"Comeliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon his pillow for a long time in vain. At length he fell asleep, but it was only to dream of his patron,—now, as he had last seen him, with the paleness of death upon his features, then again transformed into all the vigour and comeliness of youth, approaching to expel him from the mansion-house of his fathers. Then he dreamed, that after wandering long over a wild heath, he came at length to an inn, from which sounded the voice of revelry; and that when he entered, the first person he met was Frank Kennedy, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... careful to please every body, and to keep an arrow adapted to every mark. If you are thirsty, you can have here your choice of drink; if you love dancing and singing, you can get here your fill. If her comeliness entice you to lust for the body of a female, she has only to lift up her finger to one of the officers of her father, (who surround her at all times, though invisibly), and they will fetch you a lass in a minute, or the body of a harlot newly ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... kind will do. At first they will tire you, leave you "all in," I have no doubt. I expect that. You see, in these exercises you are putting into play a lot of muscles that have been lying dormant, perhaps never been used in the way you will use them in this class as preparation for health, comeliness and dancing strength. You need to use these muscles. It is to stir them up and make you strong, and at the same time supple and shapely, that I have devised this series of exercises. It was not made by guess, ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... as a rule a judge of good looks; and no doubt 'tis unreason in me to pity her the more for her comeliness. But as a matter of ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... me he shall be made King, and he shall reign for ever in Fairyland, without weeping and without sorrow. Come with me, O gentle Connla of the ruddy cheek, the fair, freckled neck, and the golden hair! Come with me, beloved Connla, and thou shalt retain the comeliness and dignity of thy form, free from the wrinkles of old age, till the awful ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... all who looked on him ever after might thus know to what company and what country he belonged, and that this was not his rest, but that he had been called and chosen to a heavenly inheritance. And, besides, it was no sooner set upon his forehead than it greatly added to his dignity and his comeliness. He had now the gravity and beauty of an angel; nay, the beauty in his measure and the gravity of Goodwill at the gate himself. And, then, as if that were not enough, the third Shining One also gave him a roll with a seal upon it, which he was bidden look on as he ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... King, most Holy Father, that this Lady, His spouse, sends her children whom you see here, who are not of a lower condition than those who came long before them. They do not degenerate; they have the comeliness both of their Father and their mother, since they make profession of the most perfect poverty. There is, therefore, no fear of their dying of poverty, being the children and heirs of the Immortal King, born of a poor mother, of the image of Jesus Christ, by the virtue of the Holy Ghost; ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... the pavement of the open street—were, as a rule, of merely medium stature, sturdily built, and not particularly intellectual in expression, while the colour of their skin was something very nearly approaching to ruddy copper, very few even of their womenkind having any pretentions to comeliness, to say nothing of beauty. The occupants of the buildings, however, who viewed the procession from their windows or the flat roofs of their houses, and who might be taken to represent a somewhat better class, ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... notes in the little summer house in Mr. Whittingham's garden at Chiswick. Here they would discuss size and quality of paper, the shape of the printed page, the number of lines, the size of the type, the form and comeliness of the title-page.[2] In all technical details the Edinburgh edition of R. L. Stevenson's works is satisfying. Here are more 'lines of beauty' than in almost any other modern printed book. As we handle it we feel satisfied that it is right. ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... said Susan, dropping her quizzing manner, "I am a long way behind the marigold or any flower in comeliness and innocence, but at least I wish ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... shaping nature's raw material into character are many and various. Of old, the seer likened the soul unto clay. The mud falls upon the board before the potter, a rude mass, without form or comeliness. But an hour afterwards the clay stands forth adorned with all the beauty of a lovely vase. Thus the soul begins, a mere mass of mind, but hands many and powerful soon shape it into the outlines of some ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... thus: "By what means can I carry those rubies to the king, and show them to him, and get my father released?" She was plunged in these perplexing reflections; meanwhile, all the people in the square and on the road, seeing her beauty and comeliness, were struck with astonishment, and remained utterly confounded. All the people said one to another, "Even unto this day, we have never seen a human being of this form and beauty." The khwaja [270] also perceived her, and sent a slave, ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... the inevitable comeliness of motherhood, opens to you. And nestling in her arms is a little boy with golden hair and happy face, like ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Gone—the beauty and comeliness of the young wife! Gone her health and allurement! Perished all her loveliness! Her garments were the garments of a scarecrow. Despite all these things the girl was innocent. But she realized her husband's horror ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the souls of whom I am going to speak were so content to dwell where they were, was simply that they had no imagination beyond, but dwelt happily among the delights which upon earth are represented by sound and colour and scent and comeliness and comfort. This was a perpetual surprise to me, because I saw in these fine creatures such a faculty of delicate perception, that I could not help believing again and again that their emotions were as deep and varied ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... she had not in earlier years seen the furtiveness in his handsome face; but at last, as his natural viciousness became stereotyped, and bad habits matured and emphasized, she saw beneath his mask of low-class comeliness. When at last she had found it necessary to dismiss the best cook she ever had, because of him, they saw little of each other. This was coincident with his failure at the ash-factory, where he mismanaged and even robbed Jean Jacques right and left; and she had firmly insisted on Jean ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Youth and amorous Inclinations, he would look upon a Coquet with the same Contempt or Indifference as he would upon a Coxcomb: The wanton Carriage in a Woman, would disappoint her of the Admiration which she aims at; and the vain Dress or Discourse of a Man would destroy the