"Light touch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... outside and he stopped a moment, hesitating as to what he should do. He had no doubt but that the maroon had a message for him from his master. But a second had elapsed when he felt a light touch on his shoulder. His hand went instantly to the seaman's hanger at his side and he faced about promptly. A ready man was ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... St. Amand called "Lucille"? Did not her own name uttered by that voice seem to her even sweeter than the music? Was she not happy when they walked out in the still evenings of summer, and her arm thrilled beneath the light touch of one to whom she was so necessary? Was she not proud in her happiness, and was there not something like worship in the gratitude she felt to him for raising her humble spirit to the luxury of feeling ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... would give the massed artillery of the enemy a chance to thunder, immediately engaged the newcomer in conversation. Paris and its theaters served admirably as a theme. Lois clearly knew her Paris well; and she had met Rostand—at a garden party—and spoke of the contemporaneous French drama with the light touch of sophistication. French phrases slipped from her tongue trippingly, and added to her charm and mystery, her fellowship with another and wider world. From Hastings she turned to embrace them all in her talk. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... when suddenly she felt a light touch on her shoulder, and looking round, saw standing beside her Nora Ray, the young gipsy girl, looking more wild and ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... when he had read only a portion of the volumes which he discussed. He often fingered them with true scholarly affection as they lay on his library table, and he discussed erudite points of learning with a light touch which his hearers, in a parish not renowned for its culture, found truly impressive. Even his vanity was of the refined and dignified order of things, and seemed to accord pleasantly with his handsome, clean-shaven, aristocratic features. Perhaps his one weakness was to ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... year has gone down silently To the dark bosom of the Past, Since I beneath this very tree Sat hoping, fearing, dreaming, last. Its waning glories, like a flame, Are trembling to the wind's light touch— All just a year ago the same, And I—oh! ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... that he was correct. He then bent his great mind to the completion of St. Mark's, and Urquhart discovered what Peter had long known, that he could really play in earnest. The reverse art—handling serious issues with a light touch—he was less good at. Grave subjects, like the blue of the sea or the shape of a goblet, he approached with the same solidity of earnestness which he brought to bear on sand cathedrals. It was just this that made him a ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... A light touch on my arm interrupted me, and, a trifle irritated, as any man might be when checked in the full flow of eloquence, I turned to find Mildred ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... with the imperishable glory of heaven when they were thus evoked in that ancient Vatican, where their spirits assuredly awoke at night and prowled about the endless galleries and spreading halls in that tomb-like silence whose quiver came no doubt from the light touch of their gliding steps ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the table and took a bottle from his pocket. He drew the cork with his teeth, then felt a light touch on his arm. "I was forgetting you," he said, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... for the remark was like the light touch of a spur. "I was grateful for the opportunity of seeing a fine picture at Cleveland, on my way here, that I never expect ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... than he would have been for the failure to see, had he been born blind. His weakness doubtless carried its own penalty of suffering. Perhaps had the guidance been there, the wanted qualities might have been trained into him. Hamilton had seen that, but Hamilton's hand had not had the light touch for the delicacy of the ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... a silver-mosaicked screen We two trod under; Then I turned where her light touch led, Trembling but unafraid. Across some Elysian sod, Winged of heel, I floated—a god!— Down and into a moon-filled glade, ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... addressed her in the most respectful language, while Kerry made idiotic love to her on the other side, and she giggled and grinned. Amory was content to sit and watch the by-play, thinking what a light touch Kerry had, and how he could transform the barest incident into a thing of curve and contour. They all seemed to have the spirit of it more or less, and it was a relaxation to be with them. Amory usually liked men individually, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... he thought: "I shall lose all my energy, I shall lose even my talent! While I wear these chains I shall see ever before me—ah! tortures of Tantalus!—the vision of a new love, fresh as the dawn which beckons to me as it passes before my sight, which lays on me the light touch of a caress, while I am forced to see it glide away, to let it vanish, disappear forever! And alas! that is not all. If I have deceived an inexperienced heart by words spoken or deeds done in a moment of weakness or temptation, can ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... characters that are implicated in the piece, and skilfully laying the basis of the action by exhibiting the essential personalities of the story in strong contrast, and denoting their relations to each other. Each character is clearly and boldly drawn and with a light touch. The second act consists of three scenes—an antique library in the ancient manor-house of Ravenswood, a room in a roadside ale-house, and a room in the dilapidated tower of Wolf's Crag. This act rapidly develops the well-known story, depicting ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Brick Simpson's pursuers with water. It was a cunning arrangement. Where the slip led through a fence with a board missing, a long slat was so arranged that the ignorant wayfarer could not fail to strike against it. This slat was the spring of the trap. A light touch upon it was sufficient to disconnect a heavy stone from a barrel perched overhead and nicely balanced. The disconnecting of the stone permitted the barrel to turn over and spill its contents on the one beneath ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... whispered in a voice of horror, as she knelt beside the figure lying there, and placed her hand over her heart. But no; the heart beneath her light touch beat ever so faintly. "Thank God! this poor creature is not dead," murmured the ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... of the long passages, but dimly lighted, leading from Mr Stoddart's apartment to the great staircase, I started at a light touch on my arm. It was from ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... With a light touch on the Princess's arm I bade her follow me, and we raced together down the slope. At the foot of it we plunged into a grove of olives and through it, as through a screen, into the street of a little marina—two dozen fisher-huts, huddled close above the foreshore, and tenantless; for their ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Obenreizer, with that light touch of his friend's elbows by way of Good-Night and benediction, "I suppose are like the majority of men. And the majority of men will take what they can get. Adieu! ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... the air of tender veneration with which the young Machiavel bowed over her hand, and even imprinted a light touch on ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... He felt her light touch on his arm. "Wait! There is one thing more—" She stood close to him, with entreaty written on her small passionate face. "There is one thing more," she repeated. "And that is, to believe that I am ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... a quick foot, a neat hand, a light touch, and a peculiar faculty of "turning off" work so that it simply would not last through the day. Why did she never think of going to the nearest city and linking her powers with those of some one who would put them to larger ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... be or have been) takes her bonnet off, with a light touch for so strong a hand, and pats her on the head. "You give the house almost a wholesome look. It wants a bit of youth as much as it wants fresh air." Then he dismisses her, lights his pipe, and drinks to Mr. Smallweed's friend in the city— the one solitary flight ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... on the sea, Scarce hope enough there moved in me, To sow with live blown flowers of white The green plain's sad serenity, Or with stray thoughts of light Touch my soul's sight. ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the lonely singer in the wood. And yet it was of none of these he was thinking as he paused under the shadow of "King Arthur,"—nor of Small Porges, nor of any one or anything in this world but only of the sudden, light touch of a warm, soft hand upon his. "Be that you, sir?" Bellew started and now he found that he had been sitting, all this while, with an empty pipe between his teeth, yet content therewith; wherefore he ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... His eyes were narrowed; he was casting about desperately for a plan. He hardly felt Sue's light touch on his ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... both of us, while, when I returned to the cabin after drying myself in the sun, she lay back in a hide-chair sleeping peacefully. So while the shadows of the firs lengthened across the clearing I sat very still, until with a light touch I ventured to rouse her. She woke with a gasp of horror, looked around with frightened eyes, then clung to me, and I knelt beside the chair with my arms about her, until at last with a happy little ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... obligation of silence. Though an old man, he stayed close to the advancing Grass, giving what assistance and comfort he could to the refugees. The anecdotes of his sudden appearance in typhusridden camps, mute and gaunt, hastening with water for the feverish, quieting the terrified with a light touch, praying silently beside the dying, sound improbable to me, but I mention them for ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Miss Marston," said Hesper; but it was with a laugh, and that light touch of the tongue which suggests but a flying fancy spoken but for the sake of the preposterous; while Mary, not forgetting she had heard the same thing once before, heard it with a smile, and had no rejoinder ready; whereupon Hesper, who was, in reality, feeling her way, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... light, of course." But there was just a shade of disappointment in Miss Laura's voice and Jim caught it. "Good-night, dear," she added, with a light touch ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... first long journey he had taken since he came to live with Aunt Saxon, slept profoundly with an oblivion that almost amounted to coma. Sometimes the man, looking back, was tempted to stop and see if the boy was yet alive, but a light touch on the hot forehead showed him that life was not extinct, ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... as her secret suitor was passing along a narrow and unfrequent street, a light touch was laid upon his shoulder, and turning, he perceived a tall figure, muffled in a ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... piquancy which we are naturally led to expect from it by knowledge of Mrger's story, on which the opera is based, and acquaintance with the composer's earlier opera, "Manon Lescaut." One element the two works have in common: absence of the light touch of humor demanded by the early scenes in both dramas. However, this is a characteristic not of Puccini alone, but all the composers in the Young Italian School. They know no way to kill a gnat dancing in the sunlight except to blow it up ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... understood, the sad despair of humanity which led men into monasteries in the old times. The misanthropical side of my nature (where is the sick man who is not conscious of that side of him?) was fast getting the upper hand of me when I felt a light touch laid on my shoulder, and found myself reconciled to my species ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... I have said, is an employment which literature has always approved. From Gay to Hazlitt, from Swift to Dickens, there have been few writers of light touch upon life who have not had a kind eye for the housemaid. There's a passage somewhere in Stevenson for which I have spent an hour's vain hunting, which exactly hits the centre. The confidential relationship, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... and their friendship, cemented by likeness of views and an absence of rivalry, kept them sympathetically together in clearly defined fields of activity. In a way each supplemented the other. Platt was neither self-opinionated nor overbearing. He dealt with matters political with the light touch of a man of affairs, and although without sentiment or ideals, he worked incessantly, listened attentively, and was anxious to be useful, without taking the centre of the stage, or repelling support by affectations of manner. But like Conkling he relied upon the use of patronage and the iron ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... plan (patented 1889) of providing the combination pedals or pistons with a double touch was a distinct step in advance for it enabled the organist by means of a light touch to move only the manual registers and by means of a very much heavier touch on the combination pedal or piston to operate also his Pedal stops and couplers. Most large organs now built are furnished with a pedal for reversing the position ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... philosopher, spoke of his love for the man who "could be humorous in an agreeable way." No reader of Grant's Memoirs (one of the few truly great autobiographies ever written by a soldier) could fail to be impressed by his light touch. A delicate sense of the incongruous seems to have pervaded him; he is at his whimsical best when he sees himself in a ridiculous light. Lord Kitchener, one of the grimmest warriors ever to serve the British Empire, warmed to the man ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense |
