"Pleasurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... love truly conjugial is notwithstanding so rare, that its quality is not known, and scarcely its existence, is, because the state of pleasurable gratifications before and at the time of marriage, is afterwards changed into a state of indifference arising from an insensibility to such gratifications. The causes of this change of state are too numerous to be here adduced; but they shall be adduced in a future part of this work, when ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... acquaintance, although he felt drawn to a worker whom he knew by indescribable tokens for a character of no common order. Both, as they came to know afterwards, were unsophisticated and shy, given to fears which cause a pleasurable emotion to solitary creatures. Perhaps they never would have been brought into communication if they had not come across each other that day of Lucien's disaster; for as Lucien turned into the Rue des Gres, he saw the student coming away from the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Ishmael's considerate and tender love-making that came to her jaded nerves with the refreshing quality of a draught of pure water to a man who has lived too long on champagne. The actual present continued to be pleasurable long after she had determined that it could never crystallise into anything more definite, and so she went on from day to day, enjoying herself, yet vaguely hoping something would happen which would enable her to retire from the engagement ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... state of affairs when St. Valentine's day dawned. Alma's two weeks of school had seemed a little eternity to her; but this day she could feel that there was something unusual in the air, and she could not help being affected by the pleasurable excitement afloat in the room. She knew what the big white box by the door was for, and when, after school, Miss Joslyn was appointed to uncover and distribute the valentines, Alma found herself following the crowd, until, pressed close to Lucy Berry's side, she stood in the centre of the merry ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... in itself felt to be pleasurable. Some reformers have hoped to reach a social system under which all work would be in itself a source of satisfaction. It is probable that such persons are made optimistic by the nature of their own doings. They are writers, schemers, reformers; ...
— Progress and History • Various
... ever," the Prime Minister remarked tolerantly. "Even a politician who has worked as hard as you have can find many pleasurable paths in life open to him in this country. However, the necessity for such an extreme course of action on your part is done away with. I am very pleased to be able to tell you that the affair concerning which I have been in communication with your secretary for ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... long as thou continuest in any sinful practice, and yet thou canst not abandon thy daily dose of this or that poison without suicide. For the sin of thy soul has become the necessity of thy body, daily tormenting thee, without yielding thee any the least pleasurable sensation, but goading thee on by terror without hope. Under such evidence of God's wrath how canst thou expect to be saved?" Well may the heart cry out, "Who shall deliver me from the 'body of this death',—from this death that lives and tyrannizes ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... friend, Mr. Cullen, I detested, and the reference to Bow Street puzzled me. However, I had no doubt that in a few minutes everything would be explained. Meantime I permitted myself to indulge in certain very pleasurable anticipations. ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... orchard, and I was preparing to grip the grandly scored trunk of the nearest walnut-tree with my chilly legs, the heavy peeling, the hard cracking, and the tedious picking of a green walnut was as little pleasurable a notion as I had ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... people continue, and commerce (already nearly annihilated by the war) be thus shackled, an absolute want of various articles of primary consumption must ensue; but if Paris and the armies can be supplied, the starving the departments will be a mere pleasurable ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Christianity and the advent of Christ, to which the gypsies listened with attention, but apparently not much profit. The promise that they would soon be able to obtain the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in their own tongue interested them far more on account of the pleasurable strangeness of the idea, than from any anticipation that they might derive spiritual comfort ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... both to the stability of his utilitarian philosophy, and to the contentment of his own temperament, that the reality of happiness should be vindicated, and he did both vindicate and attain it. A highly pleasurable excitement that should have no end, of course he did not think possible; but he regarded the two constituents of a satisfied life, much tranquillity and some excitement, as perfectly attainable by many men, and as ultimately attainable by very many more. The ingredients of this satisfaction he set ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... is he?" asks Molly, impatiently, full of keen and pleasurable excitement. "I die of vulgar curiosity. What is he like? Is he young, handsome? Oh, John, do say he is young ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... dispassionate way, judging them—when he judged at all—as he might have judged the more material workmanship of his own hands. But this face that was framed for a few brief moments in the door reached out to him and stirred an interest within him which was as new as it was pleasurable. It was a beautiful face. He knew that in a fraction of the first second. It was not white, as he had first seen it through the window. The girl's cheeks were flushed. Her lips were parted, and she was breathing quickly, as though from ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... OLD EDUCATION. A number of changes in the character of the old education were now gradually introduced. The rigid drill of the earlier period began to be replaced by an easier and a more pleasurable type of training. Gymnastics for personal enjoyment began to replace drill for the service of the State, and was much less rigid in type. The old authors, who had rendered important service in the education of youth, began to be replaced by more modern writers, with a distinct ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... pacing to and fro had reached the window, wheeled round abruptly and faced his entering visitor. The light fell aslant upon his stately figure as he drew himself up to his full height, and greeted Leigh with a suavely condescending bow and smile, while Aubrey in turn glanced him up and down with a pleasurable consciousness of his intellectual appearance, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... "In this pleasurable way of life he soon wasted his little property, and a considerable legacy left him by a maternal uncle, a colonel in the army, to whom the nephew made a visit in Flanders during the war. While on his tour he wrote several entertaining letters to his Oxford ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... with Thoreau and the Indians grinning openly, and Marie's face peering cautiously and joyously from the cabin door. Three times he entangled his feet hopelessly and floundered like a great fish in the snow; then he caught the "swing" of it and at the end of half an hour began to find a pleasurable exhilaration, even excitement, in his ability to skim over the feathery surface of this great white sea without so much as sinking to his ankle bones. When he slipped the shoes off and stood them up ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... would soon be over, that she would be free once more, entirely her own mistress, released from every restraint and consideration. How rapturous was the idea that she would soon be roving through the fields and woods again with gay, reckless companions! Was there anything more pleasurable than to forget herself, and devote her whole soul to the execution of some difficult and dangerous feat, to attract a thousand eyes by her bewitching grace, and, sustained by her enthusiasm, force a thousand hearts ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the truth, Corona felt uneasy; but the sensation was somehow rather pleasurable, although it crossed her mind that the Prince might have heard of her excursion, and had possibly come to find out why she had been so near to his place. She ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... romance runs smoothly so far; I hope it may to the end," said Polly heartily as she watched the lad tramp away, whistling as blithely as if his pleasurable emotions must find a vent, or endanger the buttons on the round jacket; while the girl pranced on her own doorstep, as if practising for the joyful dance which she had promised ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Albani, Melba, and Eames would induce any operatic management to resurrect "La Favorita." Even up-to-date ear-tickling is not popular now in the opera-house: we go to the music-hall for it; and we don't want to pay a guinea at the opera to be tickled in a way that arouses no pleasurable sensations. Those terrific tonic and dominant passages for the trombones, sounding like the furious sawing of logs of wood, only make us laugh; and pretty tootlings of the flutes have long been done better, and overdone, elsewhere. Donizetti is amongst the ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... arguments which have been urged against its habitual use, we cannot fail to be struck with the extraordinary fact, that so large a portion of mankind should voluntarily struggle through its repugnant qualities, both of taste and effect, until by habit its stimulus grows pleasurable, and the system becomes mithridated against its poison! It would almost seem as if the use of some substance of this class were necessary to the intellectual and physical economy of man, since no nation nor age, of which we have any account, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... tired, and out of spirits as he was, he nevertheless felt a certain pleasurable sensation as he left St. Pancras, driving homeward through the hot crowded streets. Erica would be waiting for him at home, and he had a comparatively leisure afternoon. There was the meeting on the Opium Trade at eight, but he might take her for a turn in one of the parks beforehand. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... which rises like a gem on the brow of the lakes, is favored by the clearest and most healthful atmosphere, and washed by the purest and most transparent water in the world, imparting the most pleasurable sensations imaginable. When this enchanting region shall become fully known, Saratoga, Cape May, and Mount Washington will be forgotten by those who fly from the heat and dust of our inland cities, to breathe a pure air and drink ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... and prayer-book, and gave her companion the pleasurable employment of helping her hold first one and then the other, throughout the service. If his spirit was quickened by a re-hearing of the prayers in which he had once believed, he did not show it. But he seemed pleased at the fact that Genevieve was too intent upon worship to gaze ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... gives more Delight, and leaves a more pleasurable Impression behind it, than WIT, is universally felt and established; Though the Reasons for this have not yet been assign'd.—I shall therefore beg Leave to ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... evidence of the widow Marston becoming wearied. We have seen a cat worried and pulled and poked by its kitten almost beyond endurance, and we have observed that the cat endured it meekly— nay, evidently rejoiced in the annoyance: it was pleasurable pain. As it is with feline, so is it with human mothers. Their love overbears and outweighs everything. Ah! good cause have the rugged males of this world to rejoice that such is the fact; and although they ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... just the least little feeling of regret that the boys didn't feel "crazy" about her. She was sitting bolt upright, with her cheeks flaming a little when she felt Kent's arm stealing round her. She did not resist when he pulled her softly against him. She was utterly surprised at the pleasurable sensation she experienced at having Kent's arm about her. The others were singing but for once Lydia's throaty contralto ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... high degree of dexterity. Whatever be the form of exertion, skilful physical activity awakens muscular sensations of perfectly balanced and harmonized contractions. This feeling of muscular poise and adjustment is pleasurable in a ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... her, might have looked just as she did when she was her age. She hoped, and then she hoped that the hope was not wicked, that she might die young rather than live to look like her aunt Maria. She pictured with a sort of pleasurable horror, what a lovely little waxen-image she would look now, laid away in a nest of white flowers. She had only just begun to doze, when she awoke with a great start. Her father had opened her door, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... see the great man after the curtain fell. The disillusion of such a meeting is too great to be pleasurable. Othello is dead, and the idea of meeting Othello in the flesh ten minutes later, smiling and triumphant, is a death-blow to that very reality which Margaret so much enjoyed. Besides, she wanted to be alone with her own thoughts, which were not entirely confined to ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... hands, for he could have no idea whether the aperture led to the imperial dungeons or to the imperial rain-water cistern; but St. George instantly bent and slipped down into that darkness, thick with the dust of the flight of the old man. With the distinctly pleasurable sensation of being still alive he found himself standing upright upon an uneven floor of masonry. He thrust out his arms and touched sides of mossy rock. Then just before him a pale flame flickered. The old man had kindled a little taper ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... anxiety, in spite of her fears as to the future, Jan's heart beat fast with pleasurable excitement. She was young and strong and eager, and here at last was the real East. A little soft wind caressed her tired forehead and she drank in the blessed coolness of ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... in his voice. This roused them all to another question, quite different from the first one. Her brother and sister looked at Ursula, one with a keen pang of involuntary envy, the other with a sharp thrill of pleasurable excitement. Oddly enough they could all of them pass by their father and leave him out of the question, more easily, with less strain of mind, than strangers could. Ursula for her part did not say ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... his rifle to the hollow of his elbow to offer his unwounded left. The master watched him slowly resume his way towards the ranch. Then with a half uneasy and half pleasurable sense that he had taken some step whose consequences were more important than he would at present understand, he turned in the opposite direction to the school-house. He was so preoccupied that it was not until he had nearly reached it that he remembered Uncle Ben. With an odd recollection of McKinstry's ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... waved, lights shone, and jewels sparkled. There was the music, not of the quadrille band, for it had not yet commenced," &c. Here Bantam, M.C., arrived at precisely twenty minutes before eight, "to receive the company." And such company! "Brilliant eyes, lighted up with pleasurable expectation, gleamed from every side, and, look where you would, some exquisite form glided gracefully through the throng, and was no sooner lost than it was replaced by another as dainty and bewitching"; the warmth ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... the prince, after all. I turned aside realizing that I would rather be alone with the pleasurable thrill which still pulsed in my veins, than to crush it out with society talk, which was my particular aversion. I wandered on through the rooms, pausing for a moment here and there to exchange greetings with acquaintances, and at last emerged upon the glass-covered garden which was a miniature ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... similar to this, except that the muscles of the sphincter ani, and those of the abdomen, which act along with them by the combined powers of sensation and association, are in tenesmus excited by painful sensation, and in the latter by a sensation, which may in some instances be almost called pleasurable, as relieving us from a painful one in the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... in conversation, but not without his usual faults of violence and pretension. Nor was he always as decorous as an old man ought to be, especially one whose turn of mind is not of the lighter and more pleasurable cast. The licences he took were coarse, and had not sufficient regard to his company. Certainly they went a great deal beyond his friend Armstrong, to whose account, I believe, Fuseli's passion for swearing was laid. The poet condescended to be a great swearer, and Fuseli thought ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... costs him nothing, and is ever available. His powers of self-control are as yet undeveloped. He can indulge himself without incurring the least suspicion. He probably knows that most boys, of his age and above, indulge themselves. The result is inevitable. He finds that sexual thoughts are keenly pleasurable, and that they produce bodily exaltation. He has much yet to learn on the subject of sex, and he enjoys the quest. Wherever he turns he finds it now—in his Bible, in animal life, in his classics, in the encyclopaedia, in his companions, and in the newspaper. Day and night ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... passed the night. As soon as the morrow dawned, they again visited Ali and said, "Come with us." Asked he, "Whither?"; and they answered, "To such a garden; for it is finer than the first and more pleasurable." So he went with them to the garden, and one of them, going away, made ready the morning-meal and brought it to them, together with strong heady wine; and after eating, they brought out the wine, when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... lowest deep there still yawns a lower deep; and in the vast halls of man's frailty, there are separate and more gloomy chambers of a frailty more exquisite and consummate. We account it frailty that threescore years and ten make the upshot of man's pleasurable existence, and that, far before that time is reached, his beauty and his power have fallen among weeds and forgetfulness. But there is a frailty, by comparison with which this ordinary flux of the human race ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... health; and this change helped to give Tom the unsettled, exultant feeling that usually belongs to the last months before leaving school. This quarter, too, there was some hope of his father's lawsuit being decided; that made the prospect of home more entirely pleasurable. For Tom, who had gathered his view of the case from his father's conversation, had no doubt that Pivart ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... pleasurable reminiscences of a collector, remembered himself suddenly. "Oh, yes, he got another ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... of this friend I rest for a day or two, enjoying his companionship, the reminiscences of old times, and the gossip of the hour. So, on my long and fatiguing journeyings, I have always looked forward to these meetings with pleasurable anticipation and remembered them ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... except quite in the evening. Sometimes a morning's interest would be excited by some story of plague in the Lazaretto, and a proposed adjournment of the ship to Vourlah, to be out of harm's way; and such speculations, though not exactly pleasurable, were at least anti-stagnative in character. In any thing like decent weather it is not bad fun to get down to Vourlah for a time, and to fly from the gaieties of the metropolis to the pleasures of the chasse at Rabbit Island. It must ever be soothing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... Pity the poor man who does not know by experience what love is. But you cannot tell what it is. "Oh!" you say, "it is emotion." Yes, so is hate, its very opposite. "Well, love is affection." Yes. What is affection? "Well, it is a pleasurable feeling, or regard, which may be very intense, and which leads us to unlimited sacrifice if need be. It is a devotion that grips the soul tremendously." That is true; yet that is only telling what love is like. No simple, plain ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... one of you, no matter whether he has been friend or foe. I have no resentments, no bitterness of feeling to carry with me. On the contrary, I shall go back to the pursuit of my profession with my mind and my heart filled with only grateful recollection and a pleasurable, and I trust a pardonable, pride for the gallant, intrepid band who have honored me with their support in this contest. Without any disposition to criticise or find fault in the slightest degree, but only as an excuse in so far ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Lord Frederick's preference with pleasurable surprise. Although she did not altogether approve of the damsel in her care, she had become very fond of her; but she failed to see why Jennie was so much sought after, when other girls, almost as pretty and ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... starve on account of your silly notions about virtue, and such humbug? Your sister and I have long since learned to dispose of our persons for pecuniary benefit, as well as for our sensual gratification—for it is as pleasurable as profitable; and you must do the same, now ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... themselves. They learn to know what they want. Their taste becomes surer and surer as their experience lengthens. They do not enjoy to-day what will seem tedious to them to-morrow. When they find a book tedious, no amount of popular clatter will persuade them that it is pleasurable; and when they find it pleasurable no chill silence of the street-crowds will affect their conviction that the book is good and permanent. They have faith in themselves. What are the qualities in a book which give keen and lasting pleasure to the passionate few? This is a question ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... flesh was one of the earliest effects of the anti-stimulating regimen, in those cures in which the system was in low condition. The animal spirits became more cheerful, buoyant, and uniformly pleasurable. Mental and bodily labor was endured with much less fatigue, and both intellectual and corporeal exertion ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... long as those giving the entertainment are local people, friends or relatives, the audience takes a more or less sympathetic part in the performance and is not actuated solely by the desire to purchase pleasurable sensations as is the case with commercial amusements. I mean by commercial amusements those which are operated solely for profit, whose advantages the individual purchases for his own pleasure rather than with any idea of participating in a group activity. Commercial amusements have their ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... this analysis of "the Nature of the Human Mind," the characteristics of the true pastoral, such as the avoidance of the hardships and vulgarities of rural life, follow logically. Similarly, since a minutely drawn description deprives the reader's fancy of its naturally pleasurable exercise, pastoral descriptions should only set "the Image in the finest Light." Rapin, on the other hand, had determined the proper length of descriptions by examining Virgil and Theocritus. For the association ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... climes.' Edward Ward, a very voluminous poet in Hudibrastic verse, but best known by the London Spy, in prose. He has of late years kept a public-house in the City (but in a genteel way), and with his wit, humour, and good liquor (ale) afforded his guests a pleasurable entertainment, especially those of the High-Church party. Jacob, Lives of Poets, vol. ii., p. 225. Great number of his works were yearly sold into the plantations. Ward, in a book called Apollo's Maggot, declared this account to be a great falsity, protesting that his public-house ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... faculties, and thus are said to improve upon, while in a certain sense they imitate nature; so the fine arts extend and exalt man's faculty of expression, or self-utterance, regarded not precisely as useful and propter aliud; but as pleasurable and propter se. Even the most uncultivated savage finds pleasure in some discordant utterance of his subjective frame of mind; and it is really hard to find any tribe so degraded as to show no rudiment of fine art, no sign of reflex pleasure ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... started on my journey but indifferently clad, and with scarcely five pounds in my pocket, of which sum two pounds had been remitted home; and I had been able not merely to subsist by the labor of my hands, but to enjoy much that was costly, and an infinite deal more that was pleasurable and advantageous; and to return home, having liquidated every debt, save that of gratitude, well provided with apparel, and with ten pounds ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... saw Chauvelin's smooth forehead wrinkled into an anxious frown, and his thin hand nervously clutched upon the table, Robespierre heaved a pleasurable sigh, leaned back in his chair, and ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... glories that I have observed to encircle the heads of saints and madonnas in those old paintings have been mostly of a dirty drab-color'd yellow—a dull gambogium. Keep your old line: it will excite a confused kind of pleasurable idea in the reader's mind, not clear enough to be called a conception, nor just enough, I think, to reduce to painting. It is a rich line, you say, and riches hide a many faults. I maintain, that in the 2d antist: you do disjoin Nature and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... necessity. They love the hedge and bush where they were born, they return to the same tree, or the same spot under the eave. On the other hand, they like to roam about the fields and woods, and some of them travel long distances during the day. When the pleasurable cares of the nest are concluded, it is possible that they may in some cases cross the sea solely for the solace of change. Variety of food is itself a great pleasure. By prehistoric memory is meant the unconscious influence of ancient habit impressed ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... organism. Sensation and Emotion are prominent marks of it. These are either pleasurable or painful; the latter diminish vital motions, the former increase them. This is a product of natural selection. A mis-reading of these facts is the fallacy of Buddhism and other pessimistic systems. Pleasure comes from continuous action. This is illustrated by the esthetic ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... arises is: "Why does he not divide all feelings into pleasurable and not-pleasurable, rather than into 'painful and not-painful'?" A Westerner will not be at a loss to answer that: "Oh, the Hindu is naturally so very pessimistic, that he naturally ignores pleasure and speaks of painful and not-painful. The universe is full of pain." But that would ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... necessary that you should." He laughed and rubbed his hands in pleasurable anticipation. "There is a young man downstairs, who arrived a few moments before the lieutenant. He has a special affair. There were words. Herr Lieutenant is mad enough to fight ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... short, whether for the splendor of the prospects, the refreshing purity of the air, or the novelty of literally walking in the clouds, we esteem the journey over these downs, as pleasurable as any portion ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... is an impressionist. His best painting betrays something of that almost modern sensitiveness to pleasurable juxtapositions of delicate colour which we admire in Orchardson, in Linton (sic!), and in Albert Moore; it betrays, sometimes, as in a portrait of Miss Alexander, a deftness of brushwork in the wave of a feather, in the curve ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... not. I followed the ways of the world in the petty microcosm in which I had been placed. I knew not of mercy, of forgiveness, charity, or goodwill. I knew not that there was a God; I only knew that might was right, and the most pleasurable sensation which I felt, was that of anxiety for vengeance, combined with the consciousness ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... would often accumulate and prepare the items of suffering and enjoyment for the doer in his next life. Only the fruits of those actions which are extremely wicked or particularly good could be reaped in this life. The nature of the next birth of a man is determined by the nature of pleasurable or painful experiences that have been made ready for him by his maturing actions of this life. If the experiences determined for him by his action are such that they are possible to be realized in the life of a goat, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... circumstances! abstinence and cleanliness, labor and rest, these simple laws, observed in just proportions, laws that may be engrossed upon a finger nail, are sufficient, on the whole, to maintain the equilibrium of pleasurable existence. Yet, if once that equilibrium is disturbed, where is the science oftentimes deep enough to rectify the unfathomable watch-work? Even the simplicities of planetary motions do not escape distortion: nor is it easy to be convinced ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... one of Landor's favorites, although he was quite ready to allow the greatness of il gran poeta. He had no sympathy with what he said was very properly called a comedy. He would declare that about one sixth only of Dante was intelligible or pleasurable. Turning to Landor's writings, I find that in his younger days he was even less favorable to Dante. In the "Pentemeron" (the author spelling it so) he, in the garb of Petrarch, asserts that "at least sixteen parts in twenty of the Inferno and Purgatorio are detestable both ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... sleep, so you don't peter right out when the fun gets good an' plenty." But Nan had no use for sleep just now. She had no use for anything that might rob her of one moment of the delight and excitement of the Calthorpe Cattle Week, as it was called. Therefore she undutifully abandoned herself to a pleasurable review of events whilst waiting for the next act in the ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... up across the opening, two deep, eyes and mouths wide open. In the front rank Percy recognized the imp who had burnt his coat, Jabe's brother, whose chastisement had started the trouble. The lad was dancing up and down with pleasurable anticipation. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... her past life, and with so little thought or hope of ever visiting them again, she seemed to have a strange desire to know what happened in the busy world. Any old newspaper, or scrap of intelligence from London, she caught at with avidity. The excitement it produced was not of a pleasurable kind, for her manner at such times expressed the keenest anxiety and dread; but it never faded in the least degree. Then, and in stormy winter nights, when the wind blew loud and strong, the old expression came into her face, and she ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... twin accrues the credit of a pleasurable discovery about Plooie. This was that, if you sneaked softly up behind him and shouted: "Hey, Plooie! What was you doing in the war?" his jaw would drop and his whole rackety body begin to quiver, and he would heave his burden ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the mind, owing to wholly inexplicable causes, and are undoubtedly inherited. I have elsewhere given one instance from my own observation of an extraordinary and complex gesture, associated with pleasurable feelings, which was transmitted from a father to his daughter, as well as some ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... Men of distinction, almost universally, wore black clothes, the coats very long, black slouch hats, wide of brim, and white shirts with glistening or heavily ruffled fronts. There were also many black people in a state of pleasurable excitement, although the war—if one should come—would ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... well, applaud him; if one of us speaks ill, applaud him too; we are all in the same movement, we are all liberals, we are all in pursuit of truth." In this way the pursuit of truth becomes really a social, practical, pleasurable affair, almost requiring a chairman, a secretary, and advertisements; with the excitement of an occasional scandal, with a little resistance to give the happy sense of difficulty overcome; but, in general, plenty of ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... are from the rest of the world, I admit, and the winters are so long and severe as to tire our patience; but soldiers must do their duty, whether burning under the tropics or freezing in the wilds of Canada. It can not be a very agreeable life, when even the report of danger near to us becomes a pleasurable feeling from the excitement ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... there is a pleasurable excitement in all this which more than overbalances any trouble it may cost, especially when the world's applause for their good deeds is thrown into ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... important question. For, throughout our past reasonings about art, we have always found that nothing could be good or useful, or ultimately pleasurable, which was untrue. But here is something pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless untrue. And what is more, if we think over our favourite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... comfortable on deck. Distribution of life-saving contraptions, business with medical cards, gleeful hoots from the funnel, chug-chug from the paddles, and hey for Blighty! across a smooth lake of a sea. Yarns of attack and bombardment were interrupted by the pleasurable discovery that Dover's cliffs ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... few seconds later Nobby came padding out of the gloom with the cheerful demeanour of the labourer who has done well and shown himself worthy of his hire. Wise in his generation, he had learned that it is a hard heart which the pleasurable, if mistaken, glow of faithful service will not disarm. Sternly I set the miscreant upon my knee. For a moment we eyed one another with mutual mistrust and understanding. Then he thrust up a wet nose and ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... fearful deed, or that he was an utterly lost soul. He was ready to yield to temptation if it came in his way; he would even court it, but he did not shape out any plan very definitely in his mind, as a more desperate sinner would have done. He liked the pleasurable excitement of emotional relations with his pretty lambs, and enjoyed it under the name of religious communion. There is a border land where one can stand on the territory of legitimate instincts and affections, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... are happily conscious once more, we must do our utmost to keep you so, and to assist your recovery. Therefore, no more conversation, if you please, until I give you permission. What you now have to do is to remain perfectly quiet and free from all excitement, pleasurable or otherwise. Rest, sleep, take such food and such medicines as I shall order for you, and recover strength as rapidly as possible. Then, when you are sufficiently well to receive visitors, I will permit a few of the many who ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... cock his ears and fix his eyes, seemingly aware of his importance and pleased to be the object of the cutting remarks. And thus the miles from mountain to the outskirts of town were covered, miles pleasurable to him, every inch revealing something of fresh interest, every mile finding him more ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... in smoking cigars. The French habit of coffee-drinking and the English habit of tea-drinking are also cases in point. They are quite as expensive as ordinary Tobacco-smoking, and, like it, defensible only on the ground of the pleasurable sensation they communicate to the nervous system. But these habits are so universal that no one thinks of attacking them, unless now and then some persecuted smoker ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... thrilled," she acknowledged. "That was the pleasurable part of it I have been so, used to looking on at shows that bored me, listening to conversations that wearied me, attempting sensations which were repellent, that I just welcomed feeling, when it came—feeling of any sort. I was excited. I forgot everything else. I was so fascinated that I ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... understood grace, young and innocent beauty, the forms which express the tender and delicate feelings, those which the divine pencil of Raphael so admirably represented. I own that he took little heed of the pleasurable aspect of things; his austere genius was at ease only in grave thoughts; but I do not agree that he was always a stranger to gentle beauty, to feminine beauty in particular. I shall not cite the "Virgin" of the London Academy, nor in another order the admirable "Captive" of the Louvre ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... its length were dishes of fried potatoes, huge piles of bread, hot biscuits, plates of butter, pies of different kinds, maple syrup, and apple sauce. It was a breakfast fit for a lord, and Cameron sat down with a pleasurable anticipation induced by his early rising and his half hour's experience in the fresh morning air with the wood pile. A closer inspection, however, of the dishes somewhat damped the pleasure of his anticipation. The food was good, abundant, and well cooked, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... last addressed my St. Julian, I have been engaged in various scenes both of a pleasurable and a serious kind. I think I am guilty of no undue partiality to my own conduct when I assure you, that I have embarked in the lighter pursuits of associates of my own age without having at any time forgotten ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... game—any kind of game, for at that time he had had no experience whatever of the sport afforded by the woods of tropical Africa, and, having gathered only a few vague ideas from books, he went forth with all the pleasurable excitement and expectation that we may suppose peculiar ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... The pleasurable sensations excited by Lord Minto's most kind and friendly communications, were succeeded by the most racking anxieties respecting Malta. Fresh orders had arrived for the recall of the Portuguese squadron; and Captain Ball could with difficulty ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... of the wicked. As is said of conversation, so may be said of parties and picnics, which are names for outings or gatherings of various kinds at which refreshments may or may not be served. Should God's children be debarred from these pleasurable associations because the world goes too far ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... carefully. He had won the first trick, he told himself, and the thought was pleasurable. The conversation had started up again, but it was yet perfunctory, and Satherwaite realized that he was still an outsider. Doyle gave ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... style into its symbolical language is a pleasurable task. The three doors and three gable ends signify the Trinity, the Catherine-wheel window (if I mistake not) the Unity, as concentrated in Christ, the Light of the Church, from whose Greek monogram its ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the countenance of a child that longs for some prohibited dainty. At last the Doctor relented, took it down, and indulged himself in the gratification of letting her taste from his hand; his eyes, always expressive in the revelation of pleasurable feelings, luminously and smilingly avowed that it was a gratification; and he prolonged it by so regulating the position of the cup that only a drop at a time could reach the rosy, sipping lips by which its ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... definition is offered, with such classification as is necessary to the leading design of the work. Their effects upon the different functions of the animal economy are next noticed; and a description is given of a few of the most important passions belonging to each of the three great classes; namely, pleasurable, painful and mixed, into which they are separated; their physical phenomena and individual influence on the well-being of the human mechanism being closely examined. A forcible exposition is also given of the evil consequences resulting from ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... always be glad I have had my share in this expedition. I have learned what campaigning is; and I must say that, under such circumstances as we have gone through, it is not quite so pleasurable as I had expected. Half one's friends are dead or invalided home; and one never knows, when one wakes in the morning, whether one may not be down with cholera before night. The fighting is all well enough but, after all, that takes up but a very small portion of one's time; and marching ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... the spot. Bravo, thou nimble Shaver; worthy to shave old spectral Redcloak, and find treasures!—On the eighth day of this desperate siege, the sixth day of October, Austria finding it fruitless, draws off, with no pleasurable consciousness; rapidly, Dumouriez tending thitherward; and Lille too, black with ashes and smoulder, but jubilant skyhigh, flings its gates open. The Plat a barbe became fashionable; 'no Patriot of an elegant turn,' says Mercier several years afterwards, 'but shaves himself ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... from any demonstration, save an involuntary spasmodic ague. When this had passed, his eyesight and sensations grew clearer, and he sat in a mental doze, looking at things with quiet animal observation. His recollection of the state, after a lapse of minutes, was pleasurable. The necessity for motion, however, set him on his feet, and off he went, still Westward, out of the Park, and into streets. He trotted at a good pace. Suddenly came a call of his name in his ear, and he threw ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from having observed a milder form of St. Vitus' dance, not uncommon in his time, which was accompanied by involuntary laughter, and which bore a resemblance to the hysterical laughter of the moderns, except that it was characterized by more pleasurable sensations, and by an extravagant propensity to dance. There was no howling, screaming, and jumping, as in the severer form; neither was the disposition to dance by any means insuperable. Patients thus affected, although they had not a complete ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... continued M. Fridriksson, "that my occupation will entirely preclude the possibility of my accompanying you. It would have been both pleasurable and profitable if I ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... come to this decision the lad was all impatience for the time to arrive when he might embark upon his career. As it is with most lads, so it was with him, the prospect of a complete change in his mode of life was full of pleasurable excitement; and perhaps it was only natural that, now he had decided to forsake it, the monotonous humdrum fisher's life became almost unbearably irksome to him. Old Bill Maskell was not slow to observe this, and with the unselfishness which was so eminently characteristic of him, though he loved ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... wants are satisfied through the articles appropriated for weapons, shelter, clothing, ornament; the act of appropriating comes to be one constantly involving agreeable associations, and one which is therefore pleasurable, irrespective of the end subserved. And when, as in civilized life, the property acquired is of a kind not conducing to one order of gratification in particular, but is capable of administering to all gratifications, the pleasure ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... at the protester, whose presence he had not noticed in the pleasurable excitement of the moment. It was a Jewish young man, indifferently attired in a pepper-and-salt suit. The muscular hostler measured him ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... white-washed in front, and hedged in by a rustic fence, with a little gate opening next the road. This was the dwelling of our schoolmistress, the remembrance of whom will ever be an oasis upon the deserts of memory—for to her I owe some of the most pleasurable moments of my boyhood existence. A more Christian-like spirit, a soul fraught with greater or intenser sympathies, and a mind less selfish in its manifestations, or imbued with more genial influences than hers, never existed within ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... best sort of life is always the grayest. The life which attracts is generally the one to be avoided. We don't do our duty," Mr. Weatherley added, brushing his hat upon his sleeve reflectively, "by always looking out upon the pleasurable side of life. Good ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... broad smile or grin, (3) laugh, (4) loud laughter, (5) paroxysms of uncontrolled laughter, a man or woman can prevent all indication by muscular movement of a desire to laugh or even to smile. Usually laughter is excited by certain pleasurable emotions, and is to be regarded as an "expression" of such emotion just as certain movements and the flow of tears are an "expression" of the painful emotion of grief and physical suffering, and as other movements of the face ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... your present letter, which I will answer with pleasurable care. At present I send you the Tauchnitz edition of my things. The bound copy is hideous, but more convenient—the other pretty. You will find a good many things bettered (I believe) even on the latest English edition. I did not remember that the line you quote from Sister Helen appeared in ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... said the darky, a pleasurable gleam passing through his eyes; 'dat sort don't run; ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... nothing very strange in this—a mere reaction of the mind after severe pain—and, to a young man of twenty-five, there are few more pleasurable images than that of a beautiful maiden with blue eyes, blooming cheeks, ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... on record that up to the year when Carlyle was married, his "most pleasurable times were those when he enjoyed a quiet pipe with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... weight with you from choice that my authority had from necessity. My advice is just eight-and-twenty years older than your own, and consequently, I believe you think, rather better. As for your tender and pleasurable passions, manage them yourself; but let me have the direction of all the others. Your ambition, your figure, and your fortune, will, for some time at least, be rather safer in my keeping than ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... cried, her eyes popping with pleasurable excitement. "The Haldens are in town for over Sunday, and the girls are going to the party tomorrow night! They've just landed yesterday and were in the customer's hunting up suits when ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... and respect. They may skate together the whole afternoon and converse upon politics, art or philosophy, the young woman feeling herself swung along—almost actually carried on her companion's strong arm. The whole experience is, in the highest degree, pleasurable and exhilarating to her, yet she may be conscious of absolutely no sexual stimulation. On the other hand, the young man experiences most exalted pleasure in the company of his young lady friend—through the pressure ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... ten years old when this happened: but whether it was, that the action itself was more in unison to my nerves at that age of pity, which instantly set my whole frame into one vibration of most pleasurable sensation;—or how far the manner and expression of it might go towards it;—or in what degree, or by what secret magick,—a tone of voice and harmony of movement, attuned by mercy, might find a passage to my heart, I know not;—this I know, that ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... of Kunti, of scattering seeds on the ground. Let there be no doubt then in thy mind. Where, however, wealth that is more or even equal is not to be gained, there should be no expenditure of wealth. For investment of wealth are like the ass, scratching, pleasurable at first but painful afterwards. Thus, O king of men, the person who throweth away like seeds a little of his virtue in order to gain a larger measure of virtue, is regarded as wise. Beyond doubt, it is as I say. They that are wise alienate the friends of the foe that owneth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the waist of the ship and on to the promenade-deck of the third-class passengers, where a huddle of stores, coiled ropes, and riff-raff prevented these poor from taking any pleasurable exercise. I stood at the taffrail and peered down at the welter of white water, the foam of the buffets of the whirling screws, and then at the wide wake, which in imagination went on and on in a luminous path to the place we had departed from, to the dock ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... of the larva, which is the first state of animal existence in the caterpillar, for his appetite is voracious, and, as a French naturalist states in describing that insect, "Tout est estomac dans un larve." —— is of the opinion of Aretaeus, that the stomach is the great source of pleasurable affections, and that as Nature "abhors a vacuum," the more filled it ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain, upon the bleak walls, upon the vacant eye-like windows, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... nationality find the propaganda of Esperanto most pleasurable. Our readers will appreciate the beautiful words of Dr. Busuttil (Malta), and doubtless it will give equal pleasure to read the following letter of Dr. Ostrovsky ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 3 • Various
... presented himself. He entered with much more ceremony than when Milvain was alone; on his visage was a grave respectfulness, his step was light, his whole bearing expressed diffidence and pleasurable anticipation. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... food, drink, and sleep, and all else that is sought in right reason, as is plain from Damascene (De Fide Orth. iii, 14). Yet it does not therefore follow that in Christ there was the fomes of sin, for this implies the lust after pleasurable things against the order ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... heard Mr. Mann was dead at Florence!"' How kind! To entertain one with the chitchat of the town, a man comes and tells one that one's dearest friend is dead! I am sure he would have lost his speech if he had had any thing pleasurable to tell. If ever there is a metempsychosis, his soul will pass into a vulture and prey upon carcases after a battle, and then go and bode at the windows of their relations. But I will say no more of him; I will punish him sufficiently, if sufficiently there be, by telling him you are perfectly ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... was not beautiful in any strictly defined sense of the word she possessed a certain evasive charm and distinction of appearance that left beholders with a pleasurable sense of satisfaction in that softly rounded girlhood of hers, with all its strongly felt potentialities. Those who knew Anne best felt, without realizing that they felt it, that her greatest attraction was the ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... memorials, savages or monsters running away with us! Fortified by these ideas, we emerged from the tent, properly equipped, and then had to take leave of the little girls. Their notions all tended towards the pleasurable kind, and had we been in a civilized place, spectators might have imagined we were starting for a good day's shopping in London or elsewhere, provided they had interpreted the young ladies' wishes as toys and not real live ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... struck with his great knowledge of Scripture; his mind seems to have been quite a concordance in itself, and we meet with epistles almost solely framed of quotations from the sacred books, in substantiation of some principle, or as grounds for some argument advanced. These are pleasurable instances, and convey a gentle hint that the greater plenitude of the Bible has not, in all cases, emulated us to study it with equal energy; there are few who would now surpass the ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... which is so grateful to the nostrils of playgoers. Austin gazed around him with keen interest. He had not been inside a theatre for years, and the vivid description that Mr Buskin had given him of the show he was about to witness filled him with pleasurable anticipation. To all intents and purposes, the experience that awaited him was something entirely new; how, he wondered, would it fit into his scheme of life? What room would there be, in his idealistic philosophy, for ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... commenced her toilet with that feeling of pleasurable anticipation common to most girls of her age. Not that she failed to appreciate her own good looks, for she did not, but because in order to attain the desired effects she was forced to exercise a nice discrimination ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... greater sincerity for his own experiments. But 'even amorous sonnets in the gallantest and sweetest civil vein,' wrote Gabriel Harvey in 'Pierces Supererogation' in 1593, 'are but dainties of a pleasurable wit.' Drayton's sonnets more nearly approached Shakespeare's in quality than those of any contemporary. Yet Drayton told the readers of his collection entitled 'Idea' {105} (after the French) that if any sought genuine passion in them, they had ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... fully appreciated his playing," returned Miss Wilder. "To hear the great Savelli was an unexpected privilege. I shall look forward to your bazaar with pleasurable anticipation and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... from the two former papers, that I am not in affluent circumstances; the intimation, therefore, that four distant relations, occupying a sufficiently high position in society, intended to dine with me, was received with a feeling the reverse of pleasurable, both by myself and my single servant. The dining-room and its table were so very small, that I never gave even family dinners. Rose had no idea of waiting; and, moreover, to cook and wait at one and the same time, is by no means an easy task for any one. I could not bear the idea ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... weeks and months after his leaving Meredith when his soul cried aloud to him but was smothered. He would not heed. He let business and coarse, pleasurable excitement gain power over him, and when they lagged he drank his conscience ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... Justice with her balance and sword, standing between the sun and moon, with a background of pinks, borage, and corn-cockle: a third is only a cluster of tulips and iris, with two Byzantine peacocks; but the spirits of Penelope and Ariadne reign vivid in all the work—and the richness of pleasurable fancy is as great still, in these silken labors, as in the marble arches and golden roof of the ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... The dreamy, pleasurable days at the Villa Ariadne were no more. The spirit of suspicion, of unrest, of doubt now stalked abroad, peering from veiled eyes, hovering on lips. And there was a coming and going of menials, a to-and-froing of extra gardeners and carpenters, and the sound of many ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... endure the scene no longer. His enemy, busily engaged in the pleasurable task of eating, might be easier to handle; or, at least he could inflict painful injury to his lower extremities. While up in the tree he might also be able to catch one of the panic-stricken parrots which were climbing and fluttering around the destroyer ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... prepared. The hour of supper being arrived, we repair to rooms illuminated with the lustre of a thousand tapers fragrant with amber. The supper-room is surrounded by three vast galleries, in which are placed musicians, whose various instruments fill the mind with the most pleasurable and the softest emotions. The young girls are seated at table with us, and, towards the conclusion of the repast, they sing songs, which are hymns in honour of the God who has endowed us with senses which shed such a ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... to speak to the keeper's wife; but we saw no more of Lady Dedlock, except at church on Sundays. There was company at Chesney Wold; and although several beautiful faces surrounded her, her face retained the same influence on me as at first. I do not quite know even now whether it was painful or pleasurable, whether it drew me towards her or made me shrink from her. I think I admired her with a kind of fear, and I know that in her presence my thoughts always wandered back, as they had done at first, to that old ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... The pleasurable anticipations of the boys, who had a lively recollection of the toothsome bird with a flavour half-way between roast fowl and pheasant, seemed likely to be damped, for they had been waiting quite half an hour without hearing or seeing anything, ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... of judging the picture by its dramatic presentation of a situation or its rendering of character; will, in short, demand of the painting that it shall be in the first place a good illustration. Those others who seek in painting what is usually sought in music, the communication of a pleasurable state of emotion, will prefer pictures which suggest pleasant associations, nice people, refined amusements, agreeable landscapes. In many cases this lack of clearness is of comparatively slight importance, the given picture containing all these pleasure-giving elements ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... depths was thrillingly suggestive, and yet entirely believable. The palpably impossible had small appeal for them. But when first they saw the great blue bird alight where they knew the water was fathoms deep, they came near being surprised. At least, they felt the pleasurable sensation of wonder. How was the heron supported on the water? From their green nest the children gazed and gazed; and the great blue bird held them with the gem-like radiance of its unwinking eye. At length to Reuben came a vision of the top of an ancient tree-trunk just beneath ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Landis. I mean to prepare her well and send her in my place. When the potatoes turned out better than I'd been counting on, I just sat down and laughed. Then I got ready and came down here to tell Landis. There she is now." She arose, a trace of pleasurable excitement showing in her manner and lighting up her weather-beaten face, and moved to where Landis, radiant and self-confident, stood with Min and others of ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... least a silent confidant, and perhaps when I am older I shall be able to read with a certain pleasurable interest its record of my singular adventures. No other man in France, on May 1, 1857, can have been transformed so suddenly, as by the wand of a witch, from a powerful and wealthy young nobleman of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... found a mass of people, mostly comprising those who had been spectators rather than actors in the siege. I remember being seized with strange feelings when I saw their little air of derision and their sneers as they looked down towards the Palace in pleasurable anticipation. They imagined, these self-satisfied people who had done so little to defend themselves, that a day of reckoning had at last come when they would be able to do as they liked towards this detestable Palace, which had given them so many ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... secrets to light than ever did paid policeman—I should never have grasped this talisman of love and hope, never have waked up as I did wake up from that hour to the endurance which immortalizes endeavor, and renders patience almost pleasurable. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... insignificant of peace offerings, and yet Archie experienced a pleasurable thrill as Putney Congdon accepted one from his case. They were very good cigarettes, of a brand with which Archie had supplied himself generously at Tiffin and Congdon expressed his approval ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... upon this head, to assume the pleasurable, but modest language, with which he has concluded his narrative of his second navigation round the globe: 'Whatever,' says he, 'may be the public judgment about other matters, it is with real satisfaction, and without claiming any merit but that of attention to my duty, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... she drew a number of pictures of various objects, and made me repeat their names, and then she cut out the alphabet in cardboard, by which means I very soon knew my letters. If I was sick she never attempted to teach me, so that all the means offered me of gaining knowledge were pleasurable, and I thus took at once a strong liking to learning, which has never deserted me. Before the termination of the voyage. I could express myself in English, so as to be understood as well as are most children of my age; and as Sir Charles would ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... weeks that followed were to Dennis such as only come once in a lifetime, and not in every lifetime either. A true, pure love was growing up within his heart—growing as the little child develops in strength and pleasurable life, and yet unconsciously to itself. It seemed as if some strong magician's wand had touched the world or him. Everything was transfigured, and no wonderland was more full of interest than that in which he existed. His life was a waking dream, in which nothing was distinct ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... beads, baskets and carven ladles, and wonderful woven blankets to lay at the feet of their now acknowledged ruler, the great Tyee. And he, in turn, gave such a potlatch that nothing but tradition can vie with it. There were long, glad days of joyousness, long pleasurable nights of dancing and camp fires, and vast quantities of food. The war canoes were emptied of their deadly weapons and filled with the daily catch of salmon. The hostile war songs ceased, and in their place were ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... to the teaching of dirty gossip, of unclean classical allusions in his school-books, of scraps of newspaper intelligence, possibly of bad companions whom he may pick up at school or business, and be sure of it, as this side of his nature is awakened—in his search after gratified curiosity or pleasurable sensation, in utter ignorance of what he is doing, through your fault, not through his—he will use his imagination and his will to strengthen the animal instincts. What ought to have been kept ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... actively unpleasant to a rival is apt to be a very pleasurable sensation. Victor had an exceedingly disagreeable half-hour to avenge and to declare St. Genis a prisoner of war, to order his removal to Grenoble pending the Emperor's pleasure, to command him to be silent when he desired to speak was so much soothing ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... right" whispers the Voice, "does this savage, merciless, persecuting animal, to which the sufferings and writhings of others of its wretched kind furnish the most pleasurable sensations, and the mass of which care only to eat, sleep, be clothed, and wallow in sensual pleasures, and the best of which wrangle, hate, envy, and, with few exceptions, regard their own interests alone,—with what right does it endeavor to delude itself into ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... figuratively speaking; you come in contact with more diversified aspects of life than a person of my limited means can afford to do. The body, you say, is a subtle instrument to be played upon in every variety of manner and rendered above all things as sensitive as possible to pleasurable impressions. In fact, you want to be a kind of Aeolian harp. I admit that this is more than a string of sophisms; you may call it a philosophy of life. But it is not my philosophy. It does not appeal to me in the least. You will get no satisfaction ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Mondolfo—to go out into that world of which I had read so much; to mingle with my fellow-man, with youths of my own age, perhaps with maidens like Luisina, to see cities and the ways of cities; here indeed was matter for excitement. Yet it was an excitement not altogether pleasurable; for with my very natural curiosity, and with my eagerness to have it gratified, were blended certain fears imbibed from the only quality of reading that had ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... There are many pleasurable recollections of the period when "the good old English gentleman" used to keep his pack of beagles or little harriers, slow but sure, occasionally carried to the field in a pair of panniers on a horse's ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... to thank you for many pleasurable and even emotional hours. The offering which I present to you now is the only ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... neighbour, smoke his cigars and drink his whisky, brought to you while reclining in a long chair on the verandah with the punkah swinging lazily over you, waiting for the master's return. This is done with the pleasurable knowledge that your friend would naturally instal himself in your house under like circumstances. Here is real charm. Think, too, of the outdoor life, of those lovely evenings when the air is soft and warm, the moon at full and of a size never ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready |
