"Desirableness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had got the family constitution after all, and would soon be as fine a fellow as ever again; and when his approbation of Rosamond's engagement was asked for, he gave it with astonishing facility, passing at once to general remarks on the desirableness of matrimony for young men and maidens, and apparently deducing from the whole the appropriateness of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... pretend to be a convincing, but merely an illustrative collection of evidence. It may, or may not, suggest to some readers the desirableness of further inquiry; the author certainly does not hope to do more, if ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... in consideration of his company, to dwell upon the desirableness of keeping an even mind. Having done full justice to this side of the subject, he added a rider. He had always said the chances were ten to one Torrens would recover his eyesight, and this sort of thing looked uncommonly like it. Now didn't ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... secret, by considering Mr. Thornton about as brusque and curt a fellow as he had ever met with, and terribly gone off both in intelligence and manner. At last, some slight noise in the room above suggested the desirableness of moving there. They found Margaret with a letter open before her, eagerly discussing its contents with her father. On the entrance of the gentlemen, it was immediately put aside; but Mr. Thornton's eager senses caught some few ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... speech to Viola, on woman's constancy before the song, consistent with his second, after it? Is his own report of himself true,—'Unstaid and skittish in all motions else Save in the constant image of the one beloved'? Is Olivia's unattainableness the main source of her desirableness for him? How is it with Sebastian? Does his loyalty in love seem to be of the sort that suffers impairment when he can win love easily? The Duke craves excess in music in order that his 'appetite may sicken and so die;' Sebastian wishes 'to steep his soul in Lethe.' Do ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... demanded under the circumstances that she should come to see the Dowager Duchess of Darte and be seen by her, if she found that she was like Lord Coombe, she would not be able to endure the prospect of a future spent in her service howsoever desirable such service might outwardly appear. This desirableness Mademoiselle Valle had made clear to her. She was to be the companion of a personage of great and mature charm and grace who desired not mere attendance, but something more, which something included the warmth and fresh brightness of happy youth and bloom. She would ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... counsel with the formula, "You'll excuse me," he gave me some excellent advice as we threaded the greasy streets, and jostled the disreputable-looking population of the lower part of the town. General counsels as to my conduct, and the desirableness of turning over a new leaf for "young chaps" who had been wild and got into scrapes at home. And particular counsels which were invaluable to me, as to changing my dress, how to hide my money, what to turn my hand to with the quickest chance of bread-winning in strange places, and how to keep my ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... writes thus of Tennyson: "When our poet descends into the arena of party polemics, in such things as Riflemen, Form! Hands all Round, . . . The Fleet, and other topical pieces dear to the Jingo soul, it is not poetry but journalism." I doubt whether the desirableness of the existence of a volunteer force and of a fleet really is within the arena of PARTY polemics. If any party thinks that we ought to have no volunteers, and that it is our duty to starve the fleet, what is that party's name? Who cries, "Down with the Fleet! Down with National ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... to feel that the chafing of home, her mother's driving and Will's courting, were becoming intolerable. Heart and brain were strained and sore; if she could be still till she died, Diana felt it to be the utmost limit of desirableness. She knew she was not likely to die soon; brain and nerve might be strained, but they were sound and whole; the full capacity for suffering, the unimpaired energy for doing, were hers yet. And stillness ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... Expedience. — N. expedience, expediency; desirableness, desirability &c. adj.; fitness &c. (agreement) 23; utility &c. 644; propriety; opportunism; advantage. high time &c. (occasion) 134. V. be expedient &c. Adj.; suit &c. (agree) 23; befit; suit the time, befit the time, suit the season, befit the season, suit the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... right person." For whatever marriage had been for herself, how could she the less desire it for her daughter? The difference her own misfortunes made was, that she never dared to dwell much to Gwendolen on the desirableness of marriage, dreading an answer something like that of the future Madame Roland, when her gentle mother urging the acceptance of a suitor, said, "Tu seras heureuse, ma chere." ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... He was not ill-tempered naturally, but this state of confinement made him more ill-tempered than he had ever been before in his life. He sat in the chimney-corner, abusing the weather and doubting the wisdom or desirableness of all his wife saw fit to do in the usual daily household matters. The 'chimney-corner' was really a corner at Haytersbank. There were two projecting walls on each side of the fire-place, running about six feet into the room, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... instruments, especially violins." The idea of grouping movements was already in vogue in the sixteenth century. Morley in his Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music, printed in 1597, speaks of the desirableness of alternating Pavans and Galliards, the one being "a kind of staid musick ordained for grave dancing," and the other "a lighter and more stirring kind of dancing." Contrast was obtained, too, not only by difference in the ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... at the 'city of pigs,' the ludicrous description of the ministers of luxury in the more refined State, and the afterthought of the necessity of doctors, the illustration of the nature of the guardian taken from the dog, the desirableness of offering some almost unprocurable victim when impure mysteries are to be celebrated, the behaviour of Zeus to his father and of Hephaestus to his mother, are touches of humour which have also a serious meaning. In speaking of education Plato rather startles us by affirming ...
— The Republic • Plato
... proposed to the consideration of Congress the expediency of establishing a national university and also a military academy. The desirableness of both these institutions has so constantly increased with every new view I have taken of the subject that I can not omit the opportunity of once for all recalling your ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... much fear that we shall be seized now and then with a Protestant fervour, as long as we have neighbour Naboths whose wallowings in Papistical mire excite our horror in exact proportion to the size and desirableness of their vineyards. Yet I rejoice that some earnest Protestants have been made by this war,—I mean those who protested against it. Fewer they were than I could wish, for one might imagine America to have ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell |
