"Perfervid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no point of this trying prelude need Lady Constantine have feared for her strength. Deeds in this connexion demand the particular kind of courage that such perfervid women are endowed with, the courage of their emotions, in which young men are often lamentably deficient. Her fear was, in truth, the fear of being discovered in an unwonted position; not of the act itself. And though her letter was in its way a true exposition of her feeling, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... which is government emergency pay. I had agreed to pay the regular maximum, two dollars a day with presents and keep. All came and demanded three dollars. I told them they could go at once in search of the hottest place ever pictured by a diseased and perfervid human imagination. ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... excuse them. If they had been lovers out of a book, they would have talked in dithyrambs or long perfervid paragraphs. Since they were real, they could bear witness to their happiness only by spooning and being a little bit silly. But—it was part of their happiness—they did ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... was my disgust that it is not at all unlikely that if one of Gardner's tickets had been in my pocket, it would have gone into the ballot-box. But persons standing by,—Democrats as well as Republicans,—having quieted this perfervid patriot, and saved me from the ignominy of swearing in my vote, I carried out my original intention, and cast my first vote ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... a laugh of delight at her perfervid concentration. "Oh, no, no! They're mostly nervous women, and it would be the death of them—if they understood me. In fact, what's the use of brooding upon such ideas? We can't hurry any change, but we can ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... distinguished stranger came amongst us—as, for example, Mr. Gladstone, on the occasion to which I have already referred—we washed our face, and put on our best clothes in order to impress the visitor. We had something of the perfervid nature of the Scot in our characters, and rose to extraordinary heights of enthusiasm on very indifferent pretexts. It followed that when we had so distinguished a body as the British Association to receive ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... considerably more friction than developed. Even as it was, the discussions were acrid and verged at times close to personalities and the oratory, especially on the part of those who advocated the "six-bit" policy, was both perfervid and vociferous. However, the representatives of the companies that had made up their minds that their honor and contracts were worth dollar for dollar had little to say and were not influenced by the alleged arguments ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... said solemnly, "them things what you're saying, are they 'cross your heart, honest to goodness, so help you,' truth, or are they the fruit of a perfervid imagination?" ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Scottish denominations, interwoven with extracts from his own family archives. His grand-uncle, it appeared, had been a minister himself, and had performed the feat—to which I have occasionally heard other perfervid Scots refer, and never without a kindling eye—known as ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... individuals wandered, searching for invariably unpunctual publishers. As though Time pressed behind them with his scythe, hatchet-faced journalists from Fleet Street were making a bee-line for the restaurant. In contrast to this perfervid haste, self-possessed young queens of the footlights lolled with their admirers, importantly believing they were recognized. All the medley of London as it used to be, is and will be again, was there; but nowhere could Tabs descry a ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... among his fellow-countrymen. The "God" of the Canon is explained away as an "Eternal Principle;" the phenomena of the universe are attributed to Nature, with its absurd personification so commonly met with in Western writers; and spirits generally are associated with the perfervid imaginations ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... plans were discussed of detaching Alsace, Lorraine, Roussillon, and Flanders.[337] To these sacrilegious schemes the French patriots opposed the dogma of Rousseau—the indivisibility of the general will. "Perish 25,000,000 Frenchmen rather than the Republic one and indivisible." This perfervid, if illogical, exclamation of a Commissioner of the Convention reveals something of that passion for unity which now fused together the French nation. Some peoples merge themselves slowly together under the shelter of kindred beliefs and institutions. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... to tempt Providence by placing his perfervid philanthropist and his serious doctrines against a background of burlesque. But he succeeded in entertaining his audience. Miss LILLAH MCCARTHY, looking her very best as Lady Fenton, and Mr. COWLEY WRIGHT, looking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... to a point far from flattering to his self-esteem. The subtle intimacies of the scene in the Long Gallery became as though they had never been. Dickie thinking over his restless night, his fierce efforts at self-conquest, those long hours in the saddle designed for the reduction of a perfervid imagination, wrote himself down an ass indeed. And yet—yet—the charm of Helen's presence was great. And surely she wasn't quite herself just now, there was something wrong with her? Anybody could see ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... about a little on the stage. My courage came back, but alas!—just in proportion as I attained confidence my emotional chant mounted too high! Since the writing was extremely ornate, my manner should have been studiedly cold and simple. This I knew perfectly well, but I could not check the perfervid rush of my song. I ranted deplorably, and though I closed amid fairly generous applause, no flowers were handed up to me. The only praise I received came from Charles Lohr, the man who had warned me against becoming a lawyer's hack. He, meeting me in the wings of the stage as I came off, remarked ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... this impartiality is essential, because without it the necessary impersonal element cannot be given to a play. In such a work as the prison drama It's never too Late to Mend, by Charles Reade, one seems to see all the time the hand of the perfervid, almost frantic, reformer, and the same remark applies to several of his novels. Of course, one does not ask the playwright to be, but only to seem, impartial. To demand real impartiality would be to ask that reality which is out ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... been placed at dinner. Sybil, at nineteen, worshipped every word and movement in Agnes Waring at twenty-eight—her way of laughing and speaking, her phraseology, her mental outlook; every opinion was introduced with the words, "Agnes says——" Two years before, when the infatuation was in its perfervid youth, Sybil had made up her mind that her brother was to marry Agnes; the determination was still so strong that she was uneasy at the presence of ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... from empirical theories. For this reason Croce considers that his work (referring to his Historia de las ideas esteticas de Espana) suffers from a certain uncertainty, from the theoretical point of view of its author, Menendez de Pelayo, which was that of a perfervid Spanish humanist, who, not wishing to disown the Renaissance, invented what he called Vivism, the philosophy of Luis Vives, and perhaps for no other reason than because he himself, like Vives, was an eclectic Spaniard of the Renaissance. And it is true that Menendez de Pelayo, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... the number of my particular friends happen to be Scotsmen, it has always distressed and annoyed me that, with the best will in the world, I have never been able to understand on what principle that perfervid race conducts its enthusiasms. Mine is a racial disability, of course; and the converse has been noted by no less a writer than Stevenson, in the story of his journey "Across ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thought he had hit upon the explanation. "I fancy the true idea," he wrote, "is that you must never do yourself or any one else a moral injury—make any man a thief or a liar—for any end"; quite a different thing, as he would have loved to point out, from never stealing or lying. But this perfervid disputant was not always out of key with his audience. One whom he met in the same house announced that she would never again be happy. "What does that signify?" cried Fleeming. "We are not here to be happy, but to be good." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The perfervid vein of philanthropic zeal which is apparent in this extract animated every part of Lord Shaftesbury's nature and every action of his life. He had, if ever man had, "the Enthusiasm of Humanity." His religion, on ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... a detail of the project when it was yet a joke—I had framed a humble and beseeching and perfervid petition to Congress begging the government to built the monument, as a testimony of the Great Republic's gratitude to the Father of the Human Race and as a token of her loyalty to him in this dark day of humiliation when his older children were doubting and deserting him. It seemed ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... by the rapid passage to and fro on the roof above and fence-tops below of vagrant felines on Cupid's contentious battles bent, to the disturbance of the still air, soughed softly through the meshes of my hammock and gave some measure of relief, grateful enough for which I ceased the perfervid language I had been using practically since sunrise, and dozed off. And then there entered upon the scene that marvelous man, Raffles Holmes, of whose exploits it is the purpose ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... the Brocken, are in certain atmospheres startled by the apparition of a shadowy figure,—a giant image of themselves, thrown on the horizon by the dawn. Similar is the relation of Carlyle to the common types of his countrymen. Burns, despite his perfervid patriotism, was in many ways "a starry stranger." Carlyle was Scotch to the core and to the close, in every respect a macrocosm of the higher peasant class of the Lowlanders. Saturated to the last with the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... who—if I may say so—has kept his eyes open. I don't want to discourage you; but you should take it for granted that accidents may happen. I would feel the reins a little bit, if I were you. Once you've got her into the church, and see her with a white veil over her head, then you may be as perfervid as ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black |