Comeliness of his Shape, or Goodness of his Understanding. I say the Goodness of his Understanding, for it is no less common to see Men of Sense commence Coxcombs, than beautiful Women become immodest. When this happens in either, the Favour we are naturally inclined to give to the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of poesy is a little matter: be it so; but of a truth I do tell thee, Cecil, it shall master full many a bold heart that the Spaniard cannot trouble; it shall win to it full many a proud and flighty one that even chivalry and manly comeliness cannot touch. I may shake titles and dignities by the dozen from my breakfast-board; but I may not save those upon whose heads I shake them from rottenness and oblivion. This year they and their sovereign dwell together; next year, they and ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... held in over high esteem; but of a sudden, in the presence of this harsh-featured dog of war, this grim, fierce-eyed ruffler, he seemed to fade, despite his comeliness of face and form, into a poor and puny insignificance. And when, presently, he unwisely related how, when in the boat he had fainted, the maiden laughed outright ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... Col. iii. 12, 13. 6. I love you with a warm and fervent love: so do you love one another. 7. I love with a holy, spiritual love, as new men who have my image stamped on, and my holy nature in you, and as you are made perfect by the comeliness and beauty I have put on you: so do you love one another, because you are a lovely and holy people unto me. 8. I love you with a constant and unchangeable love; notwithstanding of all your weaknesses, yea, unkindness too, and unworthy walkings before me: thus you are ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... rugged elms or melancholy yews; but the grass was probably rank and untended, and the ground a confused medley of shapeless heaps. Except in epitaphs, there were no particular signs of tenderness and care; no flowers, no shrubs, no crosses. The revival of care for our beauty and comeliness of churches, and the example of well-kept cemeteries, have combined, since the time of the last of the Georges, to effect an improvement in the general aspect of our churchyards, which was certainly very much needed. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... lips parted in a happy smile, gray eyes eager with anticipation under the long, curving, brown lashes. She was so very dear to him. Not alone because of the instinctive yearning of flesh to flesh, not altogether because of the grace of her vigorous young body, the comeliness of her face, the shining coils of brown hair that gave him a strange pleasure just to stroke. Not alone because of the quick, keen mind that so often surprised him by its sureness. There was some charm ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... palate, and jaws, though he will have no use for them? Shall the members which nature has given to the body for the sake of generation be useless to the Deity? Nor would the internal parts be less superfluous than the external. What comeliness is there in the heart, the lungs, the liver, and the rest of them, abstracted from their use? I mention these because you place them in the Deity on account of the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... proud of him, as they had never been proud of a captain before, because he upheld every tradition of manliness and manhood at its best. And they only liked him the better that so far his attitude to his own comeliness was rather that of boredom than anything else. Certainly it weighed as nothing in the balance against the joy of scoring a century and achieving a good average ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... wolves by way of revenge; but we let those go, and catch the harmless and tame sort, and such as have neither stings nor teeth to bite with, and slay them; which, so may Jove help us, Nature seems to us to have produced for their beauty and comeliness only. [Just as if one seeing the river Nilus overflowing its banks, and thereby filling the whole country with genial and fertile moisture, should not at all admire that secret power in it that produces plants and plenteousness of most sweet and useful ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... trembling, her eyes sunk into her head with continual blubbering: and moreover, they might see the most part of her stomach torn in sunder. To be short, her body was not much better than her mind: yet her good grace and comeliness and the force of her beauty was not altogether defaced. But notwithstanding this ugly and pitiful state of hers, yet she shewed herself within, by her outward looks and countenance. When Caesar had made her lie down again, and sat by her bedside, Cleopatra began to ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... Billingtons, worshipful Master Howland, lackey of the governor, and page-boy to his wife," demanded the voice that had interrupted Mistress Hopkins, and turning toward it, Howland confronted a short, square woman, not without a certain vulgar comeliness of her own, although now her buxom complexion was florid with anger and her black eyes snapping angrily, while the arms akimbo, the swaying figure, and raised voice betrayed Helena Billington for precisely what she was, a common scold and shrew. Howland was a brave man; he had already ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... or talons, or by the very outline of the pillow where his curly head had rested only an hour or two ago. Whereas her love for Christ was a deep and solemn passion that seemed to well not out of His comeliness or even His marred Face or pierced Hands, but out of His wide encompassing love that sustained and clasped her at every moment of her conscious attention to Him, and that woke her soul to ecstasy at moments of high communion. These ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... pitched, as I have said, against the bulwarks, where he lay like some horrible, ungainly sort of puppet; life-size, indeed, but how different from life's colour or life's comeliness! In that position I could easily have my way with him; and as the habit of tragical adventures had worn off almost all my terror for the dead, I took him by the waist as if he had been a sack of bran, and with one good heave tumbled him overboard. He went in with a sounding plunge; the red cap ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of men,' so He 'humbled Himself,' and all along the course of His earthly life He chose constant lowliness and to be 'despised and rejected of men.' It was the result moment by moment of His own will that to the eyes of men He presented 'no form nor comeliness,' and that will was moment by moment steadied in its unmoved humility, because He perpetually looked 'not on His own things, but on the things of others.' The guise He presented to the eyes of men was 'the fashion of a man.