"Slenderness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... physiognomy and phrenology have any truth in them, there was little strength in her character. In the womanly yieldingness of the short curved upper lip, the pleading timidity of the regard, the disproportionate but elegant slenderness of the head between the ear and the neck, there were the tokens of one who cannot resist the will, perhaps the whim, of another whom she either ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the pink cloud of the apple blossoms her aviator son looking handsomer than she had ever beheld him, leading a girl in white-fringed crepe that clung in soft folds to her slenderness. All about her shoulders fell a veil of golden hair, and her appealing eyes glowed in a face at once ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... noises. But just then I wasn't disposed to be critical. I was full of the sense of her presence; her arm was stretched out over me as she moved past me, the gracious slenderness of her body was near me. The words we used didn't seem very greatly to matter. I had vague ideas of getting out with ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... enough left to see—enough to charm. There was the little rim of delicate white lace, encircling the lovely, dusky throat; there was the figure visible, where the shawl had fallen open, slender, but already well developed in its slenderness, and exquisitely supple; there was the waist, naturally low, and left to its natural place and natural size; there were the little millinery and jewellery ornaments that she wore—simple and common-place enough in themselves—yet each ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... and gray sheets of rain shroud all the central highlands in mystery and sadness. Beyond them, without a shore, spreads open sea. But the fantastic grandeur of the place cannot be described in words. The pencil of the artist must be trusted. I can vouch that he has not in the least exaggerated the slenderness and steepness of the rock-masses. One of them, it is said, has never been climbed; unless a myth which hangs about it is true. Certain English sailors, probably of Rodney's men—and numbering, according to the pleasure of the narrator, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... moisture had caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly to the broad expanse of cheek and neck which he turned to her; but she was aware also, from the look in his small dull eyes, that the contact with her freshness and slenderness was as agreeable to him as the sight of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... scarcely above the middle height, of an almost frail but very graceful slenderness, and very graceful, too, in all his movements. In dress he was supremely elegant, with the elegance of France, that in England would be accounted foppishness. He wore a suit of dark blue cloth, with white satin linings ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... consequence is, that they exhibit peculiar features of the most repulsive kind, projecting jaws with large open mouths, depressed noses, high cheek bones, and bow legs, together with an extremely diminutive stature. These, with an abnormal slenderness of the limbs, are the outward marks of a low and barbarous condition all over the world; it is particularly seen in the Australian aborigines. On the other hand, the beauty of the higher ranks in England is very remarkable, being, in the ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... spoiled hunting for the carnivorous, rendered feeding extremely difficult for the non-carnivorous, and generally upset the ordered balance of things which made life worth living for the wild people of that range. It was as disturbing to them, and more lastingly so, by reason of the comparative slenderness of their resources, as the passage through a town of an armed giant, who was also a thief and a murderer, would be to humans. Finn had been feared and respected in that corner of the Tinnaburra; while, by some of the wild folk who, from one cause or another, were able ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... these chose to rob one another, an honest man might well look on non-interferent. But what guarantee had he that this robbery was not planned to draw plunder from the outside public as well? The pledged word of Mr. White. And that was worth? He smiled disdainfully when he thought of the slenderness ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... millipedes generally shun the light, and hide under stones and in crevices during the day. But there are some which love the sunlight. These kinds are remarkable for the great length and slenderness of the legs, which they part with readily when handled! Most of these long-legged species are brightly coloured with black and yellow stripes or spots. In their native haunts these creatures may be seen darting about after their prey in the sun, heedless of the notice ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... woman whose tall slenderness, combined with a remarkable physiognomy, arrested the old man's attention. She was not handsome—that, surely, was his first impression? The cheek-bones were too evident, the chin and mouth too strong. And yet the fine pallor of the skin, the subtle black-and-white, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... where the horsemen rode strongest I rode out in front of them, Hurled forth my battle-shout and charged them; No man thought blame of me. Antar! they cried; and their lances Well-cords in slenderness, pressed to the breast Of my war-horse still as I pressed on them. Doggedly strove we and rode we. Ha! the brave stallion! Now is his breast dyed With blood drops, his star-front with fear of them! Swerved he, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... gestures, and that authentic hair of hers falling in Victorian curls, she offered to the world a figure that no one could regard without a physical pleasure and stimulation. And she was so shiningly correct in her black silk and black velvet, and in the massive jet at her throat, and in the slenderness of her shoe! It was useless to recall her duplicities, her mendacities, her hypocrisies, her meannesses. At any rate she could be generous at moments, and the splendour of her vitality sometimes, as now, hid all her faults. She would confess to aches and pains like ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... And the slenderness of her! You cannot imagine it! She looked like a young sapling bending to the gale. But what cut me to the heart was the look of terror and of misery in her face. She clasped her hands together and the tears ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... fellow when rid of the self-consciousness of jealousy. His eyes, mouth, chin, and nose, acquired from reliable and recognizable sources, were good features, and statuesque in their immobility beneath the drooping curves of his broad soft hat. He was tall, with the slenderness of youth, despite his evident weight and strength. He was long-waisted and lithe and small of girth, with broad square shoulders, whose play of muscles as he strove with the gate was not altogether concealed by the butternut jeans coat ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... to a pool to drink. As he bent over the surface he saw his own reflection in the water, and was struck with admiration for his fine spreading antlers, but at the same time he felt nothing but disgust for the weakness and slenderness of his legs. While he stood there looking at himself, he was seen and attacked by a Lion; but in the chase which ensued, he soon drew away from his pursuer, and kept his lead as long as the ground over which he ran was open and free of trees. But coming presently to a wood, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... Saint-Pol. Jehane of the Fair Girdle, the beloved of Richard Coeur de Lion, Richard Yea-and-Nay. Her eyes were gray green while yours are of the most wonderful blue, but there is something about your height and slenderness, your poise, the set of your head, the glory of your hair that suggests her. If Mother gives the fancy dress ball that she is threatening, please go as Jehane. I should like to ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... purse was never shut while his heart remained open. Without reflecting upon the slenderness of his store, he exercised his charity to all the children of distress, and acquired a popularity, which, though pleasing, was far from being profitable. In short, his bounty kept no pace with his circumstances, and in a little ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... with a silver gray "W" on a dark red background and over her shoulder was strapped a smart knapsack. She seemed to dance away from the other girls, although she was not dancing but running. Yet such was her grace and slenderness that somehow she appeared: ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... if these do not succeed in reminding us that decay has begun, a black speck on a tooth cannot fail to do so; and when we go to the dentist to have it stopped we have begun to repair artificially the falling structure. The activity of youth soon passes, and its slenderness. I remember still the shock I felt on hearing an athlete say that he could no longer run races of a hundred yards; he was half a second or a quarter of a second slower than he was last year. I looked at him saying, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... in her little black frock—it was made of a thin lawn for the hot days, and the pale slenderness of her arms and neck were revealed by the thinness of the fabric—went to school, she knew, the very moment that Miss Ida Slome greeted her, that Aunt Maria had been right in her surmise. For the first time since she had been to school, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of the shawled figures moving toward the group on the steps walked one whose slenderness and grace marked her from the rest. A scarlet shawl splashed the cream of her garments. Unlike the other women, she wore no disfiguring handkerchief on her head. Her face, oval and creamy-brown, was framed ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... no more of the rest, listened to nothing but the divine eloquence of their lean slenderness, regarding them only under the semblance of tall flower-stems deep in carved stone tubes and expanding into faces of ingenuous fragrance, of innocent perfume, while Christ, touched and saddened, blessing the world, seemed to bend from His throne ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... comprehension, Edmond de Goncourt grown old, but still robust, upright and gallant, a soldier of art in whom the creative faculty is by no means exhausted. Rothenstein's lithograph in particular, with the sort of morbid languor that pervades it, the mournful fixity of the gaze, the aristocratic slenderness of the hands and the features, surprises and startles the spectator. "By nature and by education," says M. Paul Bourget, "M. Ed. de Goncourt possesses an intelligence, the overacuteness of which verges on disease in its comprehension of infinitesimal gradations and ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... delphinium frock and the big blue hat with its single La France rose. She walked pensively, her head bowed; and, in that moment, by some trick of sense or spirit, he saw her vividly, as she was. He saw the grace of her young slenderness, the wild-flower colouring, the delicate aquiline of her nose that revealed breeding and character; the mouth that even in repose seemed to quiver with sensibility. And he thought: "Good Lord! ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... one can see that in the photographs," said Sir Basil. There were several of these standing about the room and he get up to look at them, one after the other—Imogen in evening, in day dress, all showing her erect slenderness, her crown of hair, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... on board the Desire, from talking with the company, Captain Davis requested he would consider the extremity of our estate and condition, the slenderness of his provision, and the weakness of his men, being in no case for undertaking that new enterprise; as, if the other ships were as ill appointed as the Desire, it would be impossible to perform his new design, having no more sails then were then bent, no victuals, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... in gracious slenderness against the background of the lighted door with a nimbus about her head, she was all feminine delicacy and allurement. But in that moment she stiffened to an overwhelming rush of memories which incited her to a transport of wrath for which ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... son and heir of Jeremiah Styles—a cultivator of the soil—who, losing his first wife, took unto himself, at the mature age of fifty, a second, called by the neighbours, by reason of the narrowness of her economy, and the slenderness of her body, ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... of which was opened to me by two damsels, all health and smiles. In the morning I saw a third sister of the same florid bloom and healthful proportions. They were none of those slight, frail figures, copies of the monthly plates of fashion, with waists of artificial slenderness, which almost force you to wonder how the different parts of the body are kept together—no pallid faces, nor narrow chests, nor lean hands, but forms which might have satisfied an ancient statuary, with a well-formed bust, faces glowing with health, rounded arms, and plump fingers. ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... you are a sick man," she said kindly. "Are you, Claud? You used to be so strong, for all your slenderness. What ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... The peculiarity was physical, to begin with, and it extended to impalpabilities. His dense, delicate hair, his overdrawn, retouched features, his clear complexion, ripe without being coarse, the very evenness of the growth of his beard, and that light, smooth slenderness of structure which made the movement of a single one of his fingers produce the effect of an expressive gesture—these personal points struck our sensitive young woman as signs of quality, of intensity, somehow as promises of interest. He was ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... Buckminster was the minister of the Congregational church at Portsmouth then. One Sunday morning in 1808, his eldest daughter sitting alone in the minister's pew, a strange gentleman was shown into it, whose appearance and demeanor strongly arrested her attention. The slenderness of his frame, the pale yellow of his complexion, and the raven blackness of his hair, seemed only to bring out into grander relief his ample forehead, and to heighten the effect of his deep-set, brilliant eyes. At this period of his life there was an air of delicacy and refinement about his ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... nearly as tall as young Paynter, whose slenderness, however, is like steel. I well remember when Dr. McGee took him to North Carolina and made him over—a weak, irritable little precocity of twelve or so. He never ate or slept in a house for three years, and I think that the birds and trees of that period got into his opera ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell |
