate but clearly defined nostril, the full firm lips unshaded by moustache, combined to render ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... in which he paced to and fro was of a solid dignity, well fitted to serve as an environment for its owner. It was very large, and lofty. There was massiveness in the desk that stood opposite the hall door, near a window. This particular window itself was huge, high, jutting in octagonal, with leaded panes. In addition, there was a great fireplace set with tiles, around which was woodwork elaborately carved, the fruit ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... chin beneath the flaming whiskers, and his whole magnificent body gave the impression of resolve and repressed action. Rainey fancied whimsically that he could hear a dynamo purring inside of the giant's massiveness. He had seen him in open rage when he had first denounced Honest Simms, but the serious mood was far ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... Sabbaths all alone in the noble Flowerdale woods, now bright under their dark hillsides, in the autumnal tints, and remarkable for the great height and bulk of their ash trees, and of a few detached firs, that spoke, in their venerable massiveness, of former centuries. The clear, calm mornings, when the gossamer went sailing in long grey films along the retired glades of the wood, and the straggling sunlight fell on the crimson and orange mushroom, as it sprang up amid the dank grass, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... struggling within him—is there not such in every man? And are not the struggles the more painful, the temptations more dangerous, the inconsistencies too often the more shameful, the capacities for evil as well as for good, more huge, just in proportion to the native force and massiveness of the soul? The doctrine may seem dangerous. It is dangerous, like many truths; and woe to those who, being unlearned and unstable, wrest it to their own destruction; and presume upon it to indulge their own passions under Byronic excuses of ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... evolved out of one another, and when related to one another, as Behmen sees them evolved and related, are categories of the clearest, surest, most necessary, and most intensely instructive kind. And if the height and the depth, the massiveness, the stupendousness, and the grandeur, as well as the sweetness, and the beauty, and the warmth, and the fruitfulness of a doctrine of GOD is any argument or evidence of its truth, then Behmen's magnificent doctrine of ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... the Ottawa river. From the river the mass of buildings poised dramatically on that individual bluff is a sharp note of beauty. On the quadrangle, that is the city side, this note is lost, and the rough stone buildings, though dignified, have a tough, square-bodied look. Yet the massiveness of the whole grouping about the great space of grass and gravel terraces certainly gives a large air. They form the adequate wings and ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... tragedy and pathos, its simple touches of primitive rude speech, its reserve of force, its unspoken mysteries. At any rate, Kingsley's best ballads have no superior in the ballads of the Victorian era in lilt, in massiveness of stroke, in strange unexpected turns. The Weird Lady is an astonishing piece for a lad of twenty-one—it begins with, "The swevens came up round Harold the Earl, Like motes in the sunnes beam"—and it ends with ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... massiveness of the Roman Past, all matters that we handle or dream of nowadays look evanescent and ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nature, or with the calmer and more gentle sense of the beautiful produced by the less imposing aspects of the surrounding scenery. On the one hand crag and beetling cliff sweeping in rugged and colossal massiveness above dark waves of pine and fir, far into the keen and clear blue air; the huge mantle of snow, so cumulus-like in its brightness, thrown in many a solid fold over ice-sculptured crest and shoulders; the dark cathedral-like ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... drunk in the warmth and life of the sun, they quiver beneath his burning glance, they lie steeped in color, gorgeous, tremulous, passionate, rosy red dropping away into pale gold, emeralds dim and sullen where they ripple down towards the darkness, dusky browns and broad reaches of blue-black massiveness, till the silent starlight wraps the scene with blessing, and the earth sitteth ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Plaza, the centre of the city, the buildings increase in size, style, and finish. The ordinary material is adobe, not only because it is cheap, but also because it best resists earthquake shocks. Fear of a terremoto has likewise led to a massiveness in construction which is slightly ludicrous when we see the poverty which it protects; the walls are often two or three feet thick. The ground floor is occupied by servants, whose rooms—small enough to be called ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... XVIII century, new vaultings, debased and conglomerate Gothic, and spectacular decorations of gilded wood have destroyed the architectural value and real beauty of the Cathedral's interior. Yet in the dim light, which is the light of its every-day life, the great height of the church and its sombre massiveness are not ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... majesty of hugeness, but of just proportions and dignified simplicity. In the general architectural scheme of the Exposition it forms one end of the main group of palaces, at the other end of which is set the Palace of Fine Arts. Machinery Hall, with its severe massiveness and solidity, is a balance to the poetry and spirituality ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... capped them quaintly, hardly making two alike. Here, at Carcassonne, every tower, or nearly every tower, resembles its fellow, and all have sugar-loaf caps that irritate the eye with iteration of the same form. The citadel has no character of massiveness, no grand donjon to distinguish it from the rest of the fortifications, and the cathedral has only two mean little donkey's ears of towers that are most ineffective, peeping over the walls of the south-western ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... of Vincennes was carried to its comparatively great height that it might serve as a tower of observation as well as a place of last retreat if in an attack the outer walls of the fortress should give way. Here at Vincennes a certain massiveness is noted in connection with the donjon, though the actual ground area which it covers is not very great; it was not like many donjons of the time, which were virtually smaller chateaux or ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... their circular form and curve inward, from the ground upward, are most imposing. Some of the gates without lintels are beautiful, and the geometric patterns in the walls extremely effective. The same objection to over-massiveness might not apply here as in Mexico, owing ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... impressive in the angry sorrow of Joris. It partook of his own magnitude. Standing in front of him, it was impossible for Captain Hyde not to be sensible of the difference between his own slight, nervous frame, and the fair, strong massiveness of Van Heemskirk; and, in a dim way, he comprehended that this physical difference was only the outward and visible sign of a mental and moral one ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... returning from the Duomo. This Cathedral is of immense size. The architecture is singular from its being a mixture of the Gothic and Greek. It appears the most ponderous load that ever was laid on the shoulders of poor mother earth. There is nothing light in its structure to relieve the massiveness of the building, and in this respect it forms a striking contrast to the Cathedral of Milan which appears the work of Sylphs. The outside of this Duomo of Florence is decorated and incrusted with black and white marble, which increases the massiveness of its appearance. The steeple or Campanile ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... from the right during the speech of Bismarck, with now and again a general ripple of laughter at some pleasantry accessible to the German mind; but these were much outdone in heartiness by the applause which frequently interrupted Richter when speaking. There is a massiveness about this scene which rises up in memory with a vividness greater, if possible, than the reality made on our excited and wearied endurance during the hours we spent there. Later, Windhorst, the leader of the Roman Catholic party, made a memorable speech. The dozen ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... as the spires of a tuft of grass do, at the same time that they have a law of propriety and regularity among themselves. The tall spire is of such admirable proportion that it does not seem gigantic; and, indeed, the effect of the whole edifice is of beauty rather than weight and massiveness. Perhaps the bright, balmy sunshine in which we saw it contributed to give it a tender glory, and to soften ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... sight it at all, confounded the instrument, and fell back on their natural vision. Others, more lucky, or better versed in telescopic observations, got a view of the fortress, and perhaps burst out swearing at the evident massiveness of the walls and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... It is true that Durham Cathedral stands upon a noble cliff overhanging a ravine, while Reading Abbey stood upon a small and irregular hill which hardly showed above the flat plains of the river meadows, but in massiveness of structure and in type of architecture Reading seems to have resembled Durham more nearly than any other of our great monuments, and to emphasise its parallelism to Durham is perhaps the best way to make the modern reader understand ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... the stones, alternating with spaces, and set in an accurate circle, and across the tops of them other stones were set, equally huge. The stones were undressed and rugged; but the huge massiveness of them impressed the eye more than all the temples and daintily tooled pyramids of our wondrous city. And in the centre of the circle was that still greater stone which formed the altar, and round which was carved, in the rude chiselling of ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... stood in black relief the grand figure of Niccolo, with his huge arms in rhythmic rise and fall, first hiding and then disclosing the profile of his firm mouth and powerful brow. Two slighter ebony figures, one at the anvil, the other at the bellows, served to set off his superior massiveness. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... borrow Caxton's language) as we well might"—in the direction of Hochstedt—we descended, extremely gratified; and sought the hotel and our dinner. Upon the whole, the cathedral of Ulm is a noble ecclesiastical edifice: uniting simplicity and purity with massiveness of composition. Few cathedrals are more uniform in the style of their architecture. It seems to be, to borrow technical language, all of a piece. Near it, forming the foreground of the Munich print, are a chapel and a house surrounded ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... subjects for his pencil. Mountains, forests, rocks, lakes, rivers, cataracts, all in perfection. But he must be bold as a lion in colouring, or he will make nothing of it. There is a clearness of atmosphere, a strength of chiaro oscuro, a massiveness in the foliage, and a brilliance of contrast, that must make a colourist of any one who has an eye. He must have courage to dip his pencil in shadows black as night, and light that might blind an eagle. As I presume my ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... huge Gothic-fashioned principals, each of which cost 100 pounds, and it is panelled above with stained timber. But we don't care very much for the roof. No doubt it is fine; but the whole of the wood work seems too, heavy and much too dark. There is a cimmerian massiveness about it; and on a dull day it looks quite bewildering. If it were stained in a lighter colour its proportions would come out better, and much of that gigantic gloom which now shadows it would be removed. There are canopied stands for two and twenty statues towards the ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... this particular. This innovation was a healthy one, and led to very noble results when followed up by succeeding artists: but in many of Giotto's compositions the figures become ludicrously cumbrous, from the exceeding simplicity of the terminal lines, and massiveness of unbroken form. The manner was copied in illuminated manuscripts with great disadvantage, as it was unfavourable to minute ornamentation. The French never adopted it in either branch of art, nor did any other Northern school; minute and sharp folds ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... just inside the west door of the church we are struck by the length of ritual nave, about 200 feet, the flatness of the roofs, and the massiveness of the arcading dividing the nave from the aisles; for, though the four western bays on the north side and five on the south are Early English in date, there is none of that lightness and grace that we are accustomed to associate with work of this period, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... been observed by our squadron, and remarked for its huge size and massiveness, giving good promise of resisting a century of sun and thaw. All on board the "Lady Franklin" described as a most wonderful spectacle this iceberg, without any warning, falling, as it were, to pieces; the sea around it resembled a seething caldron, from the violent plunging of ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... moved faster. Hermione glanced at his face. Its massiveness looked heavy. The large eyes were fixed upon the table-cloth. His hand just then was more expressive. And as she glanced at it again something very pitiful awoke in her, something pitiful for him and for herself. She ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... Drama. The interest all, or nearly all, centres in the catastrophe, there being only so much of detail and range as is needful to the evolving of this. Thus the thing neither has nor admits any thing like the complexity and variety, the breadth, freedom, and massiveness, of Shakespeare's workmanship. There is timber enough and life enough in one of his dramas to make four or five Sophoclean tragedies; and one of these might almost be cut out of Hamlet without being missed. Take, for instance, the Oedipus at Colonos of Sophocles and King Lear, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... houses on each side were divided only by a pace or two, and communicated with one another, here and there, by arched passages. They looked very ancient, and may have been inhabited by Etruscan princes, judging from the massiveness of some of the foundation stones. The present inhabitants, nevertheless, are by no means princely, shabby men, and the careworn wives and mothers of the people, one of whom was guiding a child in leading-strings through these antique alleys, where hundreds of generations have trod before those ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... churches are, and is not so made out of the dim, awful, mysterious, grotesque, intricate nature of man. But it is beautiful and grand. I love its remote distances, and wide, clear spaces, its airy massiveness; its noble arches, its sky-like dome, which, I think, should be all over light, with ground-glass, instead of being ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... band plays, and there is some color in the throngs who surge along the colonnades to look into the court of honor. A portion of the great space is now accommodating huge shattered cannon and air craft of the enemy, their massiveness suggesting, as the little glittering medals are pinned upon the soldiers' breasts, that it is not so easy to be ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... the habit of preferring large to small blocks, even in monuments of a very moderate size, involved the Phoenician architects in awkwardnesses and anomalies, which offend a cultivated taste; but it should be remembered, on the other hand, that massiveness in the material conduces greatly to stability, and that, in lands where earthquakes are frequent, as they are along all the Mediterranean shores, not many monuments would have survived the lapse of three thousand years had the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Florence, with its encircling hills, and its glorious Val d'Arno. There arose the stupendous outline of Il Duomo, the stately form of the Baptistery, the graceful shaft of the Campanile, the medieval grandeur of the Palazzo Vecchio; and the severe Etruscan massiveness of the Pitti Palace was just below. Far away the Arno wound on, through the verdurous plain, while on either side the hills arose dotted with white villas and deep green olive groves. Is there any view on earth which can surpass ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... when the hand of the last patriot was shaken; he took the hand of Pomp also. "We are all men in the sight of God!" His heart was full; there was a thrill of fervent emotion in his voice. His calm young face, his firm and finely-cut features, always noticeable for a certain massiveness and strength, were singularly illumined. He went on, the light of the cave-fire throwing its ruddy flash on the group. "We are all His children. He has brought us together here for a purpose. The work to be done is for all ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... CAPITAL. It is adorned with heads of animals, and is the finest of the whole series in the broad massiveness of its effect; so simply characteristic, indeed, of the grandeur of style in the entire building, that I chose it for the first Plate in my folio work. In spite of the sternness of its plan, however, it is ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... getting on, cara mia, than for getting off!" the Duchess blandly returned. She was a person of no small presence, filling her place, however, without ponderosity, with a massiveness indeed rather artfully kept in bounds. Her head, her chin, her shoulders were well aloft, but she had not abandoned the cultivation of a "figure" or any of the distinctively finer reasons for passing as a handsome woman. She was secretly ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... showed them how the ancient edifice had been encased by the modern house, and bade them note, from the deep shelving window-seats, that the stone walls were three feet thick. The rooms were low-ceiled and quaintly shaped, but they borrowed a certain grandeur from this massiveness; and it was easy to figure the priests in black and the nuns in gray in those dim chambers, which now a life so different inhabited. Behind the house was a plot of grass, and thence the wooded ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... grandeur. The mass of its central piers, illumined by a flood of light from the clerestory, and the smaller pillars of the wings gradually fading into obscurity, are so arranged and lighted as to convey an idea of infinite space; at the same time the beauty and massiveness of the forms, and the brilliancy of their coloured decorations, all combine to stamp this as the greatest of man's architectural works, but such a one as it would be impossible to reproduce, except in such a climate, and in that individual ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... preservation of its pyramidal purpose it is scarcely inferior to that most consummate work, the tower of St. Stephen's in Vienna. It is composed of three superimposed structures, gradually diminishing in solidity and massiveness from the square base to the high-springing octagonal spire, garlanded with thorny crowns. It is balanced at the south end of the facade by the pretty cupola and lantern of the Mozarabic Chapel, the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... greatly interest anyone having a smattering of knowledge of the characteristic ornaments of these different periods. A careful examination would demonstrate how the one style gradually merged into that of its successor. Thus the massiveness and grandeur of the best Louis Quatorze meubles de luxe, became, in its later development, too ornate and effeminate, with an elaboration of enrichment, culminating in the ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... uninhabitable and are occupied by only a few sickly, degraded natives who live largely by the chase. Yet in the past this region was the scene of by far the highest culture that ever developed in America. There alone in this great continent did men develop an architecture which, not only in massiveness but in wealth of architectural detail and sculptural adornment, vies with that of early Egypt or Chaldea. There alone did the art of writing develop. Yet today in those regions the density of the forest, the prevalence of deadly fevers, the extremely enervating temperature, ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... another relic discovered at the village of Hunaneh on the road from Safed to Tyre; it recalls the days of David. Hiram was King of Tyre in the time of David. The tomb is a limestone structure of extraordinary massiveness Unfortunately the Mosque of Omar stands on the site of Solomon's Temple and there is no hope of digging there. As for the palace of Solomon, it should be easy to find the foundations, for Jerusalem has been rebuilt several times upon ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... out from among them and forming a sheltering roof with their boughs, showing for how long a period they must have been deserted. There were churches too, which we discovered to be such by their construction and the massiveness of their walls; many of them of considerable size, and built of well-burnt bricks. Altogether we were struck by the elegance and substantial appearance of the different buildings, so superior to those of modern ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... endless variety. The Electric Tower, designed by Mr. Howard, the central point in the scheme of architecture, its background of columns and its airy perforated walls and circular cupola with the Goddess of Light above, combined massiveness with lightness. Other buildings were strikingly quaint and pleasing, especially those suggesting the old Southern Missions. All blended into the general scheme with scarcely a discord. This harmony was not accidental, but resulted from combined effort, each ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... almost to massiveness. An iron-grey beard and a mustache that completely hid the mouth covered the lower part of his face. His eyes were a pale blue, and a little watery; here and there upon his face were moth spots. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... distribution of employments will set in, especially if the habitat or the fauna with which the group is in contact is such as to call for a considerable exercise of the sturdier virtues. The habitual pursuit of large game requires more of the manly qualities of massiveness, agility, and ferocity, and it can therefore scarcely fail to hasten and widen the differentiation of functions between the sexes. And so soon as the group comes into hostile contact with other groups, the divergence of function will take on the developed ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... keen a man not to know the meaning of that reply, and there was a certain massiveness in Lydgate's manner and tone, corresponding with his physique, which if he repelled your advances in the first instance seemed to put persuasive devices out ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Shakespeare's dramas, Kant's philosophic writings and Homer's epics. All the great works of literature and philosophy were well known to him. Thus he brought to bear on his music a mind singularly well equipped in every direction. He was, too, essentially a Teuton, with all the German massiveness of conception and depth of soul. A lesser man must have fallen before the prospect of attempting such a colossal reform. What was that reform in its essentials? It was this—to compose opera in which the idea of the drama was made the ruling conception; to attain this end by a wedding ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... chequered stonework is carried across the space beneath them, and a small circular window inserted above. It may be mentioned here that the pointed arch has generally been adopted in the new work, to distinguish it from the old, but the characteristic massiveness and predominant scale of the original has been preserved throughout the restoration. A practical illustration of these principles will be seen in The Porch, as an ingenious compromise between the older and newer types of architecture which are brought together ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... Gluck almost takes the man out of paint to put him in flesh and blood. He looks down with wide-open eyes, swelling nostrils, firm mouth, and massive chin. The noble brow, dome-like and expanded, relieves the massiveness of his face; and the whole countenance and figure express the repose of a powerful and passionate nature schooled into balance and symmetry: altogether the presentment of a great man, who felt that he could move the world and had found the pou sto. ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... with Secchi's third and fourth orders of stars with banded spectra. Whether, in the interim, they should display spectra of the Sirian or of the solar type was made to depend on their greater or less massiveness.[1381] But the relation actually existing perhaps inverts that contemplated by Ritter. Certainly, the evidence collected by Mr. Maunder in 1891 strongly supports the opinion that the average solar star is a weightier body than the average ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... useful still, going through its own daily work,—as some old fisherman, beaten grey by storm, yet drawing his daily nets: so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth, in blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering human souls together underneath it; the sound of its bells for prayer still rolling through its rents; and the grey peak of it seen far across the sea, principal of the three that rise above the waste of surfy sand and hillocked shore,—the ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... also be distantly related to the horses, but passed through an entirely different course of development. From the lower Eocene to the lower sub-stage of the middle Oligocene the series is complete, beginning with small and rather lightly built animals. Gradually the stature and massiveness increase, a transverse pair of nasal horns make their appearance and, as these increase in size, the canine tusks and incisors diminish correspondingly. Already in the oldest known genus the number of digits had been reduced ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... not begin till the establishment of the empire. The enactments of the emperors, clothed at first in the pretence of popular sanction, but afterwards emanating undisguisedly from the imperial prerogative, extend in increasing massiveness from the consolidation of Augustus's power to the publication of the Code of Justinian. It will be seen that even in the reign of the second emperor a considerable approximation is made to that condition of the law and that mode of administering it with which we are all familiar. A statute law ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... After certain stern, painful formalities were gone through, in the most matter-of-fact way, between my companion and the commander of the strong post which was on guard, we entered the mighty precincts, and the gates closed behind us. I had then time to marvel at the massiveness of the structure—the immense blocks of stone, so typical of the colossal empire under which it was constructed. Passing through a long series of narrow passages, gloomy and sad, impervious to all sound, save that of low sighs and groans from dungeons below and around us, we arrived ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... The massiveness and vastness of these temples demonstrate the power of the religious instinct in man, even when that instinct is most perverted. With all their grossness and crudity, these shrines reveal a wealth ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... us lies Carrowmore, with its labyrinth of cromlechs and stone circles, a very city of dead years. There is something awe-inspiring in the mere massiveness of these piled and ordered stones, the visible boundaries of invisible thoughts; that awe is deepened by the feeling of the tremendous power lavished in bringing them here, setting them up in their ordered groups, and piling the crowns ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... scarcely to be distinguished from the more artificial ruins of the ancient metropolis of the Deccan, which are usually constructed with blocks quarried from their sides, and vie in grotesqueness of outline and massiveness of character with the alternate airiness and solidity exhibited by nature in the nicely-poised logging stones and columnar piles, and in the walls of prodigious cuboidal blocks of granite which often crest and top her massive domes and ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... out. Finally they brought us to a black, oaken door with a great, black lock on it, and bolts at the top and bottom; it was near the end of a corridor, in the oldest wing of the building. The door, in addition to its native massiveness, was studded with great nails, and there were bands of iron or steel crossing it horizontally. When we proposed to enter, our friends informed us that this door had been closed one hundred and eighty years before and had never been opened since then, and that it had shut ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... sat down on the grass to partake of a camp luncheon. The Vladika was then in the thirty-fifth year of his age. In truth, he was a goodly man—a very Saul among his people. His height I should think very nearly midway between six and seven feet. He was not fat, but the breadth and massiveness of his chest and limbs was extraordinary. His figure was very finely proportioned, and his movements free and active. His face was somewhat broad, with good features, and his voice peculiarly soft and pleasing. His hair and beard black, and, after the fashion of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... did nothing of the sort," retorted the General. "I trust I am not so lacking in manners. I merely remarked its beauty and quaintness and massiveness and general artistry. My host expressed pleasure at my appreciation of its qualities and volunteered the information that it was a little thing he had picked up in a curio shop on Regent Street, London, last summer. He had acquired it in perfect good faith. What its history had been ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... has a fascination for the antiquary, and does not fail to impress even the most casual person who wanders into the churchyard and enters the spacious porch. The solemn massiveness of the Norman nave, the unusual effect of the coloured paintings above the arches, and the carved stone effigies of knights whose names are almost forgotten, carry one away from the familiar impressions of a present-day Yorkshire town, and almost suggest that one is living in mediaeval ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... Mount, who had grown too old for service, but had been pensioned and was more fond of fine stories than ever, added to his importance as a gentleman of quality by describing the banquets at the Towers, the richness of the food, the endless courses, the massiveness of the gold plate, the rareness of the wines, and the magnificence of ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Municipio, is a shapeless unfinished block of masonry. It is here that the Eugubine tables, plates of brass with Umbrian and Roman incised characters, are shown. The Palazzo de' Consoli has higher architectural qualities, and is indeed unique among Italian palaces for the combination of massiveness with lightness in a situation of unprecedented boldness. Rising from enormous substructures mortised into the solid hillside, it rears its vast rectangular bulk to a giddy height above the town; airy loggias imposed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... imitating as nearly as possible its ancient feudal grandeur. At the Revolution however it was forfeited, and has since been sold twice; but though each purchaser has pulled down a part, and sold the materials, enough still remains to give a perfect idea of its former strength and massiveness. M. Blancheton now resides, as we were informed, near Beaune, regretted as a bon seigneur by his poorer neighbours, whom he has not visited since the demolition of his paternal seat. "It would break his heart," said a poor old woman, "to see it as it ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... of the castle they were struck by the vastness and massiveness of the building, at the entrance to which sparkling fountains played in {223} the midst of luxuriant and park-like gardens. Here the king's daughters, Chalciope and Medea, who were walking in the grounds of the palace, met them. The ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... will through the garden. Moving from enclosure to enclosure of box, she came, before she knew it, to the house itself. It loomed up before her a pale massiveness, with no lights in any of the windows, but on the back porch sat the owner. He sat in a high-back chair, with his head tilted back, and his eyes were closed and he seemed to be asleep, but Sarah was not quite sure. She stopped short. ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... at and with him. Nevertheless, if I had the choice of sitting with him at the Boar's Head or with Johnson at the Turk's, I shouldn't hesitate for an instant. The agility of Falstaff's mind gains much of its effect by contrast with the massiveness of his body; but in contrast with Johnson's equal agility is Johnson's moral as well as physical bulk. His sallies 'tell' the more startlingly because of the noble weight of character behind them: they are the better because ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... out of which seemed to rise like a genie, as the steam settled, the figure of a tall, gaunt peasant impressively crowned with the high Astrakhan cap and wrapped in the great sheepskin overcoat that added to the massiveness of his figure. He stood with his rifle ready to fire. Under his girdle lay the sharp ax without which the Siberian peasant cannot exist. Eyes, quick and glimmering like those of a wild beast, fixed themselves alternately on each ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... rugged surface of which suggests a natural cliff (say of the Vaucluse order) rather than an effort of human, or even of Roman labor. It is the biggest thing at Orange, - it is bigger than all Orange put to- gether, - and its permanent massiveness makes light of the shrunken city. The face it presents to the town - the top of it garnished with two rows of brackets, perforated with holes to receive the staves of the vela- rium - bears the traces of more than one tier of orna- ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... the pamphlets that were coming out only those that could give him light on this question can have been of the least interest to his rough common sense. Now, as it happened, he could be under no mistake, after his arrival in London, as to the strength and massiveness of that current of opinion which had set in for a re-seating of the secluded members. Since the first restoration of the Rump in May 1659, Prynne had been keeping the case of the secluded members perpetually ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... overran this porch, whose antique massiveness harmonized with the building, for the straggling branches shot out in all directions, and its coarse blossoms, then in season, seemed to have drank up all the red paint as it vanished from the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... of Queen Anne taste reverted to the older lighter designs, grotesques were eliminated, massiveness gave place to grace, and brightness of colour to a soft modified brilliancy that was very engaging. In the Georgian copies heaviness again obtained favour, and gradually the designs deteriorated, and were eventually temporarily lost in "the limbo of the past." ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands
... tolerable representation of majesty; and thence he has the satisfaction of seeing all the poachers transported beyond the seas. The county jail and the house of correction are particular pets of his. He admires even their architecture, and prides himself especially on the size and massiveness of the prison. He used to extend his fondness even to the stocks; but the treadmill, almost the only modern thing which has wrought such a miracle, has superseded it in his affections, and the ancient stocks now stand deserted, and half lost in a bed of nettles; but he still looks with a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various |
