"Symmetry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of an artificial image to express a moral superiority. But Solomon, it is probable, did not compare his beloved's nose to a "tower" on account of its length, but of its symmetry; and making allowance for eastern hyperbole, and the difficulty of finding a discreet image for a female nose in nature, it is perhaps as good a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... perpetual drudgery, carrying burdens too heavy to be borne, and other slavish employments considered beneath the dignity of the men. These walked before erect and graceful, decked with ornaments which set off to advantage the symmetry of their well-formed persons, while the poor women followed, meanly attired, bent under the weight of the children and utensils, which they carried everywhere with them, and disfigured and degraded by ceaseless toils. They were very early married, for a Mohawk had no other servant but his ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... diverse nature and race, but which from some gross resemblances, probably helped by an equivoque in the language, are closely affiliated in the Hindoo myth {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} a reddish colour of the skin, want of symmetry and ungainliness of form, strength in hugging with the fore paws or arms, the faculty of climbing, shortness of tail(?), sensuality, capacity of instruction in dancing and in music, are all characteristics which more or less distinguish and ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... take all they can get in Society for nothing, but they take it without the smallest gratitude, and have the audacity afterwards to censure those who have laboured for their amusement.' Tact, which is an exquisite sense of the symmetry of things, is, according to Mr. Mahaffy, the highest and best of all the moral conditions for conversation. The man of tact, he most wisely remarks, 'will instinctively avoid jokes about Blue Beard' in the company ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... affection by esteem. In his boyhood, although he made some degree of progress in classical attainments, and even in philosophy and mathematics, thus proving that natural ability was not wanting, he was far more successful in attaining mere accomplishments, which add a powerful charm to comeliness and symmetry than in mastering more solid studies. He became an adept in fencing, in riding, in drawing, and also in music; and acquired the distinctive and comprehensive designation, of being ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... moon Shone dimly through her form— 80 That form of faultless symmetry; The pearly and pellucid car Moved not the moonlight's line: 'Twas not an earthly pageant: Those who had looked upon the sight, 85 Passing all human glory, Saw not the yellow moon, Saw not the mortal scene, Heard not the night-wind's rush, Heard not an earthly sound, 90 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... possession of two tall dead stumps, and wound around and about them, and swung out from their tops, and twined their meeting tendrils together into a faultless arch. Man, with all his art, could not improve upon its symmetry." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... features of the face, particularly in the elongation of the lower ones, in the small calf to the leg, and the curve of the thigh, they bore a general resemblance to the natives of Port Jackson; but there was not one in all this group, whose countenance had so little of the savage, or the symmetry of whose limbs expressed strength and agility, so much, as those ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... menial, the latter the monastic buildings. The precincts are entered by a gateway (P), at the extreme western extremity, giving admission to the lower ward. Here the barns, granaries, stables, shambles, workshops and workmen,s lodgings were placed, without any regard to symmetry, convenience being the only consideration. Advancing eastwards, we have before us the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fair were more than match For fairest she e'er saw mine eyes before! And what a form! A foot and instep there! Vouchers of symmetry! A little foot And rising instep, from an ankle arching, A palm, and that a ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... may be a medley of letters and telegrams and narrative, like Mr. Aldrich's "Margery Daw;" it may be cast in any one of these forms, or in a combination of all of them, or in a wholly new form, if haply such may yet be found by diligent search. Whatever its form, it should have symmetry of design. If it have also wit or humor, pathos or poetry, and especially a distinct and unmistakable flavor of originality, so much the better. But the chief requisites are compression, originality, ingenuity, and now and again a touch of fantasy. Sometimes we may detect ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... man, and I walked so fast that I left the Duchesse every day when our promenade ended bathed in a copious perspiration; which, aided by the medicine and sparing regime, soon restored her figure to its former symmetry. ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... trace Shall my sure hammer leave of silly pride. Chip after chip must fall from vain desires, And the sharp corners of my discontent Be rounded into symmetry, and lent Great harmony by faith that never tires. Unfinished still, I must toil on and on, Till the pale critic, Death, shall ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... as pathless as the realms of Neptune, stands the Adirondack Lodge, probably one of the most quaint, picturesque little hotels in the world. It is tastefully built in the style of a rustic log-hut, its timber being merely rough-hewn by the axe and not reduced to monotonous symmetry by the saw-mill. It is roofed with bark, and its wide-eaved verandas are borne by tree-trunks with the bark still on. The same idea is carried out in the internal equipment, and the bark is left intact on much of the furniture. The wood retains ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... of clay-slate and sandstone, containing fossils, very closely related to, but not identical with, those found in the Silurian formations of Europe; the hills are formed of white granular quartz rock. The strata of the latter are frequently arched with perfect symmetry, and the appearance of some of the masses is in consequence most singular. Pernety [8] has devoted several pages to the description of a Hill of Ruins, the successive strata of which he has justly compared to the seats of an amphitheatre. The quartz rock must have been quite ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... handkerchief method. (2) In uncomplicated fractures of average severity in any part of the bone, the method of sling and body bandage. (3) In cases where, for aesthetic reasons, the chief consideration is the avoidance of deformity and the maintenance of the symmetry of the shoulders, as in girls, the treatment by recumbency. (4) When retentive apparatus fails, or when the fragments are exerting injurious pressure, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... perpendicular to the direction of {beta} in M, and in the instantaneous space of N the level {lambda} is perpendicular to the direction of {alpha} in N. This is the fundamental property which forms the definition of perpendicularity. The symmetry of perpendicularity is a particular instance of the symmetry of the mutual relations between two time-systems. We shall find in the next lecture that it is from this symmetry that the ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are. One plus two plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling. Always find out this equal to that. Symmetry under a cemetery wall. He doesn't see my mourning. Callous: all for his own gut. Musemathematics. And you think you're listening to the etherial. But suppose you said it like: Martha, seven times nine minus x is thirtyfive thousand. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... or corn-stones, of a shape not now usual in the neighborhood were exhibited. Some of these were quite graceful, having several feet and highly ornamented. The vases of pottery were occasionally noteworthy for their symmetry and beauty, as that shown ...
— The Battle and the Ruins of Cintla • Daniel G. Brinton
... thousand talents. Its columns are of Pentelic marble, exquisitely proportioned, which I myself saw at Athens; but at Rome they were again cut and polished, by which process they did not gain so much in gloss as they lost in symmetry, for they now appear too slender. However, if any one who wonders at the expense of the temple in the Capitol were to see the splendour of any one portico, hall, or chamber in the house of Domitian, he would ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... minutes they were in the thick of the timber, searching the small trees and saplings for Y-forks to serve as catapult handles. In half an hour they returned with a dozen of varying degree of symmetry ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... plan was nearing its fulfilment. The symmetry of the Roman column was giving place to a straggling line showing perceptible gaps through which the enemy had pierced. The resistance was becoming individual; small companies pursued or retreated in obedience to the dictates of their immediate danger; no single head could grasp the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... What symmetry! Observe that crescent; and those diamonds—their neatness rejoices the eye. The spacing of the plants, also, is perfect. It has been recently ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... swaddling-clothes of its second childhood. If we have spoken freely—we hope not flippantly—of these feeblenesses, it is because the renown of Cooper is too tenaciously and permanently rooted to be 'radically' affected thereby, however they may diminish the symmetry and dim the verdure of blossom and branch. His magnificent panoramas of prairie solitude, his billowy expanses of the 'many-voiced sea,' his artistically-grouped figures of red-skins and trappers, sealers and squatters, are among the things which Anglo-Saxon literature in either hemisphere ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... crimson; but, when the first flush passed away, her looks gave painful proof of the effect of solitude and sorrow. The rounded beauty of her cheek was gone, her eyes, once dancing with every emotion, were fixed and hollow, and her frame, once remarkable for symmetry, was thin and feeble. But, her heart was buoyant still, and when I talked of past scenes and recollections, her eye sparkled once more. Still, her manner was changed—it was softer and less capricious; her language, even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... latter day pride, she declared she had seen in his boyhood;—had now ruined his chances of being President by killing a man. She rocked slowly and pitifully to and fro, as the old mule ambled on, bemoaning the mess of pied cubes that now stood only for destroyed symmetry—a recalcitrant universe. She may have derived some comfort from the anticipation of rearranging Nancy to a nicer part, but this was vastly overshadowed by ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... large full-bottomed wig—gave at that early period of life an appearance of nearly twice the years he bore. Florid health and the earnest of good humour, a funny smile on entering a room and on first accosting his friends, rendered in his youth that exterior agreeable, to which beauty and symmetry had ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... rest of it! Your hands, I was about to say, not only awaken admiration by their grace and symmetry, but the sight of them does ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... preserved with a care due to articles which had been often used with effect in the past. Among them was one which had been out in the campaigns of 1689 (Dundee's), 1715 (Mar's), and in 1745-6. It was of Spanish manufacture, and remarkable for the length and symmetry of its blade, in consequence of which it received the sobriquet of Rangaire Riabhach.[B] In his failure to find the keys of the arms depository, he bethought him to make a confident and enlist the sympathies of an elderly lady, who had been a member of the family ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... Symmetry, strength, grace, health,—these are admirable qualities in a man. From the remotest ages they have been the marks of heroes. Secondary though they are to moral and mental qualities, they should be ever highly valued. A manly man! Nature designs such to be the sires ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... solitary tree broke this endless pasture, now healed of the wounds inflicted by the incendiary bombing, no saltlick, wandering stream or struggling bush enlivened this prairie. There was not even an odd conformation, a higher clump here or there, a dead patch to relieve the unimaginative symmetry. I have read of men going mad in solitary confinement from looking at the same unchanging walls; well, here was a solitary cell hundreds of miles in area and its power to destroy the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... plays an important part in art, the result of convention fixed by tradition often simulating the aspect of a deep-seated aesthetic preference. In this connexion it is to be remarked that even so permanent an element as symmetry may owe its quasiaesthetic value to custom, by which is understood its wide and impressive display in the organic and even the inorganic world.14 Yet the influence of custom taken in this larger sense need not greatly disturb us. In aesthetics, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... mathematics, neither is philosophy. And how many philosophical ideas are not strictly owing to something akin to rhyme, to the necessity of rightly placing a consonant! In Kant himself there is a great deal of this, of esthetic symmetry, rhyme. ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... length. The north and south extremities are connected by two oval borders which serve as new bases, and divide the whole side into three steep but regular gradations from the plain. The only thing characteristic in this hill is its extreme symmetry, and this, together with its being totally detached from the other hills which are at the distance of eight or nine miles, would induce a belief that it was artificial; but, as the earth and the loose pebbles which compose it, are arranged exactly ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... purest Parian marble, just flushed with the glow of morn, and cut in those perfect lines of proportion which nature only bestows on a few chosen favorites at intervals to show the possibilities of feminine beauty, Amelie de Repentigny added a figure which, in its perfect symmetry, looked smaller than it really was, for she was a tall girl: it filled the eye and held fast the fancy with the charms of a thousand graces as she moved or stood, suggestive of the beauty of a tame fawn, that in all its movements preserves ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... experiments. At Easter a 'fly past' of aeroplanes took place at a review of a territorial brigade on Perham Down. General Smith-Dorrien, who reviewed the troops, took the salute from the aeroplanes. There was a cross-wind, so that the symmetry of the spectacle was a little marred by the crab-like motion of the aeroplanes, which had to keep their noses some points into the wind to allow ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... tall and slight, youthfully undeveloped, yet with the grace of personal symmetry, high breeding, and military training, upright without stiffness, with a command and dexterity of movement which prevented the sword and spurs from being the annoyance to his pew-mates that country awkwardness usually made these appendages. The spurs were on cavalry boots, guarding the knee, and ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reader of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water—things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each other—forms like nought ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... success:—yes, for he was ignorant of the cause necessary to produce it. The separate features might be perfect, but they were unsuited to each other, and in their forced union he could not give to the whole countenance symmetry and an ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... hear thy thrilling voice, Nor see thy winning face; That once would gleam like morning's beam, In mental pride and grace: Thy form of matchless symmetry, In sweet perfection cast— Is now the star of memory That fades ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... unadorned column rising in the midst of richly-carved sculptures arrests attention by its mere dignity of height and grace of perfect proportion, so in the unassuming wife of Bernard Oliphant there was a loftiness and symmetry of character which made people feel that in her was the ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... distinguish the group from other sub-orders, though there are other non-adaptive characters which indicate the relationship to other groups and which are not adapted to the horizontal position of the original median plane of symmetry. The principal adaptive characters are: both eyes and the pigmentation on the side which is uppermost in the natural position, lower side without eyes and colourless; dorsal and ventral fins continuous and extending nearly ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... flashing black eyes-an expression of melancholy in which at short intervals we read her thoughts-an incessant playing of those long dark eyelashes, that clothes her charms with an irresistible, a soul-inspiring seductiveness. Her dress, of moire antique, is chasteness itself; her bust exquisite symmetry; it heaves as softly as if touched by some gentle zephyr. From an Haidean brow falls and floats undulating over her marble-like shoulders, the massive folds of her glossy black hair. Nature had indeed been lavish of her gifts ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... trode the turf by moonlight. Her stature, considerably less than the ordinary size of women, gave her the appearance of extreme youth, insomuch, that although she was near eighteen, she might have passed for four years younger. Her figure, hands, and feet, were formed upon a model of exquisite symmetry with the size and lightness of her person, so that Titania herself could scarce have found a more fitting representative. Her hair was a dark shade of the colour usually termed flaxen, whose clustering ringlets suited admirably with her fair complexion, and with the playful, yet ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... of the stars, an exquisite chateau rose from the borders of the lake, climbed in marble radiance half the height of an adjoining mountain, then melted in grace, in perfect symmetry, in translucent feminine languor, into the massed darkness of a forest of pine. The many towers, the slender tracery of the sloping parapets, the chiselled wonder of a thousand yellow windows with their oblongs and hectagons and triangles ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... that, in the case of poetry, the laws of versification should be observed. These elements contribute to excellence of form. In addition to these external elements there should be unity of thought, symmetry of presentation, truth of statement, and sincerity and self-restraint in sentiment. These elements give substantial worth to the matter or content of literature. Besides all this there is a grace or elegance or force, proceeding from the personality of the writer and transcending ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... from sacred stones (such as the Canaanite massebas), which originally represented the deity, came to be conventional attachments to temples, and then were treated in accordance with architectural principles. They would be placed in pairs, one pillar on each side of the temple door, for the sake of symmetry, and dignity would be sought by giving them a considerable height.[560] They might also be utilized, when they were not too high, as stands for lamps or cressets, but this would be a secondary use. The obelisks that stood in front of Egyptian temples, likewise, were probably ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... one of the most delicious of the tropical fruits, the mango is also one of the most beautiful of trees. It is tall, spreads very wide, and its branches sweep to within ten feet of the ground. Its perfect symmetry combined with the size and deep green of its leaves causes it to resemble, from a short distance, a beautiful green hill. Beneath its umbrella one finds dense shade, unmottled by a single ray of sunlight, so that one can lie under it in full confidence. For, parenthetically, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... there, behind a goodly curtain, a little chamber in whose midst stood a couch of juniper-wood[FN285] plated with shimmering gold and covered with a handsome carpet. On this sat a lovely young lady, confounding all beholders with her beauty and comeliness and symmetry and perfect grace, and by her side a youth, whose hand was on her neck; and he was kissing her and she kissing him. When I saw them, O Prince of True Believers, I could not contain myself nor knew where I was, so dazed and dazzled was I by ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... admiration, and must feel convinced that the maker of all has bestowed equal skill in every class of animated beings; and also allow with Paley, that "the production of beauty was as much in the Creator's mind in painting a butterfly, as in giving symmetry to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... frequently and the call to go was strongest after seeing an action. Standing on that stone floor where princes and warriors had stood through eight hundred years of the history of France, I have seen looking up at the incomparable nave with its majestic symmetry, French poilus in their faded blue, helmets in hand and perhaps the white of a bandage showing, spruce generals who had a few hours away from their commands, dust-laden dispatch riders, boyish officers with the bit of blue ribbon that they had won for bravery on ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... similar mode of performing this operation; for instance, they not only mark the body with single upright figures, or animals, as in the Sandwich Islands, but represent upon it, in the most perfect symmetry, connected ornaments in concentric rings and knots, which added greatly to the beauty of its appearance. The women only tatoo their hands and arms, the ends of their ears, and their lips. The lower classes are less tatooed, and many of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... me, without a veil, and straightway said, "Arise and enter in the name of Allah." So I arose and went in after her and we gave not over going till we reached a saloon. When I examined the place, I found it neither handsome nor pleasant, but desolate and dreadful without symmetry or cleanliness; indeed, it was loathsome to look upon and there was in it a foul smell. After this inspection I seated myself amiddlemost the saloon, misdoubting; and lo and behold! as I sat, there ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... consequence of which has been that my chin is full of little dells, thickly studded with dark and stunted bristles. I have bunions and legs that (as "the right line of beauty's a curve") are the perfection of symmetry. My poor mother used to lament what she, in the plenitude of her ignorance, was pleased to denominate my disadvantages. She knew not the power of genius. To me these—well, I'll call them defects—have been the source of great profit. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... surpasses all in the seats of the blest. Pythagoras also, when he was asked what time was, answered, it was the soul of the universe. For time is no affection or accident of motion, but the cause, power, and principle of that symmetry and order that confines all created beings, by which the animated nature of the universe is moved. Or rather, this order and symmetry itself—so far as it is motion—is called ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... green silk, simply arranged, and adding to her fair oval face an air of peculiar delicacy, present her with personal attractions of no ordinary character. And then her soft blue eyes, and her almost golden hair, hanging in thick wavy folds over her carnatic cheeks, add to the symmetry of her features that sweetness which makes modesty more fascinating. And though she has been but a slave, there is a glow of gentleness pervading her countenance, over which a playful smile now sheds ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... has been paid, even in Europe, to historical sequence and special motives in the arrangement of galleries. As in the Pitti Gallery, pictures were generally hung so as to conform to the symmetry of the rooms,—various styles, schools, and epochs being intermixed. As the progress of ideas is of more importance to note than the variations of styles or the degree of technical merit, the chief attention in selection and position should be given ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... works which, for the most part, have been carefully edited for American students, are commonly read in schools and colleges, and could be presumed to be familiar to most users of the Anthology. As the additional matter would thus have been largely useless, it seemed to me that the ideal gain in symmetry would be more than offset by the increased bulk and cost of the book, which was already large enough. I hold of course that anthologies have their use in the study of literary history; but it would be a mistake, in my judgment, for any student to take up a volume of selections without ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... a gloomy picture of a Spanish alchemist by Hippolyte Schinner, an autograph of Lord Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb, framed in carved ebony, while, hanging opposite as a species of pendant, was a letter from Napoleon to Josephine. All these things were placed about without the slightest symmetry, but with almost imperceptible art. On the chimney-piece, of exquisitely carved oak, there was nothing except a strange, evidently Florentine, ivory statuette attributed to Michael Angelo, representing Pan discovering a woman under the skin of a young ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... in extenso here—this is scarcely a fitting opportunity to do so;—but I think it might well be possible to show, on purely psychological grounds, how impossible it was for a man like Wagner to produce real art. For how can harmony, order, symmetry, mastery, proceed from uncontrolled discord, disorder, disintegration, and chaos? The fact that an art which springs from such a marshy soil may, like certain paludal plants, be "wonderful," "gorgeous," ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... garrison in turn to his own table, and entertaining his guests with agreeable and lively conversation. He himself was no sturdy warrior, worn with toil and hardships, but a figure of the most delicate symmetry, seemingly in all the freshness of youth, with a gentle and engaging aspect. He was no orator, but yet was fascinating in conversation, as we may partly learn from his letters. During this siege, as he perceived that the men, cooped up in such narrow limits and eating their food ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... General Knox a thumb, and Hannibal an eye; and that old Roman grenadier, Dentatus, nothing more than a bruised and battered trunk, a knotty sort of hemlock of a warrior, hard to hack and hew into chips, though much marred in symmetry by battle-ax blows. Ah! but these warriors, like anvils, will stand a deal of hard hammering. Especially in the old knight-errant times. For at the battle of Brevieux in Flanders, my glorious old gossiping ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favor of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the orangutan for the black women over those of his own species. The circumstance of superior beauty is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... cornices and rounded tribune, meet together and soar up into the cupola; while the grand but austere proportions of the arches and the piers compose a symphony of perfectly concordant lines. The music is grave and solemn, architecturally expressed in terms of measured space and outlined symmetry. The whole effect is that of one thing pleasant to look upon, agreeably appealing to our sense of unity, charming us by grace and repose; not stimulative nor suggestive, not multiform nor mysterious. We are reminded of the temples imagined by Francesco Colonna, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... shoulders. Its fellow on the other side of the legs is prepared in exactly the same manner; and the second trestle is a duplicate of the first, with the exception that the directions of the struts are reversed relatively to the C piece, to preserve the symmetry—which, however, is ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... Homer's poem then, according to Mr. Pope, a confused heap of beauties, without order or symmetry, and a plot whereon nothing but seeds, nor nothing perfect or formed is to be found; and a production loaded with many unprofitable things which ought to be retrenched, and which choak and disfigure those which deserve to be preserved? Mr. Pope will pardon me if I here oppose those comparisons, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... that a collision with the Indian was unavoidable, and without the least hesitation prepared himself for it. The savage was a Miami—a brawny, muscular warrior, fully six feet in height, of matchless symmetry and formidable strength. When the combatants were perhaps a dozen yards apart, he raised his tomahawk over his head, and poising it a moment, hurled it, with a most deadly force, full at the head of the hunter. The latter had not expected ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... of Salem, with a form of great symmetry, possesses a countenance not only beautiful, but entirely intellectual—the most so of any you have met with either here or elsewhere; it is of the Italian model; and should have basked beneath an Italian sky. She is very easy, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... in all, as a friend, as a gentleman, as a Christian, as a citizen, I never knew a man so thoroughly delightful as Dr. Heugh. Others had more of this or more of that, but there was a symmetry, a compactness, a sweetness, a true delightfulness about him I can remember in no one else. No man, with so much temptation to be heady and high-minded, sarcastic, and managing, from his overflowing wit and talent, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... that attains great proportions and beautiful symmetry is yonder giant oak or elm that grows in the open. It needs room to breathe and grow. It grows better if it is segregated from the crowded forest. The giant tree is not the one that grows in the ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... their shaggy horses by a rope, with their broad dark busts exposed to view as they suffered their robes to fall from their shoulders. Others again stood carelessly among the throng, with nothing to conceal the matchless symmetry of their forms; and I do not exaggerate when I say that only on the prairie and in the Vatican have I seen such faultless models of the human figure. See that warrior standing by the tree, towering six feet and a half ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... were from the first, and for the most part, treated with an axial symmetry. Almost all are full front; only occasionally will one, like the announcing angel, be drawn with a three-quarter face. The features are thus kept together on the general map of the face. In the same ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... things which I must bring before you when we enter on the study of architecture. That study we shall begin at the foot of the Baptistery of Florence, which, of all buildings known to me, unites the most perfect symmetry with the quaintest [Greek: poikilia]. Then, from the tomb of your own Edward the Confessor, to the farthest shrine of the opposite Arabian and Indian world, I must show you how the glittering and iridescent dominion of Daedalus prevails; and his ingenuity in division, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... those well-ordered motions and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed, delights in harmony, which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church music. For myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... sunshine and cloud, had served to mould the form of Ella Barnwell into one of peculiar beauty and grace. In height she was a little above five feet, had a full round bust, and limbs of that beautiful and airy symmetry, which ever give to their possessor an appearance of etherial lightness. Her complexion was sufficiently dark to entitle her to the appellation of brunette; though by many it would have been thought too light, perhaps, owing to the soft, rich transparency of her skin; through which, by a crimson ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... elegance, as to show clearly the intellect and resources of an excellent architect. At the same time some errors of the grossest kind have been committed, such as would be inexcusable in the most ignorant workman; as, for instance, the symmetry of parts has been neglected where the parts correspond; a pilaster is cut off by a door which passes through the middle of it; and other mistakes occur which might have been avoided without difficulty. This strange mixture of good and bad taste, of skill and carelessness, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... chain," or frill, the tail, and, most important of all, the ear-tufts. The tufts between the toes and the flexibility of the tail are other important points. The shape of head, eyes, and body are also carefully noted. A short-haired cat is judged first for color, then for eyes, head, symmetry, and ears. ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... gloriously-finished true-blue-slightly- imbricated-with-red-flag coalition rose whose deep globular head with ornate decorative calyx retains its perfect exhibition-cross-question- hostile-amendment symmetry of form without blueing or burning in the hottest Westminster sun. Its smiling peach and cerise endearments terminating in black scarlet shell-shaped waxy Berlin ultimata are carried on an admirably rigid peduncle. Equally vigorous in all parts of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... another was similarly situated as regarded the stern. The other four—there were six in all—were lashed lengthwise along the sides,—two of them opposite each other on the larboard and starboard bows, while the other two respectively represented the "quarters." By this arrangement a certain symmetry was obtained; and when the structure was complete, it really looked like a craft intended for navigation, and by Ben Brace,—its chief architect,—it ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... canoes and assisting in the search for useful minerals among the snow-clad ranges. He wore a wide, gray felt hat, which had lost its shape from frequent wettings, an old shirt of the same color, and blue duck trousers, rent in places; but the light attire revealed a fine muscular symmetry. He had brown hair and brown eyes; and a certain warmth of coloring which showed through the deep bronze of his skin hinted at a sanguine and somewhat impatient temperament. As a matter of fact, the man was resolute and usually shrewd; but there was a vein ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... fourteen. It often happens that fruits borne on the same stem are different in color and taste; so these two sisters were different in personal appearance and character. Nature seems to have presided in a special manner over the moulding of Aloysia's exquisite frame. The symmetry of her person, hand and foot of charming delicacy, azure eye and rosy cheek, garlanded with nature's golden tresses, and the sweet expression of innocence in her features, would suggest her at once as a model for one of Raphael's Madonnas. Her disposition, too, comported with ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... asleep, chemised with her hair[FN12] as she were the full moon rising[FN13] over the Eastern horizon, with flower-white brow and shining hair-paring and cheeks like blood-red anemones and dainty moles thereon. He was amazed at her as she lay in her beauty and loveliness, her symmetry and grace, and he recked no more of death. So he went up to her, trembling in every nerve and, shuddering with pleasure, kissed her on the right cheek; whereupon she awoke forthright and opened her eyes, and seeing the Prince ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the error just alluded to, that woman is inferior to man, and strive to get rid of the inferiority by making her a man. There may be some subtle physiological basis for such views—some strange quality of brain; for some who hold and advocate them are of those, who, having missed the symmetry and organic balance that harmonious development yields, have drifted into an hermaphroditic condition. One of this class, who was glad to have escaped the chains of matrimony, but knew the value and lamented ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... selective faculty, and loiter over copious laboured descriptions of the veriest trifles; it is as if a visitor to Olympia, instead of examining, commending or describing to his stay-at-home friends the general greatness and beauty of the Zeus, were to be struck with the exact symmetry and polish of its footstool, or the proportions of its shoe, and give all his attention to ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... to complete the dismal picture and to bring out the full symmetry between the end of Nicholas' reign and its ominous beginning: a medieval ritual murder trial after the pattern of the Velizh case. And a trial of this nature did not fail to come. In December, 1852, and in January, 1853, two Russian boys from among the lower classes disappeared in the city ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... into our history), although a dwarf of the least possible size, had nothing positively ugly in his countenance, or actually distorted in his limbs. His head, hands, and feet were indeed large, and disproportioned to the height of his body, and his body itself much thicker than was consistent with symmetry, but in a degree which was rather ludicrous than disagreeable to look upon. His countenance, in particular, had he been a little taller, would have been accounted, in youth, handsome, and now, in age, striking and expressive; it was but the uncommon ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Apollo Belvedere and the Venus de Medici stand near each other, and I knelt at the feet of the Goddess of Beauty. In her glance I forgot all the wild excitement from which I had escaped, my eyes drank in with intoxication the symmetry and immortal loveliness of her infinitely blessed form; Hellenic calm swept through my soul, while above my head Phoebus Apollo poured forth, like heavenly blessings, the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of New England emigrants, of Middle State Quakers, of Virginia planters, of Kentucky pioneers; he himself was one of the men who grew up with the earliest growth of the great West. Every jewel of his mind or his conduct sheds radiance on each portion of the nation. The marvelous symmetry and balance of his intellect and character may have owed something to this varied environment of his race, and they may fitly typify the variety and solidity of the republic. It may not be unreasonable to hope that his name and his renown may be forever a bond of union to the country ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... is an attribute of Infinite Wisdom to proportion powers to results, to adapt instruments to ends with exact fitness. But if we are utterly to die with the ceasing breath, then there is an amazing want of symmetry between our endowments and our opportunity; our attainments are most superfluously superior to our destiny. Can it be that an earth house of six feet is to imprison forever the intellect of a La Place, whose telescopic eye, piercing the unfenced fields of immensity, systematized ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... symmetry and manly beauty—one of those productions of the American race which are very rare, but which, when seen, are the nearest approach to physical and mental perfection that is ever attained in this world. He was about five feet ten inches in ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... sail now and then on the river, when it was tranquil. She did not seem to grow stronger, though she would not admit that she was ill. She watched Rose with a curious half-dread. She was growing tall, but her figure kept its lithe symmetry. Out in the woods she sometimes danced like a wild creature. Miladi had been so fond of dancing in M. Giffard's time, but now it put her out of breath and brought a pain to her side. She really ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... as he walks on the perspective of their change of position will be symmetrical. Lastly, if he has not even one definite mark, but is walking among a throng of forest trees, he may learn to depend wholly on the symmetry of the changes of perspective of the trees as a guide to his path. He will keep his point of sight unchanged and will walk in its direction, and if he deviates from that direction, the want of symmetry in the change of perspective on either side of the point ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... resting on such arbitrary marks as satin, cotton-print, and bits of rag, had superadded striking personal differences which allowed of no mistake. Thus, the Doll-lady of distinction had wax limbs of perfect symmetry; but only she and her compeers. The next grade in the social scale being made of leather, and the next of coarse linen stuff. As to the common-people, they had just so many matches out of tinder- boxes, for their arms and legs, and there they were—established ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... so to speak, for we should perhaps have been cast off by our own kindred, and might never have returned to our native land; but your presence would have made this new country,—this young Hercules of lands,—this land full of sinews, bones and muscle, not yet clothed with rounded symmetry of outward form, but fresh and strong and teeming with promise, a true home to us. Its vast, ever-growing mind would have given new expansion to our own mental faculties. We should have grown spiritually, and reached nobler heights together. If we had griefs to endure, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the subject of retail trades, which in their natural use are the reverse of mischievous; for every man is a benefactor who reduces what is unequal to symmetry and proportion. Money is the instrument by which this is accomplished, and the shop-keeper, the merchant, and hotel-keeper do but supply the wants and equalize the possessions of mankind. Why, then, does any dishonour attach to ...
— Laws • Plato
... saucers abruptly away to make a clear space on the white cloth. The newspaper slipped rustling to the floor on the side near the window. Already his gloves were abominable in the slop-basin, and now with a single gesture he had destroyed the symmetry of the set table. Mrs. Maldon with surpassing patience smiled sweetly, and assured herself that Mr. Batchgrew could not help it. He was a coarse male creature at large in a room highly feminized. It was his habit thus to pass through orderly interiors, distributing havoc, like a rough ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... peering screen of new-born leaves, pale-faced and trembling. After a moment's rest, they turned southward to where the lean brown road went paving a deep corridor, straight, silent, its black walls towering. Distance and gloom lent these a grim symmetry, suggestive of duress; above, a grey ribbon of sky issued a stony comfort, such as prisoners use.... With a shiver, Every turned away his head. To the north the ground fell sharply, and the cut of the road vouchsafed a glimpse of what it led to—woods, woods, woods, swelling, rising, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... thoroughly aside, revealed right generous lips, about which hovered a certain sweetness ever ready to break into the blossom of a smile. That and a small tuft below was all the hair he wore upon his face. Rare conjunction, the whole of the countenance was remarkable both for symmetry and expression—the latter mainly a bright intelligence; and if, strangely enough, the predominant sweetness and delicacy at first suggested genius unsupported by practical faculty, there was a plentifulness and strength ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... was summer day long enough for me to see and to study all that the old road had to show. Here, at the moist edge of the road, the ditch stone-crop is opening its yellow-green flowers, each one a study in perfect symmetry. With the showy, straw-colored cyperus it flourishes under the friendly shade of the overhanging cord-grasses whose flowering stalks already have shot up beyond the reach of a man. Among them grows the tall blue vervain, its tapering ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... bred for the cart, and such a one as we call a hunter, and a horse of foreign extraction, and set them together, the meanest judge will easily point out the best racer, from the texture, elegance, and symmetry of their parts, without making any appeal to blood. Allow but a difference in the texture, elegance, and symmetry of parts in different Horses, whose extraction is foreign, this principle will be ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... should come, to create temporal beings, imperfect copies of himself in various degrees. These, of which man was the chief, began their career in the year 4004 B.C., and they would live on an indefinite time, possibly, that chronological symmetry might not be violated, until A.D. 4004. The opening and close of this drama were marked by two magnificent tableaux. In the first, in obedience to the word of God, sun, moon, and stars, and earth with all her plants and animals, assumed their appropriate places, and nature sprang ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the glow of her superb and youthful symmetry, ever, it seemed to him, some inward radiance pulsated, burning in her golden burnished hair, in scarlet on her lips, making lovely the soft splendour of her eyes. Hers was the fresh, sweet beauty of ardent youth and spring incarnate,—neither frail and colourlessly spiritual, nor tainted with ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... girl—whose face possesses the crowning charm of expression, whose slightest movement reveals the supple symmetry of her figure—less lovely because she is blessed with a good appetite, and is not ashamed to acknowledge it? With a grace all her own, Cecilia dived under the bed, and produced a basket of jam tarts, a basket of fruit and sweetmeats, a basket of sparkling lemonade, and a superb cake—all ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... chignon, or any adventitious adjuncts from an artiste's shop. Very bitter was she in consequence when speaking of the head-gear of other women. Her chin was perfect in its round, not over long,—as is the case with so many such faces, utterly spoiling the symmetry of the countenance. But it lacked a dimple, and therefore lacked feminine tenderness. Her mouth was perhaps faulty in being too small, or, at least, her lips were too thin. There was wanting from the mouth ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... occupied the middle section of the ancient city square. In shape it was an irregular oblong, the original builders being apparently content to enclose sufficient space without reference to architectural symmetry. Its perimeter might be roughly estimated at eight hundred yards, respectable proportions, and indicating a capacity to comfortably accommodate the whole population of Doom should the ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Nature, and the observation of her beautiful proportions, first determined man to imitate the divine plan and study symmetry and order. This gave rise to societies and birth to every useful art. The architect began to design, and the plans which he laid down, being improved by time and experience, have produced works which are ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... Globe, had caught the Artist's eye. The building, or group of buildings, is six stories high, with a sky-line that reflects the range of mountains under which Grasse nestles. Windows of different sizes, placed without symmetry or alignment, do not even harmonize with the roof above them. Probably there was originally a narrow house rising directly above the door of the Cheval Blanc. When the structure was widened, upper floors or ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... was at the time more than fifty years old, but the uncommon symmetry and exact proportion in her form, with her singular vivacity, enabled her to represent the character of "Celia" with all the juvenile appearance ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... others. Every circle was charmed by her presence; by her condescension she inspired the diffident; and she banished dulness by the brilliancy of her humour. Her countenance, it should be added, wore a pleasant and animated expression, and her figure was modelled with the utmost elegance of symmetry and grace. Her sister, Lady ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... link such sun-cast symmetry With the torn troubled form I know as thine, That profile, placid as a brow divine, With continents of ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... seems to be a continual effort to raise itself into a higher state; and a measured gain, through the fierce revulsion and slow renewal of the earth's frame, in beauty, and order, and permanence. The soft white sediments of the sea draw themselves, in process of time, into smooth knots of sphered symmetry; burdened and strained under increase of pressure, they pass into a nascent marble; scorched by fervent heat, they brighten and blanch into the snowy rock of Paros and Carrara. The dark drift of the inland river, or stagnant slime of inland pool and lake, divides, or resolves itself as ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... poetry. Not only is his prose classical in quality, by virtue of its restraint, of its definite aim, and of the dry white light of intellect which suffuses it; but the doctrine which he spent his life in preaching is based upon a classical ideal, the ideal of symmetry, wholeness, or, as he daringly called it, perfection.... Wherever, in religion, politics, education, or literature, he saw his countrymen under the domination of narrow ideals, he came speaking the mystic word of deliverance, 'Culture.' Culture, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... della Fazelli, and acquitted herself with the ease and dignity so natural to her. Julia experienced a various emotion of pleasure and fear when the Count de Vereza, in whom she recollected the cavalier she had observed from the window, led her forth. The grace of her step, and the elegant symmetry of her figure, raised in the assembly a gentle murmur of applause, and the soft blush which now stole over her cheek, gave an additional charm to her appearance. But when the music changed, and she danced to the soft Sicilian measure, the airy grace of her movement, and ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... is of the Jonblat family. The ancestral mansion he inhabits was built by one of the ancient race called the T'noohh, who flourished there from the 10th to the 17th century, and artists had been brought for the purpose from Constantinople; the symmetry of the masonry is admirable, and consequently the shadows formed from it are particularly ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... has within the last fifty years assumed a somewhat different character from that which he once possessed. He is distinguished by a beautiful symmetry of form, of which he once could not boast, and he has even superior speed to that which he formerly exhibited. He is no longer used to struggle with the deer, but he contends with his fellow over a shorter ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... beautiful thing is a harmonious line! Colour does not uplift me so much as outline, proportion, symmetry and all the wonderful properties of form. Look at this little statue. Pancaldi's right: it's the work of a great artist. The legs are both slender and muscular; the whole figure gives an impression of buoyancy and speed. It is very ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... which, to the present day, is highly applauded by all those who, under the influence of the error alluded to, conceive decimal numeration to be a sacred truth: applauded, not because of its adaptation to commerce, but simply because of its beautiful proportions, its elegant symmetry, to say nothing of the array of learning and power engaged in its production and inauguration: imposing, truly, and alike on its authors and admirers; for the qualities they so much admire are not peculiar ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... truncated pyramid (Fig. 18). The axis of the ground-plan of these pylons is frequently obliquely inclined to the axis of the plan of the temple itself; and indeed one of the most striking features of Egyptian temples is the lack of regularity and symmetry in their construction. The entrance gives access to a large courtyard, generally ornamented with columns: beyond this, and occasionally approached by steps, is another court, smaller than the first, ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... distinct persons, I assure you—and two such beauties!—By all that's desirable, if there was only one more in the city who could vie with the lovely girls, and boast of the same elegantly proportioned forms; the same beauty, delicacy and symmetry of features; the same celestial complexion, in which the lily and carnation ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... sacred was the scene, The palace of our patriot Queen. The little charmer to my view Was sculpture brought to life anew. Her eyes had a poetic glow, Her pouting mouth was Cupid's bow: And through her frock I could descry Her neck and shoulders' symmetry. 'Twas obvious from her walk and gait Her limbs were beautifully straight; I stopp'd th' enchantress and was told, Though tall, she was but four years' old. Her guide so grave an aspect wore I could not ask a question ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... all to twelve, besides their chief, who was in the advance, crossed the threshold, and, without uttering a word, either of anger or salutation, squatted themselves upon the floor. They were stout, athletic warriors, the perfect symmetry of whose persons could not be concealed even by the hideous war-paint with which they were thickly streaked—inspiring anything but confidence in the honesty or friendliness of their intentions. The head of each was shaved and painted as well as his person, and only on ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... the yield of honey, and size of the swarm, more than anything else. As honey becomes scarce, they are destroyed. Their bodies are large and rather clumsy, covered with short hairs or bristles. Their abdomen terminates very abruptly, without the symmetry of the queen or worker. Their buzzing, when on the wing, is louder, and altogether different from the others. They seem to be of the least value of any in the hive. Perhaps not more than one in a thousand is ever called upon to perform the duty for which they were designed. Yet they assist, on some ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... captured, instantly threw off all her clothing, seized a broken piece of wood, and plunged into the stream. Worn down by exhaustion and famine, her nerveless arm failed her, and she sank beneath the waves. Her body, like a bronze statue of marvelous symmetry, was soon after found washed upon the shore. As faithful chroniclers, we must declare, though with a blush, that the English cut off her head, and set it upon a pole in their streets, a trophy ghastly, bloody, revolting. Many of her subjects were ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... dinner. And the dinner progressed finely until the coffee and dessert were served, and Mr. Stephens had dismissed the waiters and prepared for a half-way business talk; then suddenly his clerk gave a quick nervous push from him of the plate on which quivered a tiny mound of jelly, its symmetry destroyed by just one mouthful, and the crimson blood rolled to his very forehead. His confusion was too apparent and continued to admit of being overlooked, and Mr. Stephens asked, with a ...
— Three People • Pansy
... of the Incas is characterized, says an eminent traveller, "by simplicity, symmetry, and solidity."31 It may seem unphilosophical to condemn the peculiar fashion of a nation as indicating want of taste, because its standard of taste differs from our own. Yet there is an incongruity in the composition of the Peruvian buildings which argues a very imperfect acquaintance with the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... them, wield them, just as she wished. Well-frocked, looking her best, a woman is a dangerous animal; but throw her in contact with another of her sex who is but poorly clad, socially beneath her, and in training her inferior, and you may behold all the grace, all the symmetry of the cobra as it unwinds its beautiful, sinuous body before the ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... nature of the universe in itself, and the connexion of the world of matter and of spirit. Wolff was a disciple of Leibnitz; great as a teacher rather than an inventor, who invested the system of his master slightly modified, with the precision of form which raised it to rivalry with the perfect symmetry of Spinoza's system. Adopting his master's two great canons of truth, the law of contradiction as regulative of thoughts, and the law of the sufficient reason as regulative of things,(664) he attempted in his ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... of beauty in Buildings; 1st, Positive, which consists in the Symmetry, Materials, and Performance, 75. 2d. Arbitrary, which is of two sorts; 1. Prudence, 2. Regularity; which consist in the proper providing against Inconveniences, and observing the Laws of Proportion, 76. The beauty is most seen in the proportion ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... as you propose going this evening I will go with you, to lend a symmetry to the drama of our departure. Would that I had served a more sensitive master! He sleeps there quite indifferent to the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... to maintain itself. One ineffaceable spot was upon the soul of that fascinating being; and though, like the spots on the sun's disk, it was hidden in the effulgence which surrounded it, still he could not conceal from himself that it DID exist, to deface the symmetry of the whole. It was his knowledge of that fearful blemish that had driven him to seek in drunkenness, and subsequently in death, a release from the agonizing tortures of his mind. Virtue and a high sense of honor had triumphed so far, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... grave and important cause which the ardent female suffragist deems it to be. Not only will it not do any of the things which she imagines it is going to do, but it will leave the world exactly where it is. Still—the concession of votes to women is desirable from the point of view of symmetry of classification; and it will soothe the ruffled feelings of quite a ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... pause during which Leila, vaguely averting herself from her mother's scrutiny, drifted toward the dressing-table and began to disturb the symmetry of the brushes and bottles ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... lives room to grow to truth, and they will grow to symmetry; give them leave to ripen, and they will ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... in some way there is a gain in completeness. On this condition everything is welcome,—without it, nothing. Thus, a broken, weedy bank is more picturesque than the velvet slope,—the decayed oak than the symmetry of the sapling,—the squalid shanty by the railroad, with its base of dirt, its windows stuffed with old hats, and the red shirts dependent from its eaves, than the neatest brick cottage. They strike a richer accord, while the others drone on a single note. Moonlight is always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... dropped his eyes. This was a trial he seldom ventured upon. He could not bear that vision long. No one could. That was the fearful implication which made him shrink. He, Robert Hollister, in the flush of manhood, with a body whose symmetry and vigor other men had envied, a mind that functioned alertly, a spirit as nearly indomitable as the spirit of man may be, was like a leper among his own kind; he had become a something that filled other men with pitying ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... 'Glen Almain'—although written afterwards at Rydal—retains its published place in the memorial group. Again the 'Departure from the Vale of Grasmere, August 1803', is prefixed to the same series; although it was not written till 1811, and first published in 1827. To give symmetry to such a Series, it is necessary to depart from the exact chronological order—the departure ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... of her complexion. She looked frequently at Cinq-Mars; but it was rather the look of coquetry than that of love, and her eyes often glanced toward the mirror on the toilette, in which she watched the symmetry of her beauty. These observations of the counsellor began to persuade him that he was mistaken in suspecting her to be the aim of Cinq-Mars, especially when he saw that she seemed to have a pleasure in sitting ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... incalculable effect upon character. Consider, then, the American continent! How simple it is! How broad! How large! How grand in design! A strip of coast, a range of mountains, a plain, a second range, a second strip of coast! That is all! Contrast the complexity of Europe, its lack of symmetry, its variety, irregularity, disorder and caprice! The geography of the two continents already foreshadows the differences in their civilizations. On the one hand simplicity and size; on the other a hole-and-corner ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... ponderings, was led to contradict. For the notion of a huge mechanism like the celestial sphere, spinning round the terraqueous globe as its pivot looked unreasonable. To explain it in any way on mathematical principles needed a most complicated array of cycles and epicycles. Symmetry and simplicity were wanting in the theory. A priori objections started up against it. If the senses pointed to the earth as a centre, reason pointed to a centre elsewhere. Copernicus studied the works of ancient philosophers ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... being the highest ground visible. The vast plains thus watered consist chiefly of a rich dark-coloured earth, to the depth of 30 or 40 feet. Unabraded fragments of trap are not uncommon in the soil of these plains, and I imagined there was a want of symmetry in the hollows and slopes as compared with features more closely connected with hills elsewhere. At 8 1/2 miles, perceiving boundless plains to the northward, I changed the direction of our route 24 degrees east of north. The plains ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... already observed, that the ankle of the true Grecian race is remarkable for its exquisite symmetry; and hers was a model of perfection, which plainly indicated her descent from a people, among whom beauty is the most decided national characteristic. Her delicate small foot was chaussee'd in a very neat black shoe, with a stocking ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... carried it forward and developed it with an independent energy. But like reader like poet. Both show the effects of having come into an estate they have not earned. A nation of readers has required of its poets a diction and symmetry of form equal to that of an old literature like that of Great Britain, which is also theirs. No ruggedness, however racy, would be tolerated by circles which, however superficial their culture, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... thrown away. A man who would permit a field to be overgrown with weeds and thorns simply because it would not naturally produce roses, would be very foolish, particularly if the ground should only need cultivation to enable it to yield abundantly of corn. Far be it from me to depreciate physical symmetry and personal comeliness. They are gifts of God, and they are very good; but there are better things in this world than a good face, and better things than the admiration which a good face wins. I am more and more convinced, as the years pass away, that the choicest ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb |
