"Solidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jars, vases, cabinets, and other rich furniture, even to wantonnesse and profusion," on the site of which Burlington Street now stands; Clarendon House, a princely residence, combining "state, use, solidity, and beauty," surrounded by fair gardens, that presently gave place to Bond Street; Southampton House, standing, as Evelyn says, in "a noble piazza—a little town," now known as Bloomsbury Square, whose pleasant grounds commanded a full view of the ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... more remarkable for solidity than for brilliancy. Many generals may have been better qualified to complete a campaign by one decisive blow; few probably have laid the scheme of a campaign with more judgment, or shown more skill and patience in carrying their plans into effect. And ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... was Mr. Harby's turn to make a speech to Ursula. He looked handsome, with his silver-grey temples and black brows, and his imperturbable male solidity. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... writings of the illustrious sage of Koenigsberg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding. The originality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance of the distinctions; the adamantine chain of the logic; and I will venture to add—(paradox as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant from Reviewers and Frenchmen)—the clearness and evidence, of the Critique of the Pure Reason; and Critique ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... acquainted with the object of the meeting; they have all read the facts in the same newspapers. The orator possesses no information which his hearers have not; yet he teaches them to see the thing with his eyes. By the new placing, the circumstances acquire new solidity and worth. Every fact gains consequence by his naming it, and trifles become important. His expressions fix themselves in men's memories, and fly from mouth to mouth. His mind has some new principle of order. Where he looks, all things fly into their places. What will he say next? Let ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... insistent upon their visual clarity, saw the red sand as the blowing surface of unliving solidity. Only clarity was admitted to Nuwell, and the only living clarity was man and beast and vegetation, spotted in the dome cities and dome farms of the lowlands. He and Maya scurried, transiting sparks of the only life, insecure and hastening in the absence of the net of roads which eventually ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... ones; it must be further asserted that this fluid is rarer or denser in the same body, whether small or great, according as the body to which that is impelled is itself small or great. But whatever may be the solidity of this objection, the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... old house is of wood—which but the more sets forth the solidity of the chimney, which is of brick. And as the great wrought nails, binding the clapboards, are unknown in these degenerate days, so are the huge bricks in the chimney walls. The architect of the chimney must have had the pyramid of Cheops before him; for, after that famous structure, ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... directions, the country of the Gospels; I have visited Jerusalem, Hebron, and Samaria; scarcely any important locality of the history of Jesus has escaped me. All this history, which at a distance seems to float in the clouds of an unreal world, thus took a form, a solidity, which astonished me. The striking agreement of the texts with the places, the marvellous harmony of the Gospel ideal with the country which served it as a framework, were like a revelation to me. I had before my eyes a fifth Gospel, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... visions of youth! I could not banish them from my mind. I knew them to be crude; but believed that deliberation would bestow upon them solidity and shape. Meanwhile I ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... a thing requiring the notes of seven German metaphysicians. I must go and talk a little to my friends the trees, and see if I can get any explanation from them. It is turning out a beautiful day after all, notwithstanding my praise of its solidity. ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... profession. Oriental critics lay more stress on loftiness of sentiment and tone than on technical qualities. This idealist temper helps to explain the deliberate avoidance of all emphasis on appearances of material solidity by means of chiaroscuro, &c., and the exclusive use of the light medium of water-colour. The Chinese express actual dislike for the representation of relief. Whoever compares the painting of Europe with that of Asia ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... attention to supply the needs of both. Both were conscious, like "Celia Chettam," that since the birth of their first child their opinions respecting literature, politics, and art had acquired additional weight and solidity, and that a wife and mother could pronounce with decision on important subjects where a spinster would do well to hold her peace. Each was fond of saying, "As a married woman I think this or that"; yet each was conscious ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... process, that of internal transmutation, is not less curious than this encroachment of grey upon green. Its first erections are often only the milk-teeth of a suburb, and as the district rises in dignity they are dislodged by those which are to endure. Slightness becomes supplanted by comparative solidity, commonness by novelty, lowness and irregularity ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... This idea has grown with the spread of the consolidation of schools, and means, as the name implies, a unifying, cooerdinating, organizing agency of some kind in the midst of the community, to bring about a harmony and solidity of all the interests there represented. It implies of course a leader; for what is left to be done by people in general is likely to be done poorly. There is no doubt that this idea should be encouraged and promoted. ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... fail. The heat that had formerly pervaded his nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind that flashes and flickers in a blaze; but rather a deep red glow, as of iron in a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness—this was the expression of his repose, even in such decay as had crept untimely over him at the period of which I speak. But I could imagine, even then, that, under some excitement which should go deeply into his consciousness—roused by a trumpet's peal, loud ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... just after this adventure that we encountered a continent of immense extent and prodigious solidity, but which, nevertheless, was supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue cow that had no fewer than ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... persistent efforts to get the better of this upstart blue man with the red cap, who serenely resumed his erect position just as often as he was forced to the ground. He was a stout, healthy-looking person, inclining to embonpoint; bound to succeed, if only from sheer solidity of person. Hadria was drawn into the game, and the two spent a good half hour on the rug together, playing with that and other toys which Martha toddled off to the cupboard to collect. The child was in great ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... mopboard you will find, upon examination, that there is a joint in it near the corner of the cabinet, but you will find it solidly nailed with about four nails each side of the joint. This appearance of extraordinary solidity will be absolute proof that it is ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... position of usefulness, in marked contrast to that of our predecessors. With a mighty advance in practical freedom, in intelligence and education, in social comfort, in material resources, the entire religious life of England has secured a solidity, an elevation, and a general influence of the most marvellous kind. In the number and wealth of our churches, in the character and position of the ministry, the Society ought to find supporters immeasurably ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... beasts, fountains of fragrant waters were scattered throughout the building, and marble tripods for burning the incense upon. Speaking of the size of it, it covers five acres of ground, and is capable of holding a hundred thousand persons. An idea of the solidity of the building may be taken from the fact that after two thousand years, during which time it has been used for a quarry for materials for palaces and churches, nearly three-quarters still remain. Now that a description of the building has been given, I will say something ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... unpractical dreamer. But the very same indolent habit of aerial speculation, which courts no test of real life and practice, is described by the ancients under the term umbraticus, or seeking the cool shade, and shrinking from the heat. Thus, an umbraticus doctor is one who has no practical solidity in his teaching. The fatigue and hardship of real life, in short, is represented by the ancients under the uniform image of heat, and by the moderns under that of cold.] was stormy, and by the violence of the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Signorelli's manner. One represents three sturdy monks, clad in brown, working with all their strength to stir a boulder, which has been bewitched, and needs a miracle to move it from its place. The square and powerfully outlined drawing of these figures is beyond all praise for its effect of massive solidity. The other shows us the interior of a fifteenth century tavern, where two monks are regaling themselves upon the sly. A country girl, with shapely arms and shoulders, her upper skirts tucked round the ample waist to which broad sweeping lines of back and breasts descend, is serving wine. The ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... false principles or false views of things should find entrance; and as carefully selected her mental food, in order that there might be health of mind as well as health of body—it was not surprising to find about her a solidity and strength of character, that showed itself beneath the sweet grace of her external life, whenever occasion for their exhibition arose. From her mother she had imbibed a deep religious sentiment; but this did not manifest itself so much in language, ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... help. soflama trickery, deception. soga rope. sol m. sun. solamente only. soldado soldier. soledad f. solitude. solemne solemn. solemnidad f. solemnity. soler to be accustomed. solidaridad f. solidarity, participation. solidez f. solidity. solitario solitary. solo alone; solo only; tan solo only. soltar to loosen, let go. soltero -a bachelor, unmarried person. solteron -a bachelor, old maid. sollozo sob. sombra shadow. sombrero hat. sombrio somber, gloomy. son ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... had halted, wheeled about, and were watching an approaching carriage. Down the wharf with this equipage came an atmosphere of solidity and opulence, of luxury and perfect taste. On the box, in quiet livery, sat a driver and a footman. The driver, from his bearing and appearance, could easily have passed for the president of a college. As the carriage halted before the gang plank, the gentleman with the nose stepped ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... strength. Set troubles against the enduring hills, misfortunes against the immense seas, perplexities against vast space, torments against the stout trees. Learn to take tribute of strength from every object that is built of strength—the strength of solidity that a stout beam may give, the strength of beauty that from a ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... was rolling up the chimney in a thick black cloud. John Willet, who appeared to consider himself particularly and chiefly referred to under the term wise men, looked that way likewise, and with great solidity of feature. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Helena and Gregory with such assurances, their rigid bending into mental forms, large and small, in which he had no confidence, put Lee outside the solidity of his family. In the instruction, the influences, widely held paramount in the welding of polite Christian characters, Fanny was indefatigable—the piece of silver firmly clasped in the hand for collection, the courtesy ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the Ski stick or another branch must be tied across the Skis, by the toe irons, to keep the Skis parallel there also, and to give solidity to the sledge. People sometimes tie a strap or string round the Skis, including their running surfaces, forgetting that this will soon cut through with ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... perspective less effective, as any one can see by comparing the views of Old and New St. Paul's. A second alteration from the Temple of Peace to be mentioned is the massiveness of the piers. Wren's regard for stability caused him to make his vast square supports of a solidity exceeding those of Mainz and Speier. From the Romans the Surveyor adopted the round arch, with its borrowed Grecian architecture partly cut away; and this, next to the dome, is the most striking feature ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... experiments to this end have been numerous and varied. Thus in the elephants, which retain the originally numerous toes, the bones of these members are planted in an upright position and tied together with such strong muscles and sinews, that the foot parts have something like the solidity and strength of the upper portions of the legs. In the single-hoofed or horse-like forms, and in the cloven-footed animals, other series of experiments have been tried which in the end have proved most successful, giving us animals with ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land; to add something to the extent and solidity of our possessions."—Huxley in "Reception of the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... leather gaiters, and a diminutive round frock, while each doorpost was appropriately garnished with a model of a coal-sack. The two eating-house keepers exhibited joints of a magnitude, and puddings of a solidity, which coalheavers alone could appreciate; and the fruit-pie maker displayed on his well-scrubbed window-board large white compositions of flour and dripping, ornamented with pink stains, giving rich promise of the fruit within, which ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... look inviting for a woman accustomed to the choice solidity of a Dutch house, and the well-sustained intimacy of a Dutch landscape, where man and nature through long-continued symbiosis have grown together ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... they produced had the 'M' or the 'S.' I was satisfied. It was a dangerous coup, but perfectly successful, and gave the company a much greater idea of the importance of Australia than anything I could say." In rapidity and at the same time solidity, of growth there is no city of modern days, I believe, to be placed beside Melbourne. Fifty years ago it did not exist. Now with the suburbs the population is 300,000, and in such a liberal manner have the streets ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... father in good spirits, saying that he had excellent hopes they should succeed, notwithstanding the unfortunate loss of the deed; that the more he considered the case, the more clearly the justice of their cause and the solidity of their right appeared. Alas! Alfred showed himself to be but a young lawyer, in depending so much upon right and justice, while a point of law was against him. It is unnecessary, and would be equally tedious and unintelligible ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... and a number of chairs of various shapes and doubtful solidity were the only furniture of the room, but in an arched recess in the wall a plaster figure holding a cornucopia, from whence fell in thick profusion the plaster presentments of the fruits of this earth, stood on an elevated ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... people get home to their houses they sit on cheap chairs before cheap tables and eat cheap food. They have given their lives for cheap things. The poorest peasant of one of the old countries is surrounded by more beauty. His very equipment for living has more solidity. ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... and those earths which are capable of being kneaded into a paste easily receiving any form, and acquiring solidity by exposure to fire: sand, chalk, and flint are likewise mixed ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... in the wall, to show a fleeting view of a bleak landscape. Bare rocks jutted from the ice, kept clear of snow by the shrieking wind. Extreme cold crept into the room, then a man swept in and the wall resumed its solidity behind him. ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... to the bishop of St. Louis, in 1841: The first rock which we saw, and which truly deserves the name, was the famous rock Independence. At first I was led to believe that it had received this pompous name from its isolated situation and the solidity of its basis; but I was afterward told that it was called so because the first travellers who thought of giving it a name arrived at it on the very day when the people of the United States celebrate the anniversary of their separation ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... us most in the whole situation was how he was ever going to get on, in the worldly sense, without her. He was to suffer not only from the loss of her counsel but from the lack of her indorsement. There are certain women who are a form of insurance to a man; and Anne gave a poise and solidity to Julian's presentation of himself which his own flibbertigibbet manner made ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... comparison on the Neva the forms without character, the surface without texture, the masses without light, shade, or colour. As the boat advances the imperial city grows in scale and pomp. The river view becomes imposing, the banks are lined on either side by granite quays, which for solidity, strength, and area, have no parallel in Europe. Beneath the bridges the unruly river rushes, bearing along rafts and merchandise, and in the broad-laid streets people hurry to and fro, as if the day were too short for the press of business: ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... stability, was a flaw that ran through the whole period of revolutionary thought. It was not surprising that the family should come in for its share of destructive criticism, along with the other elements of the established system, but it is a proof of the solidity of Turgot's understanding that he should from the first have detected the mischievousness of this side of the great social attack. Nor did subsequent discussion with the champions of domestic license have any ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... temper, and conduct. The mere mechanical parts of education may at all times be purchased for money; automatons may be made to perform wonders. But we all know that something more is wanting to give solidity and consequence to character. If you refuse my daughter, she will lose her ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... reasonable that he should force his girl to look at things with his eyes? The man was distasteful to him as being unlike his idea of an English gentleman, and as being without those far-reaching fibres and roots by which he thought that the solidity and stability of a human tree should be assured. But the world was changing around him every day. Royalty was marrying out of its degree. Peers' sons were looking only for money. And, more than that, peers' daughters were bestowing themselves ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of miles away, behind a vast curve of water on a tiny piece of earth, came before their eyes. They who had had no solidity or anchorage before seemed to be attached to it somehow, and at once grown more substantial. Perhaps they had been in the drawing-room at the same moment; perhaps they had passed each other on the stairs; at any rate they knew some of the same people. They looked one another up and down ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... be vegetable, with a dumb and sightless life of their own, up to beings of intelligence and purpose. It was a world, in fact, on which a history like that of our own world was working itself out; but the whole was of a crystalline texture, if texture it can be called; there was no colour or solidity, nothing but form and silence, and I realised that I saw, if not materially yet in thought, and recognised then, that all the qualities of matter, the sounds, the colours, the scents—all that depends upon material vibration—were abstracted from it; while form, of which the idea exists in the mind ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the inefficacy of questioning by tortures, and the danger of trusting to common hear-say, is indeed pretty enough, but would be insufferable to the tutored ears of the moderns, and to a people who are justly distinguished for the solidity of their knowledge. He likewise wrote several other pieces, spoke a number of good Orations, and was certainly an eminent pleader; so that I much wonder, considering how long he lived, and the character he bore, that he was never preferred to the Consulship. ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... is a seedling of the Early York, and was propagated in 1864. It has proved to be from a week to ten days earlier than the Early Rose, as far as size and solidity are concerned, and from two to three weeks ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... to the vault itself, which was by no means a large chamber, but remarkable for the extreme solidity of its building. It was concrete, as most vaults are, and lit only by a single electric light, which, when switched on, shone dully against the gray stone walls. The only ventilation it boasted was provided by means of a row of small holes, about an inch in diameter, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... Bristol, was a self-taught artist. He also is noted for his brilliant colouring, but there is a want of solidity in his painting. He visited the Continent and travelled as far as Italy (see Plate XXIII). His landscapes were chiefly river and lake subjects. He published "The English Lake District" and "The Lake Scenery of England," illustrated ...
— Masters of Water-Colour Painting • H. M. Cundall
... nationalities of the Americas is plainly stamped upon their respective cities. The one is sealed with a hurried activity—the mark of the exigencies of commerce; the windows and doors of a business world, where men look out or emerge to the strife of money-making. Notwithstanding its wealth and solidity it bears a certain ephemeral stamp which the Mexican type does not convey. The atmosphere of this is one of serenity, of indifference to the feverish haste of money-getting, and its windows and doors give sight and footstep to less modern, less useful, perchance, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... remarkably well-informed for a woman, and prodigiously so for a French woman. She understood half a word—knew a great deal—and guessed at the remainder. She had, in short, that blending of grace and solidity which gives to the conversation of a woman of cultivated mind an incomparable charm. Habituated from infancy to her mental superiority as to her pretty face, she carried the one as unconsciously as the other. She devoted herself to the care ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... not be criticized as part of the construction. The tiled pavements of the vestibules, designed to sustain, besides criticism of the he-who-walks-may-read order, the impact of the feet of all nations, are more important. Their pattern is very fair—their solidity will doubtless stand the test. The turf and shrubbery meant to brighten the entourage, especially at the carriage concourse on the east front, we can hardly hope will fare so well. The defence of their native soil, to prevent its being rent from them by the heedless tread of millions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... have the following characteristics and treatment: (1) it must contain certain jelly-making properties; (2) it must be extracted properly; (3) it must be combined with the correct proportion of sugar; and (4) it must be cooked the proper length of time. There are, of course, numerous degrees of solidity of jelly, varying from that which will barely retain its shape to that which is very tough and hard, but neither extreme is desirable. To be right, the jelly should be firm enough to stand up well, but should be tender and soft when a spoon is ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... turned away. As he did so he collided with a rather excessive lady. She gave the impression of solidity and bulk; her mouth was hard and knowing. Mr. Magee felt that she wanted to vote, and that she would say as much from time to time. The lady had a glittering eye; she put it to its time-honored use and fixed Mr. ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... question, without moving the decorations which covered them, and the mason affirmed that it was quite impossible to get a view of the foundations of the north-west corner of the palace, which were said to be weak, without knocking a hole through a wall upon which depended such solidity as there was. It was useless, he said. The snuffy gentleman could ask the Baron, if he pleased, and the Baron could do what he liked since the property now belonged to him: but he, the mason, would ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... at its pleasantest in the winter. When all the world outside is dark and damp and cold, the light and warmth of the place are comforting. There is a pleasant air of solidity about the interior of a bank. The green shaded lamps look cosy. And, the outside world offering so few attractions, the worker, perched on his stool, feels that he is not so badly off after all. It is when ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... unifies character and makes life a consistent and harmonious whole; so self-indulgence in vicious pleasures disorganizes a man's life and eats the heart out of him.—Corrupt means literally broken. The corrupt man has no soundness, no solidity, no unity in his life. He cannot respect himself. Others cannot put confidence in him. There is no principle binding each part of his life to every other, and holding the whole together. The other words by which we describe such a life all spring from the same conception. ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... granite or marble which the artisan piles, one on the other, and the result of which, though it may represent a poor style of architecture, is still a rude specimen of a Gothic edifice. The artist and artificer are both observable in Webster's work; but the reality and solidity of the construction cannot be questioned. At the present time, an educated reader would be specially interested in the mental processes by which Webster thus succeeded in giving objective existence and validity to the operations of his mind, and, whether sympathizing ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... which the British public never wearies. The American does not clamour for telling "curtains," if the character-drawing be keen, the conversations fresh, sparkling, and humorous. John Bull likes vividness and solidity of impasto; Jonathan's eye is often more pleasantly affected by a delicate gradation of half-tones. The one desires the downright, the concrete, the real; the other is titillated by the subtle, the allusive, the half-spoken. The antithesis is between force ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... not only the Subjects of Prudence and Decency, regular Behaviour and vertuous Actions, but likewise the justness of Human Sentiments and Opinions in Points of Controversy; of the last, the Dialogue of Dr. Eachard against Mr. Hobbes is a famous Example, where, by great Strength and Solidity of Reason, mixt with agreeable Wit and Raillery, he entertains and informs the Reader, and at once exposes and confutes the conceited Philosopher. An Instance of the first is, the celebrated History of Don Quixote, compil'd by the Spanish ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... a clear night, with a young moon, and the stars set deep in blue so dark that the sky gave an impression of solidity. The air was full of scents and of a soft balminess, with the faint nip of an early May in ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... and in Germany, but we do not recollect to have found precisely these sins in the long catalogue of those hitherto laid to his charge. It is worth while, therefore, to examine into these discoveries effected solely by the aid of the "lucidity and solidity" of the mind ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... countenance hers is in expression! No wonder Bernard has softened down. There is strength and solidity as well as sweetness in her face. Ah, there ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... stolidity of their native mothers. Jessie McRae was graceful as a fawn. Every turn of the dark head, every lift of the hand, expressed spirit and verve. She must, he thought, have inherited almost wholly from her father, though in her lissom youth he could find little of McRae's heavy solidity ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... the gate of Italy. Yet what I prefer in Genoa are her triumphant slums, then the palaces and villas with their bigness, so impressive for us who came from the North, which seem to be a remnant of Roman greatness, a vision as it were of solidity and grandeur. Something of this, it is true, haunts almost every Italian city; only nowhere but in Genoa can you see so many palaces together, whole streets of them, huge, overwhelming, and yet beautiful houses, that often seem deserted, as though they ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... Christ. His glorified body is somewhere. The value of this thought is that it gives solidity to our ideas of a future life. There they are. We need not dwell on the metaphysical difficulties about locality for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... left on my mind a very different impression, namely, that I should grow to respect and like him the more that I saw of him. There was nothing insincere or lacking in genuineness about him. I felt his solidity, his loyalty, his uprightness very strongly. But he exhibited on first acquaintance—due no doubt to a sturdy British shyness—all the qualities that make us so detested upon the Continent, and that lead the more expansive foreigner, who only sees the superficial ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... There is a solidity about a stone house, stone porch and stone wall in every part of Ireland; a strength that makes one think how easily a house could be turned into a fortalice ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... the queen to gain over, by judicious leniency, a man whose apostasy would be a fresh disgrace to his cause, and who might be as useful as a servant as he had been dangerous as a foe.[287] Wyatt, being a man without solidity of heart, showed signs of yielding to what was required of him; but his revelations came out slowly, and to quicken his confession he was brought to his trial on the 15th of March. He pleaded guilty to the indictment, and he then said that Courtenay had been the ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... formerly sheltered this lady's singular menage stands on a hillside above the road, which a rapid path connects with the little grass-grown terrace before it. It is a small shabby, homely dwelling, with a certain reputable solidity, however, and more of internal spaciousness than of outside promise. The place is shown by an elderly competent dame who points out the very few surviving objects which you may touch with the reflection—complacent in whatsoever degree suits you— that they have known the familiarity ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... wretched condition, having but few guns, and manned by very insufficient crews. The largest vessels were the three corvettes, Confederacion, Santa Cruz, and Valparaiso. Only one ship, the schooner brig Colocolo, was distinguished for solidity and swift sailing. The fleet was commanded by an admiral of little judgment ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... was effected by electing Sieyes to fill the vacancy caused by the retirement of Rewbell from the Directoire,—Sieyes, who was known for his hostility to the existing system, whose reputation for solidity and political integrity was wide, whose capacity as a constitutionalist and reformer ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... only does that rock act in resisting the force of the small one which lays upon it, but, by the attraction of gravitation it is able to maintain its position in the side of the mountain; by cohesion it retains its distinct identity and solidity, and repels all foreign bodies. It is also subject to the laws which govern the earth in its diurnal and annual revolutions, and moves in common with other matter at the astonishing rate of a thousand miles in an hour! Who shall teach children, in these days of light and improvement, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... bottom of the sea should be converted into an elevated land, or placed high above the level of the ocean, there is required, in the operations of the globe, a consolidating power, by which the loose materials that had subsided from water, should be formed into masses of the most perfect solidity, having neither water nor vacuity between their various constituent parts, nor in the pores of those constituent ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... And he adds, "If we have risen to that little-to-be-envied elevation of thought which values no feature of an economy save the capital invested in it, we cannot deny to the management of the Roman estates the praise of consistency, energy, punctuality, frugality and solidity." Without any desire to defend Cato, one may suggest, out of an experience in a kind of farm management not very different from that Cato pictures, that it is doubtful whether even Cato himself was quite as economical ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... estates, with some of your lordships, because I am my lord governor's prisoner." After some scornful language thrown out both against him and the governor, they proceeded to read the articles against him a second time, and hear his answers, which he made with great solidity of judgment: After which they condemned him to be burnt as an heretic, paying no regard to his defences, nor to the emotions of their own consciences, but thought that by killing him they should do God good ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... who first advocated the doctrine that the roads were the ancient beaches of freshwater lakes, were unable to offer any probable hypothesis respecting the formation and subsequent removal of barriers of sufficient height and solidity to dam up the water. To introduce any violent convulsion for their removal was inconsistent with the uninterrupted horizontality of the roads, and with the undisturbed aspect of those parts of the glens where the shelves come ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... idea, in true philosophy, the surest bulwark of human rectitude; every day do I receive fresh conviction of its profound solidity. I have endeavored to recommend it in all my latter writings, but the multitude read too superficially to have made the remark. If I survive my present undertaking, and am able to begin another, I mean, in a continuation of Emilius, to give such a lively and marking example ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... innocent loue, And makes a blister there. Makes marriage vowes As false as Dicers Oathes. Oh such a deed, As from the body of Contraction pluckes The very soule, and sweete Religion makes A rapsidie of words. Heauens face doth glow, Yea this solidity and compound masse, With tristfull visage as against the doome, Is thought-sicke ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... determined support to Lord George. On the day fixed for the second reading of the Bill, the Premier called a meeting of his party at his private residence. Nearly two hundred obeyed the summons. He spoke, on the occasion, against the Irish railway scheme; but his arguments were devoid of force and solidity. He said the money could not be raised, which nobody believed. He said it was generally admitted, that only twenty-five per cent. of the money spent in the construction of railways went for labour; ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... age is made to appear more golden than it really was by the mists of time; but undoubtedly the old actors possessed a mellowness, a solidity, a sort of high tradition now almost unknown. These qualities were due in part, perhaps, to the long and arduous stock company training, where, in the old days, every actor must serve his apprenticeship, and in part to the study of the classic drama which had so ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... to recommend this, outside the fact that it has with the native all the solidity of accepted ethics, and it certainly helps to run the real criminal to earth. The innocent sometimes suffers innocently, but not very often; and our own records show that in that respect with us it is the same. This is not the place to argue the right or wrong of the matter from our own ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... also returned their contemplation, and her charming eyes had several times encountered those of Basil Ransom. But they wandered mainly in the direction of Mrs. Farrinder—they lingered upon the serene solidity of the great oratress. It was easy to see that the girl admired this beneficent woman, and felt it a privilege to be near her. It was apparent, indeed, that she was excited by the company in which she found herself; a fact to be explained by a reference ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... very serviceable and lucid style, a power of clear statement, which afterwards stood him in good stead. His official work gave him the power of seeing the point, it gave him an economy of words, an effective briskness and solidity of presentment; at the same time his literary work prevented him from degenerating into ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... feeling such as we have when we dance or when we sing in chorus. In other words, ceremonies are a sort of "get-together" exercise which pulls men together in spite of themselves, giving them a shoulder-to-shoulder feeling of solidity and power that helps to build up that confidence and spirit which ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... suggestion of the converging lines to the fixation of the high point in the picture,—the small area occupied by the Madonna and Child,—and by the subordination of the free play of other elements. The contrast between the broad base and the apex gives a feeling of solidity, of repose; and it seems not unreasonable to suppose that the tendency to rest the eyes above the centre of the picture directly induces the associated mood of reverence or worship. Thus the pyramidal ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... Crimsworth, without our knowing exactly how he does it, declares himself to Frances. The dialogue is half in French, and does not lend itself to quotation, but it compares very favourably with the more daring comedy of courtship in Jane Eyre. Frances is delicious in her very solidity, her absence of abandonment. She refuses flatly to give up her teaching at Crimsworth's desire, Crimsworth, who will have six ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... three-story houses, reminders to him of those in European provinces. Near the city of Karbou, upon two perpendicular rocks, one sees the ruins of a little town or village. A tempest and an earthquake are said to have shaken down its walls, the solidity of which seems to ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... which deal with distant objects, and scarcely grasp these objects at all, whereas all that the touch perceives it perceives thoroughly. Besides, if to nerve-force we add muscular action, we form a simultaneous impression, and judge of weight and solidity as well as of temperature, size, and shape. Thus touch, which of all our senses best informs us concerning impressions made upon us by external things, is the one oftenest used, and gives us most directly the ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the unfortunate Minor Canon would look, in part indignant and in part perplexed; while his worthy mother sat bridling, with tears in her eyes, and the remainder of the party lapsed into a sort of gelatinous state, in which there was no flavour or solidity, and very little resistance. ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... They contented themselves with strolling around it once again, admiring its shingles that were weather-beaten to a silvery gray, enthusing over the quaintly-gabled windows of its upper story, calling each other's attention to its palpable solidity of structure. ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... of the best tales of adventure produced by any living writer, combining the inventiveness of Jules Verne, and the solidity of character and earnestness of spirit which have made the English victorious in so many fields of labour and ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... exceed thirteen shillings per month. As in Berlin, we dined at a "restauration," or at the "Fress Madam's" (Mrs. Gobble's), a jocose term for a private eating-house, well known to the jewellers. The mid-day meal of the Viennese workman is remarkable for strength and solidity, but also for its sameness. It always takes the shape of fresh boiled beef and vegetables, the latter arranged in a thick porridge of meal and fat. It commences, of course, with soup; is followed by the "rind-fleisch and gemuse," as above; and, if you can ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... use it in its grammatical relation to a sentence. He had no time for vacation; no mental cessation, but it was one unceasing struggle for knowledge. And no doubt his approximate relation to Shurtleff College helped to impart a certain healthy tone and solidity to his style as a writer and preacher which ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... however exceed the bounds prescribed to modesty itself, were I to neglect availing myself of the authority of others, who were not only far from being professors of this art, but who hold the highest rank in the public opinion for solidity of understanding, and purity of morals, and who yet did not disdain to give their opinion in favor of an art only imagined frivolous, for want of considering it in ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... less flexible and gained in stability, especially in the lower sections. The sacrum, for instance, is created by the fusing together of several vertebrae into one bone for the sake of greater strength and stability. The sacrum in man is much broader than in animals, for it must supply solidity and strength to the lower part of the spine, thus adapting it to the vertical position, and in the same way the lower vertebrae generally are comparatively broader and heavier, gradually decreasing ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... surround them, or as Plutonic dykes injected into fissures at a later period,—are of very considerable extent, one of them measuring about twenty-five yards across, and another considerably more than a quarter of a mile; and, had they but the solidity of the true marbles, they would scarce fail to be regarded as valuable quarries of a highly ornamental stone, admirably suited for the interior decorations of the architect. But they are unluckily what the quarrier would term rubbly,—traversed ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... plastic minds. Who will deny that Hogarth was a novelist and play-wright, if not indeed a heart-rending tragedian? Who will refuse to those nameless monastic architects who planned and fashioned the fretted towers of Gloucester, the stern solidity of Durham, the fairy steeple of Strasburg, or the delicate pinnacles of Milan, the praise due to them of being genuine poets of the immortal Epic? Phidas and Praxiteles, Canova and Thorswaldsen, are in this view real authors, as undoubtedly as Homer or Dante, Sallust or Racine; and to rise ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... misty unrealities. Therefore it is assumed that my dreams should have peculiar interest for the man of science. In some undefined way it is expected that they should reveal the world I dwell in to be flat, formless, colourless, without perspective, with little thickness and less solidity—a vast solitude of soundless space. But who shall put into words limitless, visionless, silent void? One should be a disembodied spirit indeed to make anything out of such insubstantial experiences. A world, or a dream for that ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... which they were examining. He was a good deal of a contrast to his partner—a slightly built, wiry man, nervous and quick of movement; although he was Mallalieu's junior he looked older, and the thin hair at his temples was already whitening. Mallalieu suggested solidity and almost bovine sleekness; in Cotherstone, activity of speech and gesture was marked well-nigh to an appearance of habitual anxiety. He stepped about the cart with the quick action of an inquisitive bird ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... his errand to the shed, I investigated the outer walls of the study with the torch, hunting some break in their solidity. They were concrete; a hair-crack would have been visible in the electric glow; there was no break. Then, as he placed the ladder against the coping, I climbed to the roof and stepped across its firmness to the skylight. ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... Arkwright showed that he had physical strength, too; but it was of the kind got at the gymnasium and at gentlemanly sport—the kind that wins only where the rules are carefully refined and amateurized. Craig's figure had the solidity, the tough fiber of things grown in the open air, in the cold, ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... fierce and hurried; my breath came short and with extreme difficulty, and I shivered as if with cold; yet I feared to stir. IT moved, it moaned, its fetters clanked dismally, the couch creaked and shook. This was no phantom, then—no air-drawn specter. But its very solidity, its palpable presence, were a thousand times more terrible. I felt that I was in the very grasp of what could not only affright but harm; of something whose contact sickened the soul with deathly ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... is not so much in its vastness or its beauty as in its tremendous solidity and duration. A portion of it had been cut away by barbarous armies during the fifteenth century, and in the reign of Isabella the Catholic the monk-architect of the Parral, Juan Escovedo, the greatest builder of his day in Spain, repaired it. These ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... table, when at length we filed into the dining room, sent a chill through me. It was a meal for the very young or the very hungry. The uncompromising coldness and solidity of the viands was enough to appall a man conscious that his digestion needed humouring. A huge cheese faced us in almost a swashbuckling way. I do not know how else to describe it. It wore a blatant, rakish, nemo-me-impune-lacessit air, and ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... for her surcease, she darted down the familiar ways until at last her feet struck the dull solidity of the rotting pier. And then it was but a few more panting steps—and good mother East River took Liz to her bosom, soothed her muddily but quickly, and settled in five minutes the problem that keeps lights burning o' nights in thousands of pastorates ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... vestibule or hall. The roof had been recently painted a brilliant red at the expense of the Variag's officers. On the inside, the church has an antiquated appearance, but presents such an air of solidity as if inviting the earthquakes to come and ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... two about the futility of laying down rules, and that was all I could get out of him. That a man of few words like him should have succeeded as a salesman was a riddle to me. I subsequently realized that his reticence accentuated an effect of solidity and helped to inspire confidence in the few words which he did utter. But at the time in question I was sure that the "gift of the gab" was an indispensable element of success in ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... spotted skin which he wears is the image of the starry firmament: his lower parts are rough, hairy, and deformed, to represent the shrubs, wild creatures, trees, and mountains here below: his goat's feet signify the solidity of the earth; and his pipe of seven reeds, that celestial harmony which is made by the seven planets; lastly, his sheep-hook denotes that care and providence by ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... still continued, haply the weaker sex might be heightened to a higher perfection than hitherto hath been attained. That sharpness of their wits, and suddenness of their conceits, which their enemies must allow unto them, might by education be improved into a judicious solidity." ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... year a new committee was established in London called the Central committee, to which all other branches of the society had the right of appointing delegates, and the movement received thereby a considerable increase of strength and solidity.[543] ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... great power conferred on the defence by modern armaments. "Machine guns and barbed wire permit the rapid organisation of defensive points of a value which cannot be disputed. In particular, they have given to a trench, or to a natural obstacle, a solidity which permits a front to be extended in a manner unsuspected before this war; they permit the prompt consolidation of a large system that is easy to hold" (Marshal Foch). "The modern rifle and machine gun add tenfold to ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... insolently away and the girl, with the strain of necessity removed, sank back weakly against the cool solidity of the walnut trunk. Except for its support she would have fallen, and after awhile, hearing Elviry's voice singing off at the back of the house and realizing that she was not watched, she turned weakly and spread her outstretched hands upward in embrace against the rough wood, as a frightened ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... world, another order of poetry altogether; here is rightly due such supreme praise as that which M. Vitet gives to the Chanson de Roland. If our words are to have any meaning, if our judgments are to have any solidity, we must not heap that supreme praise upon poetry of ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... in a shady angle adjoining Portman Square. We go out to dinner in solemn procession. We admire the preternatural solidity of the furniture and the plate. The hostess is a fine woman, "with neck and nostrils like a rocking-horse, hard features and majestic headdress." Her husband, large and pompous, with little light-colored wings "more like hairbrushes than hair" on the sides ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... White, with pious solidity, throwing back his shoulders with an air that seemed to suggest a readiness to fight any man who should hint at such a thing, and he waved the mere thought aside with a ponderous ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... danger, self came less to the front with her than usual? It was that now first she was face to face with reality. Until this moment her life had been an affair of unrealities. Her selfishness had thinned, as it were vaporized, every reality that approached her. Solidity is not enough to teach some natures reality; they must hurt themselves against the solid ere they realize its solidity. Small reality, small positivity of existence has water to a dreaming soul, half consciously gazing through half shut eyes at the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... pretty uniform appearance. Their surface is decorated with carvings and engravings representing animals, plants, and hunting scenes. They are thicker than they are wide, and the care often taken to reduce the thickness is a proof that an attempt was made to combine elegance and lightness with solidity (Figs. 31, 32, 33, 34, and 35). Nearly all of them are pierced at one end with large holes, of which the number varies. Some of these holes were later additions. May we perhaps see in them the signs ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... received a rather disagreeable shock, which was far from my intention. My mind, having retained a very exact image of his former appearance, took note of unmistakeable changes such as a painter would certainly not have made by way of flattering his subject. He had lost his slimness, and that curved solidity which might have adorned a taller man was a rather sarcastic threat to his short figure. The English branch of the Teutonic race does not produce many fat youths, and I have even heard an American ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... such intense irritation, that as the only means of allaying it he had to be kept buried up to the neck while still alive. The disease under which Roquefort suffered seemed to have its seat in the marrow, for his bones by degrees lost all solidity and power of resistance, so that his limbs refused to bear his weight, and he went about the streets crawling like a serpent. Both died in such dreadful torture that they regretted having escaped the scaffold, which would have spared them ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Every jewel of his mind or his conduct sheds radiance on each portion of the nation. The marvelous symmetry and balance of his intellect and character may have owed something to this varied environment of his race, and they may fitly typify the variety and solidity of the republic. It may not be unreasonable to hope that his name and his renown may be forever a bond of union to the country which he loved with an affection so impartial, and served, in life and in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... to draw, as if by magnetic power, the man who had formed an alliance with him amid blood and steel, and who was destined to lend the right solidity to the newly erected structure of the institute—I mean Heinrich Langethal, the most beloved and influential of my teachers, who stood beside Froebel's inspiring genius and Middendorf's lovable warmth of feeling as the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the negative position of hostile criticism; there had been no reorganization and clarification of purposes, and no new leader had appeared who combined the personal prestige of Bryan with those qualities of conservatism and solidity which the East demanded, so that from the beginning there was no doubt that Bryan would again be the candidate and that he would take the lead in framing the platform. The convention met in Kansas City, on July 4. The platform placed most emphasis upon three issues. The first, which was declared ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... too comfortable for that. There were too many chairs and sofas; and they were designed on broad lines for the stolid, permanent sitting of stout, comfortable bodies. There were too many photographs on view of persons distinguished for their solidity rather than for their good looks, the portraits of the guests whom one would expect to find installed in those chairs. A grand piano was there; but the absence of any music in its neighbourhood indicated that its purpose was chiefly to symbolize harmony in the home ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there; makes marriage-vows As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow; Yea, this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... shall satisfy the different parts of the programme that we have just laid out, that is to say, strength, lightness, rapidity of erection, and ease of carriage. The shelters that are at present employed for movable markets at Paris are very primitive, and are wanting in solidity and convenience. They consist simply of wooden uprights to which are affixed cross-pieces ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... his own mind of the existence of any other premiss, he will readily understand, if it be denied that 'whatever exhibits marks of design must have had an intelligent author,' that the affirmative of that proposition is necessary to the solidity of the argument. An argument thus stated regularly and at full length, is called a syllogism; which, therefore, is evidently not a peculiar kind of argument, but only a peculiar form of expression, in which every argument ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... perspiration from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, to indicate his sanguine and ardent temperament, he would thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his trousers, and, standing near me in an attitude of perpendicular solidity, begin a ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... Bois de Boulogne appeared to be draped in a Siberian mantle rarely seen at that season. A deep and clinging covering of snow hid the ground, and the prolonged freezing of the lakes gave absolute guaranty of their solidity. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... London Bridge, but it was awarded to the Rennies, under whose superintendence it was built. The bridge is nine hundred and twenty-eight feet in length, and has five arches. In this structure although utility was the first consideration, there in an elegant solidity of design which makes it pleasing and impressive in the highest degree. The rapid stream is as little obstructed as the circumstances admitted, and there does not appear to be in the bridge an atom of superfluous material. London Bridge is, I suppose, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... the chateau is of enormous extent. The solidity of the walls and the towers resisted so successfully the mines and pickaxes of Richelieu that the great outlines of the immense building are still easily definable, with fine traces of the architecture of the great chapel. That St.-Louis and Henry IV. visited Coucy we know, and the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... habitual course. She sympathized with it now, for a little comfort had restored her geniality. Speech and silence pleased her equally, and while Mr. Wilcox made some preliminary inquiries about cheese, her eyes surveyed the restaurant, and admired its well-calculated tributes to the solidity of our past. Though no more Old English than the works of Kipling, it had selected its reminiscences so adroitly that her criticism was lulled, and the guests whom it was nourishing for imperial purposes bore the outer semblance of Parson Adams or Tom ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... of the time did not show much change or become more varied or comfortable. It was large and solid and the chairs had the satisfactory effect of good proportion, while the general squareness of outline added to the feeling of solidity. Oak was used, and later walnut. The chair legs were straight, and often elaborately turned, and usually had strainers or under framing. Cushions were simply tied on at first, but the knowledge of upholstering was gaining ground, and by the time ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... Laurent had become an intrepid swimmer, and an indefatigable oarsman. Camille had preserved that terror for deep water which is inherent in women and children. He tapped the end of the boat with his foot to make sure of its solidity. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... lose by it, and whatever censure and contempt he might incur. He well knew how improper it was in such company to relate the extraordinary manner in which he was awakened, which they would probably have interpreted as a demonstration of lunacy, against all the gravity and solidity of his discourse; but he contented himself with such a rational defence of a righteous, sober, and godly life, as he knew none of them could with any shadow of reason contest. He then challenged ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... windows, the air of space and largeness. Yet the whole was small, I note that in all these Flemish bell-towers, the topmost portion invariably develops into something charmingly fantastic, into cupolas and short, little galleries and lanterns superimposed, the mixture of solidity and airiness being astonishing. It is appropriate and fitting that this grace should attend on what are the sweetest musical instruments conceivable. Mr. Haweis, who is the poet of Flemish bells, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... Four was called Tetractys by the Pythagoreans, who accounted it the most powerful of numbers, because it was the foundation of them all, and as a square it signified solidity. They said it was at the source of Nature, four elements, four seasons, &c., to which later speculators added the four rivers of Paradise, four evangelists, and association of the number four with God, whose name was a mystical Tetra grammaton, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele |
