"Ravishing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wearing. I kept her busy with her 'pin-balls and knittin'-work, and supplied Almiry with pretty materials for the various things I found she could make. You wouldn't believe what dainty bows those long fingers could tie, what ravishing doll's hats she would make out of a scrap of silk and lace, or the ingenious things she concocted with cones and shells and fans and baskets. I love such work, and used to go and help her often, for I wanted her window and shop to be full for Christmas, and lure in plenty ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... and pronounce that you are ravishing," Victorine said at length, folding her hands with a sigh of satisfaction, as she fell back in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... universe With ECSTASIES of heat, of hue, of harmony! Its INNER gaze creating Life in Fact, So, robing sheer Reality in colors ravishing, Giving it Voice, forming within it Heart, And vitalizing All with Feeling—Being's blood. This is our Eye, viewing the world ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... —thus with hia stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, tow'rds his design moves like ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... and from whom a word, a glance even, was deemed the greatest and most gratifying distinction—whom all orders, classes, and conditions of men had combined to stimulate with multiplied adulation, with all the glory and ravishing delights of the world, as it were, forced upon him—to see him thus assailed with the savage execrations of all those vile things who exult in the fall of every thing that is great and the abasement of every thing that is ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... strange lecture comes next in your letter! You say I must familiarize my mind with the fact, that 'Miss Austen is not a poetess, has no "sentiment"' (you scornfully enclose the word in inverted commas), 'no eloquence, none of the ravishing enthusiasm of poetry',—and then you add, I must 'learn to acknowledge her as one of the greatest artists, of the greatest painters of human character, and one of the writers with the nicest sense of means to an end that ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... great floor, holding the instrument delicately poised, and still awaking its ravishing voice, stood a figure, the sight of which almost stopped ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... through and inquired what they wanted. Seeing, however, who it was that had knocked, he forthwith drew the bar and allowed them to enter, which was into a pleasant policy adorned with jonquils and jelly-flowers, and all manner of blooming and odoriferous plants, most voluptuous to the smell and ravishing to behold, the scents and fragrancies whereof smote my grandfather for a time, as he said, with the very anguish of delight. But, on looking behind to see who had given them admittance, he was astounded when, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... the scenes of earth seem lovelier to me than to most mortals; whether there is more ravishing sweetness in the springtime, more glory in summer, more richness and beauty in the autumn, more rest and whiteness in the winter, more transcendent splendor in the sunset sky and glory in the starlit heavens. But it is certain that in being admitted to this inner realm the writer has ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... as sweet as ditties highly penn'd, Sung by a fair queen in a Summer's bower, With ravishing division, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... painting both behold pleasure and profit as their common object,[420] is rhetorical—depending on precept and example—and attaining its true aim when it moves men to action. Poesy is "a dulcet and gentle Philosophy, which leades on and guides us by the hand to Action with a ravishing delight and incredible Sweetnes."[421] Jonson evidently knew that he was merging oratory and poetry in their common purpose of securing persuasion; for ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... her innocence will save her from the knowledge of her loss. As for Balder,—his suffering will satisfy a reasonable enemy. No wife, no fortune, the cup dashed from his lips just as the aroma was ravishing his nostrils!—O, enough! Open the door, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... it seems as though sentiments liked to be complete when they showed themselves, and are sublime by juxtaposition. So it is with faces. In Paris one sometimes sees in the aristocracy, set like stars, the ravishing faces of young people, the fruit of quite exceptional manners and education. To the youthful beauty of the English stock they unite the firmness of Southern traits. The fire of their eyes, a delicious bloom on their lips, the lustrous black ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... There, as the goddess says to Bran, "there is nothing rough or harsh, but sweet music striking on the ear." It sounded from birds on every tree, from the branches of trees, from marvellous stones, and from the harps of divine musicians. And this is recalled in the ravishing music which the belated traveller hears as he passes fairy-haunted spots—"what pipes and timbrels, what wild ecstasy!" The romantic beauty of Elysium is described in these Celtic tales in a way unequalled in all other sagas or Maerchen, and it is insisted on by those who come to lure mortals ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... shoulders of the Indian porters, and, after being carefully registered, were placed in safe deposit under a strong guard. They now began to believe that the magnificent promises of the Inca would be fulfilled. But, as their avarice was sharpened by the ravishing display of wealth, such as they had hardly dared to imagine, they became more craving and impatient. They made no allowance for the distance and the difficulties of the way, and loudly inveighed against the tardiness with which the royal commands were executed. They even suspected ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... salubrity of the air; all, in a word, pours contentment and joy into the soul of the enchanted spectator. It is above all in the morning, when the sun is rising, and in the evening when he is setting, that the spectacle is really ravishing. I could not detach my regards from that superb picture, till the nascent obscurity had obliterated its perfection. Then, to the sweet pleasure that I had tasted, succeeded a triste, not to say, a sombre, melancholy. How comes it to pass, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... eloquent appeal of an intrepid Huguenot pastor, determined to petition the States General for the free exercise of the reformed religion. The representatives of the church made its complaints regarding the "ravishing wolves, false preachers, and their adherents, who are to-day in so great numbers that there are not so many true sheep knowing the voice of their shepherds." The "mild and holy admonitions" of the church having been ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... course, George always sends her some, but these are altogether ravishing," cried Annie, with a ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... and self-contained in general company, would laugh till the tears ran down her cheeks; and the music of her laughter, which was deep and low, rang more agreeably to Barty's ear than even the ravishing strains of Adelina Patti—the last of the great prime donne of our time, I think—whose voice still stirs me to the depths, with vague remembrance of fresh girlish ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... in age from six to fifteen. Miss Nixon made a special class of us, and aided us so skilfully and earnestly in our endeavors to "see-a-cat," and "hear-a-dog-bark," and "look-at-the-hen," that we turned over page after page of the ravishing history, eager to find out how the common world looked, smelled, and tasted in the strange speech. The teacher knew just when to let us help each other out with a word in our own tongue,—it happened that we were all Jews,—and ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... deep ecstatic sigh. The ball! It was the crowning glory, and—she had a beautiful new gown for each event. It was a ravishing thought. Perhaps a mere man may be forgiven his lack of imagination in his appreciation of such perfect, unutterable delight. But Nan had no cloud to obscure her sun. The labor of dressing afresh, three times in one evening without a maid, except the questionable ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... of the Atlantic. Philosophers, historians, musicians, warriors, and poets slept side by side around me; some beneath the gorgeous monument, and some beneath the simple headstone. But the political intrigue, the dream of science, the historical research, the ravishing harmony of sound, the tried courage, the inspiration of the lyre—where are they? With the living, and not with the dead! The right hand has lost its cunning in the grave; but the soul, whose high volitions it obeyed, still lives to reproduce ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... road. She smiled at you over her shoulder radiant in a white tricot Palm Beach suit, who thought palms grew in jardinieres only. On page 17 she was revealed in the boyish impudence of our Aiken Polo Habit, complete, $90. She was ravishing in her golf clothes, her small feet in sturdy, flat-heeled boots planted far apart, and only the most carping would have commented on the utter impossibility of her stance. Then there was the Killiecrankie ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... free in this ample space, and my sighs had more liberal vent among these orchard gardens."[47] Madame de Warens was the semi-divine figure who made the scene live, and gave it perfect and harmonious accent. He had neither transports nor desires by her side, but existed in a state of ravishing calm, enjoying without knowing what. "I could have passed my whole life and eternity itself in this way, without an instant of weariness. She is the only person with whom I never felt that dryness in conversation, which turns the duty of ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... soul-ravishing, Shines from his prayer, that now he be shriven Of all the past! And penitence lavishing, All he confesses; with glad homage given Mirrors and masses Deep the mountains' high peaks ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... seen him in man's clothes in the street, but though a fine-looking fellow, he had not made any impression on me, for one could see at once that he was only half a man, but on the stage in woman's dress the illusion was complete; he was ravishing. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... launch-whistle and as fetching as a baby's cry. Instantly three chambermaids, two barmaids, the two maiden sisters who were breakfasting on the shady side of the inn gable, and the dog's owner, who, in a ravishing gown, was taking her coffee under one of the Japanese umbrellas, came rushing out of their respective hiding-places, impelled by an energy and accompanied by an impetuousness rarely seen except perhaps in some heroic attempt to save a drowning child sinking ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... envy, and he was accused of magical arts: his harp had been heard to pour forth strains of ravishing beauty when no human hand was near, and other like prodigies, savouring of the black art, were said to attend him, so that he fled the court, and took refuge with his uncle, Elphege, the Bishop ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... The wool-clad flocks and shaggy goats to treat. Here lies a labour; hence for glory look, Brave husbandmen. Nor doubtfully know How hard it is for words to triumph here, And shed their lustre on a theme so slight: But I am caught by ravishing desire Above the lone Parnassian steep; I love To walk the heights, from whence no earlier track Slopes gently downward to Castalia's spring. Now, awful Pales, strike a louder tone. First, for the sheep soft pencotes I decree To browse ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... and I are on the intention to make good cheer, and a great expense; -and this country is in possession to furnish wherewithal to amuse oneself. All that England has of illustrious, all that youth has of amiable, or beauty of ravishing, sees itself in this quarter. Render yourself here, then, my friend; and you shall find assembled all that there is of best, whether ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... those anthems of our festal days, Whose ravishing division held apart The lips of listening throngs in sweet amaze, Moved in all breasts the selfsame ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Ireland, where he became Secretary to the Reverend James Usher, Arch-bishop of Armagh: one suitable to his disposition, having a Genius byassed to Devotion; Here at leisure times did he exercise himself in those ravishing delights of Poetry, but (alwaies with the Psalmist) his heart was inditing a good matter; these in time produced those excellent works of his, viz. his Histories of Jonas, Esther, Job, and Sampson; his Sions Songs and Sions ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... Abrizah, mercy! leave me not for I * Of thy love and Yamani[FN225] glance the victim lie My heart is cut to pieces by thy cruelty, * My body wasted and my patience done to die: From glances ravishing all hearts with witchery * Reason far flies, the while desire to thee draws nigh; Though at thy call should armies fill the face of earth * E'en now I'd win my wish and worlds in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... of life, and then he looked as happy as a man who had helped a fellow being through a momentous undertaking, and was grateful to know that he had not lived in vain. Laura thanked him once more. The words were music to his ear; but what were they compared to the ravishing smile with which she flooded his whole system? When she bowed her adieu and turned away, he was no longer suffering torture in the pillory where she had had him trussed up during so many distressing moments, but he belonged to the list of her conquests and was a flattered and happy ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... sky, the soft mellow atmosphere, the brilliant surroundings, and the flowers and flashing gems, rich dresses and ravishing music, and every form of splendour and luxury, combined to create a scene that to Tancred was startling, as well from its beauty as its novel character. A rich note of Therese Laurella for an instant arrested ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... looked away from my eyes. I saw the colour spreading in a slow wave over her cheeks; it was like those tints of early dawn that are so ravishing to the souls of poets. "In four or five months from now—-" ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... touched his forehead lightly for an instant with her slender fingers in facetious demonstration, and he trembled in painful rapture. And she played on her lute, too, on the lute he had given her of old, those slender fingers making ravishing music on the many-stringed instrument, though her pose as she played was more witching still. What a beautiful glimpse of white shoulders and dainty lace her straight-cut black ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... chattered to him, jeered at him, flattered him with all the arts and graces of the practiced flirt she was, until Larry, swept from his bearings, walked the clouds in a wonder world of rosy lights and ravishing airs. His face, his eyes, his eager words, his tremulous lips, were all eloquent of this new passion that ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... began auspiciously. Quite puffed up with vainglorious pride over the little maiden's admiration of one of my modest possessions, while Bee's and Mrs. Jimmie's ravishing masterpieces had received not even a look, we met Jimmie bustling up with programmes and opera-glasses, and went toward the main entrance. We showed our tickets, and were sent to the side door. We went to the side door, and were ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... at pleasure in the delightfull pasture on either border. the young geese are now completely feathered except the wings which both in the young and old are yet deficient. after feasting my eyes on this ravishing prospect and resting myself a few minutes I determined to procede as far as the river which I saw discharge itself on the West side of the Missouri convinced that it was the river which the Indians call ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... his admiration; and fully did the amateur give the expression to one sense of the words uttered, for he was indeed the true representative of a thief stealing onwards in the night, "with Tarquin's ravishing strides," and disguising his face as if he were thoroughly ashamed of it. The darkness of the scene did not, however, show his real character so much as the masquerade, when he came forward with hideous grin, and made what he considered his bow,—which consisted in thrusting his ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... whose head Of gods is honored, With song made splendent in the sight of men— Whose heart most sweetly stout, From ravishing France cast out, Being firstly hers, was hers most wholly then— Or where on shining seas like wine The dove's wings draw the drooping Erycine. (Give ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... unprotected lives. Its true nature must be concealed even from Clotilde. What a secret—for what a spirit—to keep from what a companion!—a secret yielding honey to her, but, it might be, gall to Clotilde. She felt like one locked in the Garden of Eden all alone—alone with all the ravishing flowers, alone with all the lions and tigers. She wished she had told the secret when it was small and had let it increase by gradual accretions in Clotilde's knowledge day by day. At first it had been but a garland, then it had become a chain, now it ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... they played on them! I regarded their performance as a species of duet; and the raw materials, ranged in the sand about the fire, were the keys. Frank touched this, Charley touched that, and over the fire the music grew—perfectly stomach-ravishing! ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... is the penetration displayed on almost every subject of imposition and delusion, he appears still to cling, with the obstinacy of a veteran, to some of the darling Dalilahs of his youth, "to the admirable and soul-ravishing knowledge of the three great Hypostatical principles of nature, salt, sulphur, and mercury," and, proh pudor! to alchemy and astrology—and those seraphic doctors and professors, Crollius, Libavius, and Van Helmont. He closed his ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... stringes in accorde, Heard I so play, a ravishing swetnesse, That God, that maker is of all and Lorde, Ne heard never better, as I gesse, Therewith a wind, unneth it might be lesse, Made in the leaves grene a noise soft, Accordant to the foules ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... proper, fair, Magnetic, graceful, splendid, pleasant, rare, Obliging, sprightly, virtuous, young, solacious, Kind, neat, quick, feat, bright, compt, ripe, choice, dear, precious. Alluring, courtly, comely, fine, complete, Wise, personable, ravishing, and sweet, Come joys enjoy. The Lord celestial Hath given enough wherewith ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... chivalry which were then being first printed and were much read. At that time Anne Boleyn, a lady who had lately returned from France, and appeared from time to time at Court, saw him at her feet; she was not exactly of ravishing beauty, but full of spirit and grace and with a certain reserve. While she resisted the King, she held ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... attractions with which she sought to win his admiration. Far away his thoughts were wandering, and in the dim distance Fancy was busy with half-defined shapes, which her plastic hand, with rapid touches, moulded into forms that seemed instinct with a purer life, and to glow with a more ravishing beauty than any thing yet seen in the actual he had made his own. And as these forms became more and more vividly pictured in his imagination, the pace of Edward Markland quickened; and all the changing aspects of the man showed him to be ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... stripling shrub; the very pines, with four or five exceptions in all our upper canyon, were not so tall as myself, or but a little taller, and the most of them came lower than my waist. For a prosperous forest tree, we must look below, where the glen was crowded with green spires. But for flowers and ravishing perfume, we had none to envy: our heap of road-metal was thick with bloom, like a hawthorn in the front of June; our red, baking angle in the mountain, a laboratory of poignant scents. It was an endless wonder to my mind, as I dreamed about the platform, following the progress ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon the discharge of my duties as a Justice of the Peace the only comment that was made by the local Democratic paper of the town was in these words: "We are now beginning to reap the ravishing fruits of Reconstruction." ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... down at the Hall, in hopes to have confirmed the poor woman in her newly assumed penitence. God give her grace to persevere in it!—To be an humble means of saving a soul from perdition! O my dear Miss Darnford, let me enjoy that heart-ravishing hope!—To pluck such a brand as this out of the fire, and to assist to quench its flaming susceptibility for mischief, and make it useful to edifying purposes, what a pleasure does this afford one! ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... With a ravishing swagger, half-lifted wings, and deep, guttural hissing, the lover approached again. He suddenly lifted his body, but she coolly rocked forward on the limb, glided gracefully beneath him, and slowly sailed into the Limberlost. He recovered himself and gazed ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... unexplored, neglected. Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, by its possession of words resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and farther removed from the domain of strict thought than the impressions excited by music itself. Here lay hidden the secret of the sensuous art of literature; it was the secret of suggestion, the art of causing delicious sensation by the use of words. In a way, therefore, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... conqueror, the relentless foe of Austria, and called down the wrath of Heaven on the French emperor, who always spoke of peace and conciliation, and always stirred up quarrels and enmities. The latest reverses of Austria had produced a most painful impression upon the aged maestro, and the ravishing joy which had illuminated Joseph Haydn's face at the performance of "The Creation," had long since disappeared from his careworn and mournful countenance. His eyes were gloomy and dim, and often veiled with ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... moved and had his being in the sanctuary of the hills, the high altar-stairs of the mountains, the sublime silences of the stately pines—where birds sung their matins and the "stars became tapers tall"; where the zitkadanto—the blue bird—uttered its ravishing notes. He sought the kat-yi-mo—the "enchanted mesa"—as the place of prayer, the hour in which to register his oath. On the wide extended plain, rolling green, like the billows of the ocean, he listened for wana'gipi tah'upahupi—"the wings of the spirits." In wana'gi ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... but his judgment be imposed upon in the most ordinary common concerns, he shall come under the scandal of being thought next door to a madman. As suppose any one should hear an ass bray, and should take it for ravishing music; or if any one, born a beggar, should fancy himself as great as a prince, or the like. But this sort of madness, if (as is most usual) it be accompanied with pleasure, brings a great satisfaction both ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... far from the "Alhambra," and is separated from it by a deep and romantic ravine. Passing through a level avenue of cypress and rosebushes, we arrived at its main entrance. The first view of the interior was ravishing. The virgin stream of the Daru, here collected in a narrow canal, was rushing with a musical sound through arbors of cypresses and files of flowery trees, arranged like fairy sentinels on either side. Passing on, we soon reached the "trysting-place" of Zoraya, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... the giants. Orm and his wife heard them covering the table, and the clattering of the plates, and the shouts of joy with which they celebrated their banquet. When it was over, and it drew near to midnight, they began to dance to that ravishing fairy air which charms the mind into such sweet confusion, and which some have heard in the rocky glens, and learned by listening to the underground musicians. As soon as Aslog caught the sound of the air she felt an irresistible longing to see ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... Hooker's successors has called him "a son of thunder and a son of consolation by turns." The same may be said of Thomas Shepard, another graduate of Emmanuel College in the old Cambridge, who became the "soul-melting preacher" of the newer Cambridge by the Charles. Pure, ravishing notes of spiritual devotion still sing themselves in his pages. He is wholly Calvinist. He thinks "the truth is a poor mean thing in itself" and that the human reason cannot be "the last resolution of all doubts," which must be sought only in the written Word of God. He holds it "a tough work, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... and there, framed in the doorway, in a Red Cross uniform, stood his dream girl, looking so much more ravishing than she had before that he promptly snatched the blue and gray vision from its place of honor and installed a red, white, and blue one instead. So engrossed was he in the apparition that he quite failed to see Captain Phipps ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... capitals, the sage is saddened with the knowledge that comeliness, at best, is but an exquisite hypocrisy. I have striven also, vainly, for contentment in the luxuries of voluptuous living. The talisman of Epicurus has evaded my grasp—the glittering bauble![5] The ravishing ideal JOY, has been to me not as the statue to Pygmalion: I have grovelled down in adoration at its feet, and have found it the same immobile, relentless, unresponsive image. Youth is yet mine, but it is a youth hoary in desolation. Centuries ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... and, in that wise, rendered the divine fire that slumbered in my heart more uncontrollable than ever, and this I felt at that very moment. Thereafter, opening a little her purple robe, she showed me, clasped in her arms against her ravishing breast, the very counterpart of the youth I loved, wrapped in the transparent folds of a Grecian mantle, and revealing in the lineaments of his countenance pangs that were ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... very pretty with anything else," observed Pauline, with more tact. "See, now, with your white embroidered petticoat and the gray train they are ravishing—and the scarlet coat will ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about that," replied the genial gentleman. "I've seen a great many concerts, and I've heard a great many good games of pool, but the concert last night was simply a ravishing spectacle. We had a Cuban pianist there who played the orchestration of the first act of Parsifal with surprising agility. As far as I could see, he didn't miss a note, though it was a little annoying to observe how he ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... like you to have a style of your own, but it looks odd and people will think you are mean if you don't make more show. Besides, you don't do justice to your beauty, which would be both peculiar and striking if you'd devote your mind to getting up ravishing costumes." ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... gushing fountain jets animated the gardens. Le Notre, the author of these amazing water-works, died in the year 1700, when almost ninety years of age. Saint-Simon declared him justly renowned in that he had given to France gardens of so unique and ravishing a design that they completely outran in beauty the famous gardens of Italy. European landscape decorators counted it part of their education to journey to France for the purpose of studying the handiwork ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... she began to be sensible that poor Donald was looking out for victuals, or seeking for some small plunder, without bestowing a thought on the fair sex; by and by she popped her head out of her place of refuge with the petty question, "Good folks, can you tell when the ravishing is going to begin?" I am sure I shall neither hide myself to avoid applause, which probably no one will think of conferring, nor have the meanness to do anything which can indicate any desire of ravishment. I have seen, when the late Lord Erskine entered the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... "a sound of revelry by night," where youth and beauty were gathered in the excitement of the raging ball. The ravishing music of the orchestra charmed from the street a red nosed old knight of the demijohn, and uninvited he staggered into the brilliant assemblage and made an effort to get a partner for the next set. Failing in this, he concluded to exhibit his powers ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... shall get there a little before five—play for a couple of hours—then have tea on the lawn, perhaps—a little dance, and home by moonlight." It was a ravishing prospect for their unemployed imaginations, and they left no time ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... please, with pleasure!" Ah! [Warmly] Most fas-ci-nat-ing! Simply beyond understanding! [Sighs] I dislike most of all dancing with students and government office clerks. But it's the real thing to dance with army men! Ah, charming! ravishing! Their mustaches, and epaulets, and uniforms, and on some of them even spurs with little bits of bells. Only it's killingly tiresome that they don't wear a sabre. Why do they take it off? It's strange, plague take it! The soldiers themselves don't understand ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... eyes are firmly closed, That, when open, form mine only rapture. And thy sweet lips are devoid of motion, Motionless for speaking or for kissing; Loosen'd are the soft and magic fetters Of thine arms, so wont to twine around me, And the hand, the ravishing companion Of thy sweet caresses, lies unmoving. Were my thoughts of thee but based on error, Were the love I bear thee self-deception, I must now have found it out, since Amor Is, without his ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... demure in cap and kerchief as the most ravishing of young Priscillas, rose obediently at the request. "May I read to her a little if she wants ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... tweak it passionately, as a prelude to kissing? Who could linger over it tenderly with a candle, or a lump of mutton fat, when cold had laid its cruel hand upon it? It is not tip-tilted like a flower; it is not whimsical with some ravishing and unexpected little crook. It is straight, like a mathematical line. But it has no parts. Her cheeks are round and fair. Each has its dimple and blush. They are thoroughly healthy, Mrs. Smith's digestion is unexceptionable. You ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... beheld his false Duessa or snowy Florimel. And, indeed, romance had in her a congenial heroine, who needed little self-blinding so to appear. Her beauty needed no illusion to be credited. Even at her age, now over forty, the glimpse they had had in the fitful torchlight of the cavern had been ravishing, and had confirmed all they had ever heard of her witching loveliness; nor did they recollect how that very obscurity ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Thus to mine eyes.—Know, o'er the one half world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtained sleep; now Witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered Murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my where-about, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives; Words to the heat ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... long ere this I [74] should have done the deed, Had not sweet pleasure conquer'd deep despair. Have not I made blind Homer sing to me Of Alexander's love and Oenon's death? And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes With ravishing sound of his melodious harp, Made music with my Mephistophilis? Why should I die, then, or basely despair? I am resolv'd; Faustus shall not repent.— Come, Mephistophilis, let us dispute again, And reason ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... Smith played some ravishing dance-music, & we all danced about an hour. There couldn't be a pleasanter night than that one was. Some of those people complained of fatigue, but I don't seem to know what ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... elbows back, shoulders forward, a bend and a slide, occasionally varied by a slight skip. But when that bonnet went on, Polly actually held her breath till it was safely landed and the pink rose bloomed above the smooth waves of hair with what Fanny called "a ravishing effect." At this successful stage of affairs Polly found it impossible to resist the loan of a pair of gold bands for the wrists and Fanny's white fan with the little mirror ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... think of Irene. That is, he had to justify her by being correct in his manners. And as he looked from mother to daughter he realized that Irene had not inherited all her beauty from her father. In their dinner gowns Mrs. Hardy was sedate and even beautiful, and her daughter ravishing. Dave thought he had not before seen so much womanly ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... the going of each day's sun gilding cloud-crests, silvering waves, setting you matchless scenes in color effect, some ravishing in their gorgeous splendor, some soft and tender of tone as the light in the eyes of the woman you worship, scenes beside which the most brilliant stage settings which metropolitans flock like sheep to ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... ministers as discharge their ministry amiss; ravishing away the goods of the widows and fatherless; and serve themselves, not others, out of those things which ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... really ravishing foot—small, swarthy, and not misshapen like the majority of feet which look dainty only in bottines. I laughed, and started to draw on to the foot a silk stocking, while Mlle. Blanche sat on the edge ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Cherubim and Seraphim, who were not stalwart and beautiful angels, but many-headed beasts from Babylonia, Owen remembered that these revolting monsters had been made beautiful in the AEgean: sullen Astaarte, desiring sacrifice and immolation, had risen from the waters, a ravishing goddess with winged Loves marvelling about her, Loves with conches to their lips, blowing the glad news to ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... who entertain such rational sentiments, are united by indissoluble bonds, all nature smiles upon them, and the most common objects appear delightful. In, my opinion, such a life is infinitely more happy and more voluptuous, than the most ravishing and best ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... stimulated by Dorothy Lane's ravishing description of you, have asked many times to see your picture. I am ashamed of my own carelessness in having gone away without obtaining one for exhibition purposes. Will you send me one at once? ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... Padua; that is, shall I write of youth's love, of its tragic or its comedy, of its darkness, joy and beauty only? No, he answers, not of that stuff shall I make my work, but of that sad dishevelled ghost of a girl, half in rags, with eyes inveterately full of tears; of wild, worn, care-bitten, ravishing, piteous, and pitiful Humanity, who begs of me and offers me her faded love in the street corners. She shall be my Queen, the subject of my song, the motive of my poetry. She may be guilty, warped awry from her birth, and ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... and the most poetic corner of a famous garden revealed itself. Amid the ruins of a cloister that had once formed part of the dissolved Cistercian priory on whose confiscated lands Castle Luton had arisen, a rich medley of flowers was in full and perfect bloom. Irises in every ravishing shade of purple, lilac, and gold, carpets of daffodils and narcissus, covered the ground, and ran into each corner and cranny of the old wall. Yellow banksia and white clematis climbed the crumbling shafts, or made new tracery for the empty windows, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she exclaimed: "And there, down below, to the right, is the little beach—the ravishing little beach! How I loved it! Here, take the glasses, Jacques, and ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... the past and a seal of triumph upon the present to have the same breakfast after his acceptance as he had ordered after his rejection; he would tell Alice about it, and it would amuse her. He imagined how he would say it, and she would laugh; but she would be full of a ravishing compassion for his past suffering. They were long bringing the breakfast; when it came he despatched it so quickly that it was only half after eight when he paid his check at the counter. He tried to be ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... spoils?—There is no fear of being hanged for such a crime as this, while we have money or friends.—And suppose even the worst, that two or three were to die, have we not a chance, each man of us, to escape? The devil's in them, if they'll hang five for ravishing three! ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... hold—two aces and a maker. By your example, our poor sex drawn in, Is guilty of the same unnat'ral sin: The study now of every girl of parts Is how to win your money, not your hearts. O! in what sweet, what ravishing delights, Our beaux and belles together pass their nights! By ardent perturbations kept awake, Each views with longing eyes the other's—stake. The smiles and graces are from Britain flown, Our Cupid is an errant sharper grown, And Fortune ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... morning, Lillie, all fresh in a ravishing toilet, with field-daisies in her hair, was in a condition to laugh gently at John for his emotion of yesterday. She triumphed softly, not too obviously, in her power. He couldn't do without her,—do what she might,—that ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Adrien Delille, an enchantingly pretty structure, where receptions were given by a little creature who should have sat under a microscope: she was "the Princess Felicia, aged thirteen, born at Clotat, near Marseilles, weighing three kilogrammes and measuring forty-six centimetres—a ravishing figure, admirably proportioned in her littleness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... time ago, an old man who lived on this mountain lost himself in the jungle at its foot, and at night, being tired, and afraid of snakes and the evil spirits of the wood, he climbed into a tree and fell asleep. He was woke by a noise of ravishing music, the sweetest gongs and chanangs mingling with voices over his head. The music came nearer and nearer to the place where he was, until he heard the sweet voices under the tree, and, looking down, beheld a large clear fountain ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... when he lifted her in his arms. The error was fatal; he had designed to get her on her feet and then stand away. But no sooner had he raised her and succeeded in disengaging his hands, than soft round arms were clasped tightly about his neck and her face—if possible, more ravishing in tears than when first he had seen it—pillowed on his breast. And for the first time she ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... understand this! To make the point quite clear, let us take magenta. Used alone, nothing has more style, more beautiful distinction, but in wrong combination magenta can be amazingly, depressingly ugly. Magenta with blue is ravishing, beautiful in the subtle way old tapestries are: it touches the imagination ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... sufficed to impart a pleasant flavor to a whole cask of wine. The race of Monte Beni—so these rustic chroniclers assured the sculptor—had possessed the gift from the oldest of old times of expressing good wine from ordinary grapes, and a ravishing liquor from the choice growth ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... calamity, had not found spirits to seek the pleasure of music. He dreaded those ravishing strains so soothing to melancholy, but which inflict pain, when we are oppressed by real grief. Music awakens those bitter recollections which we are desirous to appease. When Corinne sang, Oswald listened to the words she uttered; he contemplated the expression ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... of Kansas scenes have been distributed among the blacks. The gentleman who has seen some of these chromos writes that the most ravishing presentment of rural life in Kansas is depicted. The Negroes look on the State as a second paradise, compared with which old Canaan is a Florida swamp. One of these pictures, entitled "A Freedman's Home," represents a fine landscape, with fields ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... at this period, to work an important revolution, and subject the poetry of the Peninsula to a foreign influence. The Italian Muse, after her long silence, since the age of the tricentisti, had again revived, and poured forth such ravishing strains, as made themselves heard and felt in every corner of Europe. Spain, in particular, was open to their influence. Her language had an intimate affinity with the Italian. The improved taste and culture of the period ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... lies in the embraces of the siren goddess, while life passes in a ceaseless orgy of sinful pleasure. But the poet wearies of his amorous captivity, and would fain return to the earth once more. In vain the goddess pleads, in vain she calls up new scenes of ravishing delight, he still prays to be gone. Finally he calls on the sainted name of Mary, and Venus with her nymphs, grotto, palace and all, sink into the earth with a thunder-clap, while Tannhaeuser, when ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... a poet was called vates, which is as much as a diviner, fore-seer, or prophet, as by his conjoined words vaticinium and vaticinari is manifest: so heavenly a title did that excellent people bestow upon this heart-ravishing knowledge. And so far were they carried into the admiration thereof, that they thought in the chanceable hitting upon any such verses great foretokens of their following fortunes were placed. Whereupon grew the word of Sortes Virgilianae, when, by sudden opening Virgil's book, they lighted upon ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... How ravishing the thing had been while it lasted, judge by these other stray symptoms; hastily picked up, partly at Berlin, partly at Brunswick; which show us the bright meridian, and also the blaze, almost still more radiant, which proved to be sunset. Readers have heard of Voltaire's Madrigals ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... because I loved him less, but them more. I would fain write particularly of some of these beloved friends, comrades of my heart, from whom I first learned the undreamed-of possibilities of human friendship, and how ravishing the satisfactions of sympathy may be. Who, among those who may read this, has not known that sense of a gulf fixed between soul and soul which mocks love I Who has not felt that loneliness which oppresses the heart that loves it best! Think no longer that this gulf is eternally fixed, or is any ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... what's to come of poor Peggy?" (Peggy being herself.) "Nothing for it but the wood and cave and the ravishing of ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... of the other sex. I walked my first minuet with him: I wouldn't tell you the year, child, for worlds; but it was soon after his famous encounter with Colonel Villiers. He had killed his man, he wore pink and silver, was most elegantly pale, and the most ravishing creature! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... climes who cannot command a pipeful of tobacco. I began to think that I had fallen amongst thorough savages, and it seemed likely enough that they would gain their very first knowledge of civilisation by ravishing and studying the contents of my dearest portmanteaus, but still my impression was that they would hardly venture upon such an attempt. I observed, indeed, that they did not offer me the bread and salt which I had understood ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... my shoes pretty,' said the hostess, speaking a few words of English, 'c'est mon dada, voyez-vous—ma collection! —Tenez—I cannot say dat in English, Monsieur; explain to your sister. My shoes are my passion, next to my foot. I am not pretty, but my foot is ravishing. Dalou modelled it for his Siren. That turned my head. Sit down, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... now anyhow, and if it is wrong may the good Father forgive me," she said softly to herself, just as the orchestra struck up, thrilling her with its ravishing strains, and making her forget all else ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... exists another composition of such lofty and religious spirit, as finds expression in the Communion-scene. It is not possible to imagine a more vivid contrast than that between the saintly melodies and those of the fascinating fairies, which latter, glowing with poetry and ravishing music captivate ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... bard in all the choir, ....... Not one of all can put in verse, Or to this presence could rehearse The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the hills in spring, When pacing through the oaks he heard Sharp queries of the sentry-bird, The heavy grouse's sudden whir, The rattle of ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... most suitably ravishing tea-gown, one of subdued simplicity—and, like a beautiful summer flower, she swept into the invalid's room when the lowered sun blinds made the light restful and the June roses filled the air with scent. It was the end of the month and glorious ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... themselves; but they do not care the scrape of a match whether the author originally intended her for the Princess of Kennaquhair or for Polly Jones, him and it for corresponding realities. Nor is the sequel particularly ravishing, though it is dedicated to "all fair and virtuous shepherdesses, all generous and perfect shepherds." Perhaps it is because one is not a generous and perfect shepherd that one finds the "Great Pan is Dead" story less impressive in Gomberville's prose than in Milton's verse ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... wall. They can hardly send anything else so characteristic. Their artists, especially of the later school, sometimes toil to depict such subjects, but are apt to stiffen the lithe tendrils in the process. The poets succeed better, with Tennyson at their head, and often produce ravishing effects by dint of a tender minuteness of touch, to which the genius of the soil and climate artfully impels them: for, as regards grandeur, there are loftier scenes in many countries than the best that England can show; ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... King, etc., bot (turning him to the Lard of Burley, standing there) this trator, wha hes committed divers poinets of his treasone against his Majestie's civill lawes, to his grait dishonour and offence of his guid subjects, namlie, taking of his peacable subjects on the night out of thair housses, ravishing of weimen, and receating within his hous of the King's rebels ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... frowned, made myself long, and confessed I had the honor to be from that city. Whereupon she let her long-lashed eyes take on as ravishing a covetousness as though I ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... began to disappear from the family board and roof by a mysterious process called marrying, which greatly mystified Zosephine, but equally pleased her by the festive and jocund character of the occasions, times when there was a ravishing abundance ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... existed with which to put it down. There were a guilty silence and a guilty ignorance on the part of the better elements of Christian society at Singapore and Hong Kong, which could be played upon by treacherous, corrupt officials by the flimsy device of calling the ravishing of native women "protection," and the most brazen forms of slavery "servitude." To this extent the individual Christians of these colonies are in many cases guilty of compromise with slavery; and to this extent the title of this book ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... compensation for our disappointment, in contemplating so much of this charming country as was visible from our ship. The magnificent scenery of Brazil has often been described, but no expression can do justice to its ravishing beauty. Imagination can scarcely picture the exquisite variety of form and colouring of the luxuriant and gigantic vegetation that thickly clothes the valleys and mountains even to the sea-shore. A breeze from the land wafted to us the ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... rested at his ease. He thought of Flora Lockhart. Her sea-eyes and red lips were as clear and bright as a picture in his brain. Her wonderful, bell-like voice rang in his ears like fairy music. The spell of her was like a ravishing ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... repay Him for this rich inheritance of Beauty! How useful, how lovely in spirit should she be! how thankful, how pious, how virtuous, how rich in inward charms! These are what God asks in return. Think of it, young women, as it really is. See God clothing your forms with Beauty, rich and ravishing in its charms; see that Beauty winning for you flowery paths of life, softening all hearts that approach you, making it easy, ay, almost a necessity, for them to love and esteem you; think how much you prize it, and how ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... transports of love which make the happiness of the glorified saints. It would be insupportable for him now to meditate one hour on the perfections of God; what then shall He do among the cherubim and seraphim, and the spirits of just men made perfect, who draw from thence their ravishing delights? He loves the pleasures and comforts of an animal life; but are these the same with the exercises of the spiritual life? His conversations, his readings, his amusements, as void of edification as of usefulness, rarely fatigue him; but an ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... when the drama was to be acted, and Donald Macgillivray, loaded with all the charms and benedictions in his country, took mournful leave of his friends, and proceeded to the scene of his intended enterprise. On approaching the well-known turret, a repetition of that mirth and those ravishing sounds, that had been the source of so much sorrow to himself and family, once more attracted his attention, without at all creating in his mind any extraordinary feelings of satisfaction. On the contrary, he abhorred the sounds most heartily, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn'd, Sung by a fair queen in a Summer's bower, With ravishing division, to ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Oh! what is that shooting into me, like a spurt of hot balm, right up to my heart?—Oh! Oh! I'm coming too!" she sobbed in ecstasy—"what divine pleasure—how you pushed at that moment—go on, dear, don't stop, it's too ravishing to waste a moment!" as she instinctively entwined her legs over me, and wriggled her bottom in excess of pleasure, as our love juices mingled in her womb; then at last she stretched herself out at length, her Cunt closely nipping Cupid's battering ram, her arms tightly holding me ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... to the house, and began looking everywhere. They even opened the door of Avrillia's own bed-room, which was upholstered entirely in pink morning-glory satin, with hangings of opalescent mist; Sara thought it was quite the most ravishing place she had ever seen; at least she though so until Pirlaps distractedly led her down into the basement to Avrillia's kitchen. A smell of something delectable scorching enveloped them as they opened the door. And there beside the stove, all deliciously sticky ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... the shoulders under each breast, and her hair, tightly bound, was decorated with another narrow band of green. She looked younger than in the city—almost virginal. Stooping low, she gathered a handful of blue scylla from the grass, Mary barely checking an exclamation at this ravishing of her beloved bulbs. Then Felicity lay down upon the grass; her eyes closed; she seemed asleep. They waited silently for some minutes. Stefan began ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... exhausted himself on roses. From the largest cabbage down to the tiniest Burgundy, he has arranged them in every possible variety of wreath, garland, bouquet, and single flower. They are of all stages of growth, from earliest budhood up to the ravishing beauty of the "last rose of summer." Nor has he confined himself to the colors usually worn by this lovely plant, but, with the daring of a great genius soaring above nature, worshiping the ideal rather than the real, he has painted them brown, purple, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... her Seraphick Face so fair and young, Her Sable Hair in careless Dresses hung, Which added to her beauteous Features, show'd Like some fair Angel peeping through a Cloud? Her Breasts, her Hands, and every Charm so bright, She seem'd a Sun by Day, a Moon by Night; Her shape so ravishing, that every Part, Proportion'd was to the nicest Rules of Art: So awful was her Carriage when she mov'd, None could behold her, but he fear'd and lov'd, She danc'd well, sung well, finely plaid the Lute, Was always witty in her Words, or Mute; Obliging, not reserv'd, nor yet too free, But as ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... been here six weeks, and still no burning: for the place seems to plead with me, it is so ravishing, so that I do not know why I did not live here, and spare my toils during those sixteen nightmare years; for two whole weeks the impulse to burn was quieted; and since then there has been an irritating whisper at my ear ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... thing, may be stiled Philemon, a lover; he that earnestly or extreamely, Zelotes, a zelot; who to all the objects of his affections, is excessively and passionately disposed, his love is ever fervent, his desires eager, his delights ravishing, his hopes longing, his hatred deadly, his anger fierce, his greefe deep, his feare terrible. The Hebrewes expresse these Intensions by doubling the word. This being the nature of zeale in generall, Christian zeale of which wee desire onely to speake, differs ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward
... hear music: it was the ravishing Nis air, which charms the mind into sweet confusion and oblivion, and Manuel did not make any apparent attempt to withstand its wooing. He hastily undressed, knelt for a decorous interval, and ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... the real scene of interest in the Paradise Lost; it is its ravishing scenes of primeval innocence and bliss which have given it immortality. We are never tired of recurring to the bower of Eve, to her devotion to Adam, to the exquisite scenes of Paradise, its woods, its waters, its flowers, its enchantments. We are so, because ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... large and important ones—are manned entirely by natives, and so are the posts and telegraphs. The rank and file of the police are natives. All these people are pleasant and accommodating. One day I left an express train to lounge about in that perennially ravishing show, the ebb and flow and whirl of gaudy natives, that is always surging up and down the spacious platform of a great Indian station; and I lost myself in the ecstasy of it, and when I turned, the train was moving swiftly away. I was going to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... favourite character's part, which he did to the life. We also made out our own "reports" for home, and played a most spirited game of croquet in the hall, with potatoes for balls and brooms for mallets, besides treating our prisoners to a ravishing concert by an orchestra of one dinner-bell, two dish-covers, two combs and paper, and one ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... life I had never heard anything so exquisite. So great was my amazement that I could scarcely breathe. Awakened by the violence of my feelings, I instantly seized my violin, in the hope of being able to catch some part of the ravishing melody which I had just heard, but all in vain. The piece which I composed according to my scattered recollections is, it is true, the best I ever produced. I have entitled it 'Sonata del Diavolo;' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... galloping horse in a field, holding by the mane, and vault on the animal's back, after which it went on faster than ever and leapt a little brook or a hedge. An odd incident occurs to my recollection just now. My friend had a susceptible heart, and a ravishing beauty was staying at a certain, country house, so we drove over to call there that he might see her. I went with him, and we had a dog-cart with a very lively horse. The drive was in the form of a great circle before the front door, so he tried to ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... he cowered in this fashion, the poor girl pressed against his body, his shoulders lowered, past visions again arose from the depths of the sea. First he heard a ravishing arpeggio in A-flat major and above it, a majestic theme, commanding quiet, as it were, in sixteenth triads. The two blended, in forte, with a powerful chord of sevens. There was a struggling, a separating, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... their account.—Now, though he had done all this, he showed himself the most impious of men in the case both of his grandmother and of his sisters. The former, because she had rebuked him for something, he forced to seek death by her own hand; and after ravishing all his sisters he shut two of them up on an island: the third had previously died. Again in the matter of Tiberius (whom he also termed "grandfather"), he asked that he might receive from the senate the same honors as Augustus; but these ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... shame and poverty, heart-broken by despair! Misery, doubtless, has cast a yellow tinge upon thy cheeks and stolen its radiance from thy glance. But no! thank God, it is not so! Thy heroic blood has strengthened thee against fate, and thy beauty is even more ravishing than of old! If a cloistered life has chastened thy roses, their tender bloom has only become more touching. Thy brow has grown loftier and purer; thine eyes still glisten beneath their sweeping lashes; and that well-remembered smile still ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... she left the stage and carried my heart and soul away with her. What chance had I? Here shone all the beauties that adorn the body, all the virtues and graces that embellish the soul; they were wedded to poetry and ravishing music, and gave and took enchantment. I saw my paragon glide away, like a goddess, past the scenery, and I did not see her meet her lover at the next step—a fellow with a wash-leather face, greasy locks in ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Fountain of Arabia, hands and feet the most perfectly beautiful the sun ever shone on, it was simply a moral and physical impossibility, then, they could be joined to a repulsive face. There was a remote possibility that it was a little less exquisite than those ravishing items, and that her morbid fancy made her imagine it homely, compared with them, but he knew he never would share in that opinion. It was the reasoning of lover, rather, the logic; for when love glides smiling in at the door, reason stalks ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... that in all my travels through Britain I never beheld anything with more pleasure. . . . Nor is it difficult, in viewing this ground, to say where the Covinarii, or Charioteers, stood. In fine, to an Antiquary, this is a ravishing scene." He adds the argument "that Galgacus's name still remains on this ground, for the moor on which the camp stood is called to this day Galdachan, or Galgachan Rosmoor." All this lore Gordon illustrates by an immense chart of a camp, and a ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott |