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a rule, are very pretty as little girls, lose their good looks as they grow up, and are disappointing when compared with the Spaniards. Sometimes one comes across fish- or market-women of considerable comeliness, which, when conjoined to the graceful figure and poise induced by the habitual carriage of heavy weights on the head and the absence of shoes, makes a striking picture. The costume is attractive, and the wealth of golden ear-rings, charms, chains, and such ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... finds himself reduced to the position of steward or director in the house of Araminte, a rich young widow, to whose hand he is induced to aspire by Dubois, his former servant, now in her employ, who, by his profound knowledge of the feminine heart, aided by his master's comeliness, succeeds in overcoming the prejudice of social standing in the mind of Araminte, and triumphantly marries her to Dorante, in spite of Madame Argante's horror at the match and her enthusiastic ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... with anyone very serious. There she would have been thought arrayed by Nature as a tearing blonde, suitable for the equivocal light stage, or as a frivolous artist's model, or as promenade girl in a suit and cloak house. But in Fraeulein the extraordinary combination of volatile comeliness and unimpeachable earnestness daily worked growing wonders ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... Stephenson jumped up, took Emerson by the collar, and giving him one of his friendly shakes, asked how it was that in England we could always tell an American? This led to an interesting conversation, in the course of which Emerson said how much he had been everywhere struck by the haleness and comeliness of the English men and women; and then they diverged into a further discussion of the influences which air, climate, moisture, soil, and other conditions exercised upon the physical and moral development of ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... her hair almost as long as herself, tied up again in pretty knots; and it seemed she stood not in that awe of her husband as the rest, for she spake and discoursed, and drank among the gentlemen and captains, and was very pleasant, knowing her own comeliness, and taking great pride therein. I have seen a lady in England so like to her, as but for the difference of colour, I would have sworn ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... solicitude lest the black veil should slip aside. Even if his bewildered soul could have forgotten, there was a faithful woman at this pillow, who, with averted eyes, would have covered that aged face, which she had last beheld in the comeliness of manhood. At length the death-stricken old man lay quietly in the torpor of mental and bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse, and breath that grew fainter and fainter, except when a long, deep, and ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... worshipper of intellect, it was intellectually that he mastered and developed them. Like Sidonia he moves among them not to feel with them but to understand and learn from them. Such sympathy as he had was either purely sensuous, as for youth and beauty and all kinds of comeliness; or purely intellectual, as for intelligence, artificiality, servility, meanness. And as his essence was satirical, as he was naturally irreverent and contemptuous, it follows that he is best and strongest in the act of punishment not of reward. ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... office, looked commonplace by comparison, while the jurymen, who turned to look at him, seemed like beings of an inferior order. It was not alone the distinction of the tall figure, erect and dignified, nor the power and massive composure of his face, but the actual symmetry and comeliness of the face itself that now arrested my attention; a comeliness that made it akin rather to some classic mask, wrought in the ivory-toned marble of Pentelicus, than to the eager faces that move around us in the hurry ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... to him that a deadly gangrene is affecting his very life; so will it be with a girl's heart. She did not yet,—not yet,—tell herself that half-a-dozen gentle words, that two or three soft glances, that a touch of a hand, the mere presence of a youth whose comeliness was endearing to the eye, had mastered and subdued all that there was of Marion Fay. But it was so. Not for a moment did her mind run away, as they were taken homewards, from the object of her unconscious idolatry. Had she behaved ill?—that was her regret! He had been so gracious;—that ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... Boulaye remembered that it was Charlot's wedding-day. Popular amongst the women by virtue of his comeliness, and respected by the men by virtue of his strength, Charlot Tardivet was a general favourite of the countryside, and here, in the room of old Duhamel, the schoolmaster, was half the village gathered to do him honour upon his wedding morn. It was like Duhamel, ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... (white-headed now and wearing spectacles and a white cap), Betsy Beauty (grown tall and round, with a kind of country comeliness) and Nessy MacLeod (looking like a premature old maid who was doing her best to be a girl) were waiting at the open porch when our car drew up, and they received me ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... no longer callow; comely, yet with a strong male comeliness; he had a pleasantly modulated voice, yet one that they had heard swell into a compelling note of command; he had the most joyous, careless laugh in all the world—such a laugh as endears a man to all that hear it—and he ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... Can comeliness of form or face so fair With kindliness of word or deed compare? No. Those at first the unwary heart may gain, But these, these ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... and she much pleased with them. Christine had a good, strong face, plain, rugged features, but a countenance that indicated so much good sense, probity, and kindliness of heart that it was attractive in spite of its lack of comeliness. ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... three brothers, who, having adventured, made known their wishes. Now the first was very tall, far above all his fellows, and vain of his comeliness. For he was of those who put bark or fur into their moccasins, that they may be looked up to by the little folk and be loved by the squaws; and his hair was plastered to stand up on high, and on the summit of it was a very long turkey-tail feather. And this man asked to become ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... to destroy anything which kept her away from him: her lover, if she had one; her pride, her modesty, her honor, if she were fancy-free. Aware of Sleeny's good looks, if not of his own ugliness, he hated them both for the comeliness that seemed to make them natural mates for each other. But it was not in his methods to proceed rashly with either. He treated Maud with distant respect, and increased his intimacy with Sleeny until ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... Some were shops or taverns, among which were interspersed the residences of the burgesses and the town houses of the rural gentry. Fronted by miry roadway, or at best an occasional strip of rough boulder pavement, over which wheeled carriages could rarely pass, these lines of houses had no form or comeliness, save what might be due to an occasional bit of small flower-garden before the few that were large and inhabited by persons in comparatively easy circumstances. Farther back the ground rose more rapidly and showed some scattered suburban houses. ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... Comeliness and grace are independent of matter. Be- ing possesses its qualities before they are perceived hu- 247:21 manly. Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and re- flects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, 247:24 outline, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... letters. I am jealous of their honour and concerned for the dignity and comeliness of their service. I was, most likely, the only writer that neat lady had ever caught in the exercise of his craft, and it distressed me not to be able to remember when it was that I dressed myself last, and how. No doubt that would be all right in essentials. The fortune of the ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... tyrant. And this extraordinary number is NEARLY equal to the number of days and nights in a year (365 x 2 730); and is therefore concerned with human life. This is the interval between a good and bad man in happiness only: what must be the difference between them in comeliness ...
— The Republic • Plato
... fourteenth night, and velour shone from between his eyes. Now that horseman was the captain of the hundred horse, and his name was Kahrdash; and when he saw in Kanmakan the perfection of cavalarice with surpassing gifts of comeliness, his beauty reminded him of a beautiful mistress of his whose name was Fatin.[FN100] Now she was one of the fairest of women in face, for Allah had given her charms and grace and noble qualities of all kinds, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... noticeable phenomenon in it, and the reaction in favour of naturalism in poetry begins in that century, early. There are, thus, the born romanticists and the born classicists. There are the born classicists who start with form, to whose minds the comeliness of the old, immemorial, well-recognised types in art and literature, have revealed themselves impressively; who will entertain no matter which will not go easily and flexibly into them; whose work aspires only to be a ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... A stain is properly ascribed to corporeal things, when a comely body loses its comeliness through contact with another body, e.g. a garment, gold or silver, or the like. Accordingly a stain is ascribed to spiritual things in like manner. Now man's soul has a twofold comeliness; one from the refulgence of the natural light of reason, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... I have said, against the bulwarks, where he lay like some horrid, ungainly sort of puppet; life-size, indeed, but how different from life's color or life's comeliness! In that position, I could easily have my way with him, and as the habit of tragical adventures had worn off almost all my terror for the dead, I took him by the waist as if he had been a sack of bran, and, with one good heave, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought than in action; more in atmosphere than in conscious life. It is a spiritual quality, and is felt more than it is seen. It is not a matter of size, nor bodily attitude, nor attire, nor personal comeliness: it is a state of inward being, and of knowing your cause is just. And so you see it is a great and profound subject after all, great in its ramifications, limitless in extent, implying the entire science of right living. I once met a man who was deformed in body and little more than a dwarf, but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... brutal creatures being, "If I beat your mother, then you beat mine; if I beat your wife, then you beat mine," &c. &c. The consequence of these ferocious habits is evident enough in the appearance of most of the young women, who have any good looks or personal comeliness to boast of. The number of violent blows upon the head, or of rude wounds inflicted by the spear, form so many miserable trophies of victories dearly won by these Australian beauties, and the early life of one of these unhappy beings is generally ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... to whose lot all {blessings} had fallen, if you except the crime of his killing Phocus. The Trachinian land[22] received him guilty of his brother's blood, and banished from his native home. Here Ceyx, sprung from Lucifer for his father, and having the comeliness of his sire in his face, held the sway without violence and without bloodshed, who, being sad at that time and unlike his {former} self, lamented the loss of his brother. After the son of AEacus, wearied, both with troubles and the length ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... he was but tender-bodied, and the only son of my womb; when youth with comeliness pluck'd all gaze his way; when, for a day of king's entreaties, a mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding—considering how honor would become such a person; that it was no better than picture-like to hang by the wall, if renown made it not stir,—was pleased to let him seek danger ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... me in a quandary. For how, pray, is it possible for me, a simple-minded male, fittingly to depict for you the clothes of Margaret?—the innumerable vanities, the quaint devices, the pleasing conceits with which she delighted to enhance her comeliness? The thing is beyond me. Let us keep discreetly out of her wardrobe, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... as from her the mask of comeliness and good manners had fallen. The wild untrammelled beast became increasingly ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... more those members of the body which seem to be weak are necessary, [12:23]and those which we esteem to be less honorable members of the body, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our uncomely members have more abundant comeliness, [12:24]for our comely ones have no need. But God has commingled the body, giving more abundant honor to that part which was lacking, [12:25]that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should ...
— The New Testament • Various
... brazen, unblushing faces! What cringing, and bowing, and fawning! What scoundrel smiles, what ruffian frowns! what polished lying! What hypocrisy of patriotism! What philippics, levelled in the very name of liberty, against her sacred self! What orations on the benefit of starvation—on the comeliness of rags! Have we not heard selfishness speaking with a syren voice? Have we not seen the haggard face of state-craft rouged up into a look of pleasantness and innocence? Have we not, night after night, seen the national Jonathan Wilds meet to plan a robbery, and—the purse taken—have they not rolled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... while Meta introduced her brother —a great contrast to herself, though not without a certain comeliness, tall and large, with ruddy complexion, deep lustreless black eyes, and a heavy straight bush of black moustache, veiling rather thick lips. Blanche reiterated ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... dreamed of turning these pleasant speeches into meaning ones. She was heartily pleased to see him without the disfiguring glasses, for the brown eyes were fine ones, and the face was full of character as well as comeliness. ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... longing. Of course no one can define it. It is that which quickens the blood of all young creatures—the rosebud, the meadow-lark, the dragon-fly, the colt, the boy and the maiden, bidding them glorify God with the show and the example of their comeliness. The boy rose from the hay and skipped under the trees, over the fantastic figures of the moon-spun carpet. He waved his arms, and there came to his throat a simple song, which he chanted croakingly, lest some one should hear him and ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... they see him march through the town, but cringe, bow, bend, and were ready to lick the dust of his feet. They also wished a thousand times over that he would become their Prince and Captain, and would become their protection. They would also one to another talk of the comeliness of his person, and how much for glory and valour he outstripped the great ones of the world. But, poor hearts, as to themselves, their thoughts would chance, and go upon all manner of extremes. Yea, through the working of them backward and forward, Mansoul became as a ball tossed, and ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... exhausting itself upon the substance which feeds it, burning lower and lower, till it goes out for lack of aliment, who will not be reminded of life itself? the animated form, the body instinct with vitality, changing and changing as time sweeps along, till the spirit that gave it vigor and comeliness, and power and beauty, is called away, and it becomes at last mere dust and ashes. And then again, when the pipe itself falls from the teeth, or the table, or the mantel, or the shelf—as fall it surely will, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... Abbey of Shaftesbury was one nun who drew Philippa's attention more than the others. This was a woman of about sixty years of age, whom all the convent called Mother Joan. An upright, white-haired woman, with some remnant of former comeliness; but Mother Joan was blind. Philippa pitied her affliction, and liked her simple, straightforward manner. She had many old memories and tales of forgotten times, which she was ready enough to tell; and these Philippa, as well as the ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... their mother's lap. The old lady was smoking a clay pipe; the man running over some castaway jackets and boots. I remarked particularly the broad shoulders and athletic arms of the woman, whose many childbirths had left no traces upon her comeliness. She asked me, wistfully: "Masser, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... her mother's placid, Madonna-like beauty, and was at this time the fairest of the whole sisterhood. Sarah, who was hereafter to be considered not only the wit but also the beauty of the family, was at this time a child of ten, and not yet grown into her full inheritance of comeliness. In after years it was said of Sarah that she was 'not only beautiful and lovely to a high degree, but was wonderfully happy in ingeny and memory.' But even at her loveliest it was never said of her, as it was of Margaret, that she was 'glorious, comely, and beautiful in that which never fades away,' ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... at Runiroi was a comfortable, old, rambling structure, in a green yard and flower garden, not ugly, but quite innocent of any pretensions at comeliness. Neither was there, to many, a bit of picturesque beauty in the flat surroundings; and yet this very flatness did lend a charm peculiar to itself. My eyes ever found a delight in its purple distances and in the great, ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... coming-out party. She simply put on long skirts, coiled her black hair on top of her head, and began going to evening parties with a few young men who were amused by the tart briskness of her tongue and attracted by the comeliness of her healthful youth. She had married the first man who proposed to her—a young insurance agent. Since then they had lived in a very comfortable, middling state of harmony, apparently on about the same social scale as Marietta's ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... where, O where Hast thou a symbol of her golden hair? Not oat-sheaves drooping in the western sun; 610 Not—thy soft hand, fair sister! let me shun Such follying before thee—yet she had, Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad; And they were simply gordian'd up and braided, Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded, Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow; The which were blended in, I know not how, With such a paradise of lips and eyes, Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs, That, when I think thereon, my spirit clings 620 And plays about its fancy, till ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... breath, "Nature, you have turned out a com-plete article this time, I reckon." Then, as Severne laughed merrily at this, she turned her candle and her eyes full on him very briskly. She looked at him for a moment, with a gratified eye at his comeliness; then ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms. In the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... the conditions when we turn to consider English Art, as it stands to-day: "The whole current of human life setting resolutely in a direction opposed to artistic production; no love of beauty, no sense of the outward dignity and comeliness of things, calling on the part of the public for expression at the artist's hands; and, as a corollary, no dignity, no comeliness for the most part, in their outward aspect; everywhere a narrow utilitarianism which does not include the gratification of the artistic ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... It is the one fatal defect in chickens that they grow. With them, youth and beauty are truly inseparable terms. The better they are, the worse they look. After they are three weeks old, every day detracts from their comeliness. They lose their plump roundness, their fascinating, soft down, and put out the most ridiculous little wings and tails and hard-looking feathers, and are no longer dear, tender chicks, but small hens,—a very uninteresting Young ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the son of AEson chief Shone forth divinely in his comeliness, And graces of his form. On him the maid Looked still askance, and gazed ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... clothes reserved for the day, and by times appeared before old Sylvester in proud array of little hats, new-brightened shoes and shining locks, span new as though they had just come from the mint; anxious to have his grandfatherly approval of their comeliness? Shortly after, the horses caught in the distant pastures, the Captain and Farmer Oliver having charge of them, were brought in and tied under the trees ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... within a few hundred years, when he lived. I picture him to myself always as a poor, shrivelled, stooping, mean-looking old man; his visage marred more than any man, and his figure more than the sons of men; no form nor comeliness in him, nor beauty that men should desire him; despised and rejected of men: a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, even as his ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... that old men should be present at the exercises, dances, and sports of young people, that they may rejoice in others for the activity and beauty of body which is no more in themselves, and call to mind the grace and comeliness of that flourishing age; and wills that in these recreations the honour of the prize should be given to that young man who has most diverted the company. I was formerly wont to mark cloudy and gloomy days as extraordinary; ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... might have had a more magnificent still, and a novel that would not be this novel merely, this War and Peace, with the addition of another excellence, a comeliness of form. We might have had a novel that would be a finer, truer, more vivid and more forcible picture of life. The best form is that which makes the most of its subject—there is no other definition of the meaning of form in fiction. ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... acquaintances did not at this time appear. Leonard Everard, who had some time ago finished his course at college, was living partly in London and partly on the Continent. His very absence made him of added interest to his old play-fellow. The image of his grace and comeliness, of his dominance and masculine force, early impressed on her mind, began to compare favourably with the actualities of her other friends; those of them at least who were within the circle of her personal interest. 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' In ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... to comply with the invitation, were it only for the charm of old times. She had not seen such a table for years, and little as the conventionalities of delicate taste were known there, it was not without a comeliness of its own in its air of wholesome abundance and the extreme purity of all its arrangements. If but a piece of cold pork were on aunt Miriam's table, it was served with a nicety that would not have offended the most fastidious; and amid irregularities that the fastidious would ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... what we heard? (or what was reported to us) and to whom was the arm of Jehovah revealed? For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground. He had no form nor comeliness; and when we saw him there was no beauty that we should desire him, He was despised and the outcast of men; a man of sorrows and familiar with grief;[fn46] and we hid as it were our faces from him, (or, as one that hid his face from us,) ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... buoyantly worked, and saw him stoop to pat its head. Or was this, after all, mere animalism, mere superficial vitality, love of health and being? She shuddered, and shut her eyes, for it came home to her that to him she was just such a being of health, vitality and comeliness, on a little higher plane. She put the thought from her, but it had had its birth, and it would not down. He had immense vitality, he was tireless, and abundant in work and industry; he went from one thing to another with ease and swiftly changing eagerness. Was it all mere force—mere ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ye?" said the tall lady, and at that moment Betty herself arrived. She was a plump person with a kind of vulgar comeliness, and Glory had a vague sense of having seen ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... enough, was often called by his surname, Wilks, by white and colored people on the home plantation. Wilks was a very fine looking man. He was about as white as anybody on the plantation; and in manliness of form, and comeliness of features, he bore a very striking resemblance to Mr. Murray Lloyd. It was whispered, and pretty generally admitted as a fact, that William Wilks was a son of Col. Lloyd, by a highly favored slave-woman, who was still on the plantation. There were many reasons for believing this ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... supply, I generously presented her with one, unfinished and all though it was, and which she "hung on the line" with Jim Clay; and no doubt it was not so great a caricature of the beauty of the Noonoon as the "enlargements" were of the comeliness of their dead original in the days when he had told life's sweetest story to the dashing damsel who could handle her coaching team of five with as much complacence as her granddaughter drove her small fat pony in the little yellow sulky about the ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... chin meditatively; it was marked by a day's more growth than on the previous morning, which did not enhance his comeliness or lessen his state of vagabondage. There was something about his appearance that made him out less a fool and more an uncouth rascal; one might easily have trusted him as well as pitied him yesterday—but to-day—Patsy's gaze was critical ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... our much-loved England thou art disporting thyself supremely and alone. But when I consider thy tragedies, throughout which is diffused the inmost soul of poesy, my crude yet labored metres seem to me as the body of a maiden, not indeed devoid of a certain comeliness and grace, yet into whose waiting bosom hath not yet been ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... acts, the more grievous is not always the more vile. For the comeliness of a man has its source in his reason: wherefore the sins of the flesh, whereby the flesh enslaves the reason, are viler, although spiritual sins are more grievous, since they proceed from greater contempt. In like manner, sins that are committed through deceit are viler, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... strange, could only be soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images of Love and Death and Madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and acanthus-like curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... have been, she romantically reflected, a handsome figure of a man. Then naively the writer had passed on to a second description: "If I have any favour of comeliness it can matter naught to me save as it giveth pleasure to my deare husbande, yet I shall endeavour to sette downe ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... pasture land of horses, called Ephyra, where Sisyphus lived, who was the craftiest of all mankind. He was the son of Aeolus, and had a son named Glaucus, who was father to Bellerophon, whom heaven endowed with the most surpassing comeliness and beauty. But Proetus devised his ruin, and being stronger than he, drove him from the land of the Argives, over which Jove had made him ruler. For Antea, wife of Proetus, lusted after him, and would have had him lie with her in secret; but Bellerophon ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... and soul as are of force To raise their beings to eternity, May be converted on works fitting men; And for the practice of a forced look, An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase, Study the native frame of a true heart, An inward comeliness of bounty, knowledge, And spirit that may conform them actually To God's high figures, which they have ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... dragon soaring high. What is her chastity like? Like a white plum in spring with snow nestling in its broken skin; Her purity? Like autumn orchids bedecked with dewdrops. Her modesty? Like a fir-tree growing in a barren plain; Her comeliness? Like russet clouds reflected in a limpid pool. Her gracefulness? Like a dragon in motion wriggling in a stream; Her refinement? Like the rays of the moon shooting on to a cool river. Sure is she to put Hsi Tzu to shame! Bound to put Wang Ch'iang to the blush! ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Al-Rashid considered her comeliness and the goodliness of her singing and her eloquence and what other qualities she comprised and rejoiced with joy exceeding; and for the stress of that which overcame him of delight, he descended from the couch and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... The supply of coats of this grade is such that they must be offered for twenty dollars in order to induce some one to take the final or marginal one. What does this mean? It means that this purchaser will pay fourteen dollars and no more in order to have the second utility, consisting in comeliness, added to the first utility, capacity to keep him warm. This man would give more than twenty dollars rather than go uncloaked; for it is plain that, if he will pay fourteen dollars for comeliness, he will give more than six for warmth. Probably he would pay ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... was one of the finest looking Indian women I have ever met,—tall, straight, lithe and dignified. But, crawling about on the floor on all fours, was the most piteous travesty of the human form I have ever seen. It was an idiot boy, sixteen years of age. He had neither the comeliness of a beast nor the intellect of a man. His name was Hootz-too (Bear Heart), and indeed all his motions were those of a bear rather than of a human being. Crossing the floor with the swinging gait of a bear, he would crouch back on his haunches and ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... the door, she turned toward them and flung back her hand with a gesture of farewell. But her face was so changed that they hardly recognized it. Sin and evil passions glowed through its comeliness, and wrought a horrible deformity; a smile gleamed in her eyes, as of triumphant mockery, at ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... inherent characteristics, which she had fought valiantly—love of good times and of pretty clothes—made ingress easy for this sinister and cynical idea. Having gained a foothold it pressed forward boldly. Cutty, who had everything—strength, comeliness, wisdom, and money. To live among all those beautiful things, never to be lonely again, to be waited on, fussed over, made much of, taken into the high world. Never more to add up accounts, to stretch five-dollar bills across ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... treasure, and going to the cart climbed into the front, sliding over the seat to a space at the head of the mattress. She bent over the still figure, looking into the face. Its youth and comeliness smote her, seemed to knock at her heart and soften something there that had been hard. An uprush of intense feeling, pity for this blighted creature, this maimed and helpless thing, rescued by chance from a horrible death, rose and flooded her. She moistened the temples ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... change he had predicted had thoroughly come to pass. Farms were everywhere to let, and a general cry to parliament for aid rang through the land. Dutton called at the office upon business, accompanied by a young woman of remarkable personal comeliness, but, as a very few sentences betrayed, little or no education in the conventional sense of the word. She was the daughter of a farmer, whom—it was no fault of hers—a change of times had not found in a better condition for weathering them. Anne Mosely, in fact, was a thoroughly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... of our famous museum—lacks comeliness of figure, though at moments he can be very impressive. We can therefore recognize him at a distance by means of a certain ungainliness of stride sometimes seen in a man wholly given over to intellectual pursuits. But when he turns and you get a glimpse ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... beauty of the woman for himself. Also did I see the women of the West go down to the salt waters to bathe. Naked were they save for a covering which clung as closely as the skin to a peach, so that if I had had a mind I could have discoursed upon the comeliness of the wife of el Jones, or the poor land belonging to el Smith. Allah! I remember well a bride-to-be of seventeen summers, comely in her outer raiment, displaying to her future husband, without hesitation, the poor harvest ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... rising, with the gathering at Braemar. And said he wha told us, 'The gilt ball fell frae the standard pole, and there's nane to think that a good omen!' But I saw it," said Mother Binning. She turned her wheel, a woman not yet old and with a large, tranquil comeliness. "What I ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... exactly careful to choose such colours as will not make any disagreeable mixture in the breed. Strength is chiefly valued in the male, and comeliness in the female; not upon the account of love, but to preserve the race from degenerating; for where a female happens to excel in strength, a consort is chosen, with regard ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... generally, unless it be when she walketh apace for her pleasure, or to catch her a heat in the cold mornings. Nevertheless it is not so decent in a meaner person, as I have discerned in some counterfeit ladies of the country, which use it much to their own derision. This comeliness was wanting in queen Mary, otherwise a very good and honorable princess. And was some blemish to the emperor Ferdinando, a most noble-minded man, yet so careless and forgetful of himself in that behalf, as I have seen him run up a pair of stairs so swift and nimble a pace, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... waits to hear that voice That shall restore her comeliness, And make her wastes rejoice. Come, Lord, and wipe away The curse, the sin, the stain, And make this blighted world of ours Thine own fair world again. Come, then, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... moment you rise as high as a college, nature is violated. First, boys go off by themselves to their own destruction; secondly, home influences withdrawn; and, thirdly,—at Harvard, which the only college I ever visited,—the thorough comeliness which is found in the lower grades of schools does not appeal. The separation of boys and girls in school is a subject which has much talked about, but has not yet come to its adequate discussion. But the achievements of the past are the surest guaranties ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... of grace! Thy comeliness Hath ever favor won and fond caress. Thy faithful lovers' lives are bound in thine; They joy in thy security, but pine And weep in gloom ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... room was not very light, there being only one window and the door; but Mrs. Hoden could be seen plainly enough as she lay, hollow-cheeked and haggard, on a bed. Once she had evidently been a woman of some comeliness. The ravages of trouble and grief were there to read in her worn face; it had not, however, any of the hard and bitter lines that had ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... beautiful dog to be seen than the show Collie of the present period. Produced from the old working type, he is now practically a distinct breed. His qualities in the field are not often tested, but he is a much more handsome and attractive animal, and his comeliness will always win for him many admiring friends. The improvements in his style and appearance have been alleged to be due to an admixture with Gordon Setter blood. In the early years of exhibitions he showed the shorter head, heavy ears, and much of the black and tan colouring which might seem to justify ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the comeliness of the daughters of Israel, nor their shekels, nor their brains, nor their ancient and most valuable blood. It knows the secret virtue of that mechanical transfusion of fluids familiar to science under the name of "endosmoses" and "exosmoses" (I ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... extravagantly, bewitchingly attractive. Her face and form would have been noticeable anywhere and under any circumstances; but now in contrast with the unmodified homeliness of her parents and brother her comeliness was almost startling. The others seemed to harmonize with their drab surroundings, with the dull, unattractive house and its furnishings, but Lorelei was in violent opposition to everything about her. She wore her beauty unconsciously, too, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... and fought other bands, but they bore no malice when the strife was over. In one point only was Hereward less than true to his own nobility of character—he was jealous of admitting that any man was his superior in strength or comeliness, and his vanity was well supported by his ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... the Restoration and the subsequent changes in affairs, the Amis family returned to England, settling in London, where Aphra, meeting a merchant of Dutch extraction named Behn, so fascinated him by her wit and comeliness that he offered her his hand and fortune. During her married life she is said to have been in affluence, and even to have appeared at the gay licentious Court, attracting the notice of and amusing the King himself by her anecdotes and cleverness of repartee; but when her husband died, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... languish for him, privily despatched to him one of her women, who was a past mistress in the procuring art and who, after much parley, told him, well nigh with tears in her eyes, that he had so taken her mistress with his comeliness and his pleasing fashions that she could find no rest day or night; wherefore, whenas it pleased him, she desired, more than aught else, to avail to foregather with him privily in a bagnio; then, pulling a ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... his birth, Larry and Sheelah were seldom known to have a dispute. Their whole future life was, with few exceptions, one unchanging honeymoon. Had Phelim been deficient in comeliness, it would have mattered not a crona baun. Phelim, on the contrary, promised to be a beauty; both, his parents thought it, felt it, asserted it; and who had a better right to be acquainted, as Larry said, "wid ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... to commend your good qualities; as the sweetness of your humour, the comeliness of your person, your good mein, your valour; but, above all, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... one side of the face and the chin. No one could behold them without wishing that the eclipse had been total. No epithet commonly applied to women in this country could adequately describe their want of comeliness. They kept their faces to their work, and except that they held their rags between their teeth, they gave no sign of knowing that strangers were standing ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... Englishmen, and the Southerners are as anxious to hide its uglier features from any note-making observer from this side the water, as to present to his admiration and approval such as can by any possibility be made to wear the most distant approach to comeliness. ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... 'Painted in his lifetime.' We must console ourselves—if not with Mr. Hardy's statement that 'ideal physical beauty is incompatible with mental development, and a full recognition of the evil of things'—at least with the pictures of those who had some comeliness, and grace, and charm. Dr. Grosart says of a miniature of Edmund Spenser, 'It is an exquisitely beautiful face. The brow is ample, the lips thin but mobile, the eyes a grayish-blue, the hair and beard a golden red (as of "red monie" of the ballads) or goldenly chestnut, the nose with ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... warmth and crimson hue, a few grey locks descended, and mixed with a long and reverent beard. The countenance of the aged noble, who had long passed his eightieth year, still retained the traces of a comeliness for which in earlier manhood he was remarkable. His eyes, if deep-sunken, were still keen and lively, and sparkled with all the fire of youth; his mouth curved upward in a pleasant, though half-satiric, smile; and his appearance on the whole was prepossessing and commanding, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... uniformly kind, if with a sort of sneer she could not understand; and he pillaged an infinity of Genoese and Venetian ships—which were notoriously the richest laden—of jewels, veils, silks, furs, embroideries and figured stuffs, wherewith to enhance the comeliness of Melicent. It seemed an all-engulfing madness with this despot daily to aggravate his fierce desire of her, to nurture his obsession, so that he might glory in the consciousness of ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... a realization of the ideals of a book—a sixteenmo, if you please, fair to look upon, of clear, clean type, well ordered and well edited, amply margined, neatly bound; a human book whose text, as represented by her disposition and her mind, corresponded felicitously with the comeliness of her exterior. This child was the great-great-granddaughter of Benjamin Waite, whose family was carried off by Indians in 1677. Benjamin followed the party to Canada, and after many months of search found and ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... are there," exclaims the wise Verulam, "which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself! A man's person hath many proper relations which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak to his son but as a father; to his wife, but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms; whereas a friend ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... Shaykh held by the hand a youth cast in beauty's mould, all elegance and perfect grace; so fair that his comeliness deserved to be proverbial; for he was as a green bough or the tender young of the roe, ravishing every heart with his loveliness and subduing every soul with his coquetry and amorous ways.[FN265] It was of him the poet spake when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Anglo-Saxon, free from Americanisms, vulgarisms, and the conflicting dialects of our Fatherland, and is pure enough to suit a Trench or a Latham. Our youth, aided by climatic influence, are in point of physique and comeliness unsurpassed in the Sunny South. Our young men are well ordered; and our maidens, 'not stepping over the bounds of modesty,' are as fair as Psyches, dispensing smiles as charming ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... beauty in ugliness, a beauty to which we were blind, for he felt the significance of her life, the eternal rightness to herself of what she was. His joy in this inner harmony has transfigured the object and made it beautiful. Beauty penetrates deeper than grace and comeliness; it is not confined to the pretty and agreeable. Indeed, beauty is not always immediately pleasant, but is received often with pain. The emotion of pleasure, which is regarded as the necessary concomitant of beauty, ensues as we are able ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes |
