"Unctuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a poor man to make a living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his company. This principle was too sound to be fought openly. It is the kind of principle to which politicians delight to pay unctuous homage in words. But we translated the words into deeds; and when they found that this was the case, many rich men, especially sheep owners, were stirred to hostility, and they used the Congressmen they controlled to assault us—getting most aid ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... best of my powers, to forget no important incident or word relative to my conduct since I landed in America; only making reservations where confession might implicate others. An artless boy might easily have been gulled by the portly presence, the unctuous voice, and eyes that twinkled merrily through gold-rimmed glasses; but no man of mature age can remember such a gross mistake without a hot flush ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... such a trifling feat,—this climbing upon the carcass of the dead whale. Nor was it to be done without danger. The slippery epidermis of the huge leviathan,—lubricated as it was with that unctuous fluid which the skin of the sperm-whale is known to secrete,— rendered footing upon it ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... in decorous response, and bowed in silence; but his wife resented the unctuous beaming of content on the other's wide countenance, and could not restrain ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... deep in the ground: we at first thought we perceived the remains of a human body, which had been originally placed upon sticks arranged transversely, but now nearly decayed by time; nothing remained of what we took for the body but a quantity of unctuous clayey matter. The whole had the appearance of being not recent, the semicircular seats being now nearly level with the rest of the ground, and the tomb itself overgrown with weeds. The river fell about three inches in ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... the corner above Julia's, as he passed, a hoarse and unctuous voice, issuing out of an undistinguishable lawn, called his name: "Noble! Noble Dill!" And when Noble paused, Julia's Uncle Joseph came waddling forth from the dimness and rested his monstrous arms upon the top of the fence, ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... professional move. If he thinks it necessary or expedient to prejudice indifferent people against me, he is clearly right to do so. Ah! I see, you think I dislike him. I don't, indeed. Morally and physically, he seems a little too unctuous, that's all. Capital clergyman for a cold climate! Fancy how useful he would be in an Arctic expedition. They might save his salary in Arnott's stoves: ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the tinkling note of the muffin-bell strikes agreeably upon the ear, suggestive of fragrant souchong and bottom-crusts hot, crackling, and unctuous. Now ensues a delicate savour in the atmosphere of the terrace kitchens, and it is just at its height when Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson are seen walking briskly up the terrace. They all go in at Smith's, where the muffin-man went ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... breath, and then ventured to draw back the curtains of the bed—my mother was not there! but there appeared to be a black mass in the centre of the bed. I put my hand fearfully upon it—it was a sort of unctuous, pitchy cinder. I screamed with horror—my little senses reeled—I staggered from the cabin and fell down on the deck in a state amounting almost to insanity: it was followed by a sort of stupor, which lasted for ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... nevertheless left the small eyes ungenial. His voice had a loud vulgar cordiality. Suddenly Dickson was conscious of a resemblance, a resemblance to somebody whom he had recently seen. It was Loudon. There was the same thrusting of the chin forward, the same odd cheek-bones, the same unctuous heartiness of speech. The innkeeper, well washed and polished and dressed, would be no bad copy of the factor. They must ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... judge of the present in its relations to the past. And, unquestionably, there is great satisfaction to be derived from so doing; the mere effort seems at once to take us into another atmosphere,—an atmosphere as foreign to unctuous cant as it is to what is vulgarly known as "electioneering taffy." This evening we pass away from the noisy and heated turmoil of partisan politics, with its appeals to prejudice, passion, and material interest, into the cool of a quiet academic discussion. It ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... about Tolstoy as old women talk about a crazy saint, all sorts of unctuous nonsense; it's a mistake for him ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... 17 Whether they unctuous exhalations are, Fired by the sun, or seeming so alone: Or each some more remote and slippery star, Which loses footing ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... arms of his chair, and matched his hands together by the thumbs and by the forefingers, and by the other fingers, one by one; and little by little the musical, false voice of his lady, and the singularly gentle and unctuous tones of his host, Arnold de Curboil, blended together and lost themselves, just as the gates of dreamland softly ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... thinskinned and some are thick. One variety is quick and vigorous beneath the touch, another gentle and yielding. The pinnock has a thick skin with a spongy lining; a bruise in it becomes like a piece of cork. The tallow apple has an unctuous feel, as its name suggests. It sheds water like a duck. What apple is that with a fat curved stem that blends so prettily with its own flesh,—the wine apple? Some varieties impress me as masculine,—weatherstained, freckled, lasting, and rugged; ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the monotony of whose surface is scarcely broken by the rivers which cross it here and there, and the great lines of railroad that serve as causeways through the desperate mud of spring and winter. A scattered people, who till the unctuous black soil only too easily, and leave as much of the crop rotting on the ground through neglect as would support the entire population; rude though thriving towns, where the grocery and the tavern, the ball room and the race course are more lovingly patronized than the church, the Sunday ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Leprosy of the Arabs. A contagious disease; the skin is thickened, wrinkled, rough, unctuous, destitute of hair, without any sensation of touch in the extremities of the limbs; the face deformed with tubercles; the voice hoarse, and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... into the raw and chilly air of the streets. The Italians are a plump race, with well-developed muscles, and their vocal chords share in the general muscular health and development; so that the average voice in Italy has a much wider compass than in most other countries; and an unctuous ease of execution is readily acquired. Their language, again, favors Italian singers quite as much as their climate. It abounds in the most sonorous of the vowels, while generally avoiding the difficult U, and the mixed vowels ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... there was a word of opprobrium, mundane or nautical, which the port skipper didn't shout at that submarine commander, the port engineer supplied it. In all his life Cappy Ricks had never listened to such rich, racy, unctuous abuse; it lifted itself about the level of the commonplace and became a work of art. Cappy ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... the Chronicle, the pages of which I did not see. Then came Mr. Dix, and such a change I had never beheld in mortal man. In place of the would-be squire I had encountered in Threadneedle Street, here was an unctuous person of business in sober gray; but he still wore the hypocritical smirk with no joy in it. His bow was now all respectful obedience. Comyn acknowledged it with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in The surplus from the bygone year; His features wear an unctuous grin, He feels he is without ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... domestic allurement is the parlour hearth- rug. For reasons apparent or otherwise these things amuse me beyond expression, and I am never weary of staring into gateways, of lingering by dreary, shabby, half-barbaric farm-yards, of feasting a foolish gaze on sun-cracked plaster and unctuous indoor shadows. I mustn't forget, however, that it's not for wayside effects that one rides away behind St. Peter's, but for the strong sense of wandering over boundless space, of seeing great classic lines of landscape, of watching them dispose themselves into pictures so full of "style" that ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the language of birds. [96] He attributes a multitude of virtues to the limbs of a dead camelion: among others that, if the left foot of this animal be grilled, and there be added certain herbs, and a particular unctuous preparation, it will have the quality to render the person who carries it about him invisible. [97] But all this is wholly irreconcileable with the known character of Democritus, who distinguished himself by the hypothesis that the world was framed from the fortuitous concourse of atoms, and ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... many years by which a young man from Homerton was then developed into the influential and highly esteemed pastor of an important flock. Things may be, and probably are, differently managed now-a-days. Mr. Beecham had unbounded fluency and an unctuous manner of treating his subjects. It was eloquence of a kind, though not of an elevated kind. Never to be at a loss for what you have to say is a prodigious advantage to all men in all positions, but doubly so to ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... diplomacy, as the damper preferred to dip in a rolling valley between my extended arms, or hang over them like a tablecloth, rather than keep its desired form. But with patience, and the loan of one of Dan's huge palms, it finally fell with an unctuous, dusty "whouf" into the opened-out bed ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... became too prosy, she could surreptitiously finish a few notes. He sank into a deep arm-chair close to the writing-table, crossed his somewhat bandy legs one over the other, made the tips of his fingers meet with unctuous accuracy, and intoned the opening sentences of his proposition. Jane, sharpening pencils and sorting nibs, apparently only caught the drift of what he was saying, for when he had chanted the phrase, ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Lyman looked too, and his breast grew warm with the new beating of his heart. Mrs. McElwin and her daughter entered the church. The preacher glanced up from his text and saw them, and his eye kindled. He gave out an old hymn and the congregation arose. The air was vibrant in the unctuous swell of sound. The spider webs hanging from the rafters trembled; the woods caught up the echo and bore it afar through the timber-land, and the distant leaves caught it as a whisper and hushed it. In it there was not music, not the harmony that seeks the approval of the brain; it was ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... to me on the part of the King his master with great compliments that his Majesty seeks to please me and satisfy me in everything that I could possibly desire of him," said James, rolling over with satisfaction these unctuous phrases as if they really ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "Whether they unctuous exhalations are Fired by the sun, or seeming so alone, Or each some more remote and slippery star Which loses footing when ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... one in a remote seat had bowed to him. He looked, and the salute came again, unctuous and obsequious. He coldly responded and frowned, for the men he was with had ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Buenavista that the gneiss manifests a tendency to pass into eurite.) The primitive limestone often simply covers this latter rock in concordant stratification. Very near the Hato the talcose slate becomes entirely white, and contains small layers of soft and unctuous graphic ampelite.* (* Zeichenschiefer.) Some pieces, destitute of veins of quartz, are real granular plumbago, which might be of use in the arts. The aspect of the rock is very singular in those places where thin plates of black ampelite alternate with thin, sinuous, and satiny plates of a talcose ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... take charge of this place, assure a comfortable future for the aged relatives in your care, and as my wife you will be both happy and honored." The Senator was decidedly coming into his own, and smile, glance and voice as he regarded Rose Mary were unctuous. In fact, through their slits his eyes shot a gleam of something that was so hateful to Rose Mary that she caught her breath with horror, and only the sharp corner of her letter pressed into her naked breast kept her from reeling. But in a second ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... "You're excited, Miss. You go home an' think it over reasonable. You'll be sorry you talked this away to me," he said with unctuous virtue. Then, swiftly, he turned and went straddling down the walk, his spurs jingling ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... relics of mortality with which the old man had heaped his fireplace, began by degrees to send forth a thick unctuous vapour, which at length leaped to light, and blazing up the aperture, gave a degree of liveliness to the gloomy scene. The blazonry of the huge escutcheon met and returned the rays with as brilliant a reflection as that lugubrious object was capable of, and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of the beaver contains a curious odoriferous substance, called by the trappers barkstone, but more scientifically "castor," or "castoreum." It is contained in two little bags about the size of a hen's egg, and is of a brownish, unctuous consistency. At one time it was supposed to possess valuable medicinal properties. It is now, however, chiefly employed by perfumers. The beavers themselves are strangely attracted by this substance, and when scenting it at a distance will invariably ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... gates adjoin'd A spacious garden lay, fenced all around Secure, four acres measuring complete. There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree, Pomegranate, pear, the apple blushing bright, The honied fig, and unctuous olive smooth. Those fruits, nor winter's cold nor summer's heat 140 Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang Perennial, whose unceasing zephyr breathes Gently on all, enlarging these, and those Maturing genial; in an endless course ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... tree your suckers tear; So deep their love of earth; nor wound the plants With blunted blade; nor truncheons intersperse Of the wild olive: for oft from careless swains A spark hath fallen, that, 'neath the unctuous rind Hid thief-like first, now grips the tough tree-bole, And mounting to the leaves on high, sends forth A roar to heaven, then coursing through the boughs And airy summits reigns victoriously, Wraps all the grove in robes of fire, and gross With pitch-black vapour ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... They're crazy over it," said Clown with an unctuous smile. Strange that whatever Clown says, it makes me itching mad. "But, if you don't look out, there ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... and for an hour I discoursed to them in a moral and unctuous manner. I had taken care to provide myself with some excellent wine, which did not fail to take effect on the three girls, who were not accustomed to a dinner that lasted two hours. They were not exactly inebriated, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... these hands and arms the fellow I see in the mirror there could, at need, choke a hippopotamus; the chain that is to deck this neck must be twice as long as that worn by a well-fed Egyptian priest. In this mirror I see a man, who is moulded out of a sturdy clay, baked out of more unctuous and solid stuff than other folks; and if the fine creature there on the bright surface wears a transparent robe, what have you to say against it, Cleopatra? The Ptolemaic princes must protect the import trade of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his engine with an unctuous glee. He was boyishly happy because he and the Home Secretary had done them out of the Car of Victory and the ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... reducing friction is to apply oil, or some other unctuous substance, to the parts which move upon each other. Some disadvantages attend this expedient, but till a better is suggested they have to be endured. The cost of the oil expended in maintaining in proper condition the axles of the machinery in a foundery, or of the rolling ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... and in his pink-striped shirtsleeves, sat upon the steps of his saloon as they went by. He wished them an unctuous good-evening. The oily smoothness of Mr. Saunders' voice cannot be described with plain pen and ink; it gurgled with sweetness, like molasses poured from a jug. This was not a special tone put ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... A period of profound introspection followed, and then he broke forth: "Well, I 'll be hanged!" emphasizing each word with a slow nod. Then he began to laugh,—not noisily; scarcely audibly, indeed; but with the deep, unctuous chuckle of one who gloats over some exquisitely absurd situation, some jest of many facets, each ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... elements of flame, {and} it takes fire at the concussion, the winds {once} calmed, the caverns will become cool; or, if the bituminous qualities take fire, or yellow sulphur is being dried up with a smouldering smoke, still, when the earth shall no longer give food and unctuous fuel to the flame, its energies being exhausted in length of time, and when nutriment shall be wanting to its devouring nature, it will not {be able to} endure hunger, and left destitute, it ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... fit of laughter. The innkeeper was in a high fever. Just then Grimaud showed himself behind his master, his carbine on his shoulder, and his head shaking like that of the drunken satyr in some of Rubens' pictures. His clothes were smeared with an unctuous liquid, which the host immediately recognized ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Moozuffernuggar, however, had his own views on this question. With a courteous wave of one dusky hand, he motioned us gracefully into somebody else's deck chairs, and then sat down on another beside us, while the gorgeous suite stood by in respectful silence—unctuous gentlemen in pink-and-gold brocade—forming a court all round us. Elsie and I, unaccustomed to be so observed, grew conscious of our hands, our skirts, our postures. But the Maharajah posed himself with perfect unconcern, like one well used to the fierce ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... caught sight, in the New Testament, of the spirit and life of its words. The recoil was even stronger from the shallowness and pretentiousness and self-display of what was popularly accepted as earnest religion; morally the preacher was revolted at its unctuous boasts and pitiful performance, and intellectually by its narrowness and meanness of thought and its thinness of colour in all its pictures of the spiritual life. From first to last, in all manner of ways, the sermons are a protest, first against coldness, but even still more against meanness, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... belted below his Geneva gown. Savagery, savagery, rank and stinking! I'll say it to his face in another world, and a poor evangel and ensample truly for the quarrelsome landward folk of this parish, that even now, in the more unctuous times of God's grace, doff steel weapons so reluctantly. I found a man with a dirk at his hip sitting before the Lord's ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... rubbing his hands very close to him made him look up. A little man with chubby cheeks and steel-grey hair very neatly flattened against his skull, stood at the window rubbing his fat little white hands together and making a faint unctuous puffing with each breath. Andrews noticed that a white clerical collar enclosed the little man's pink neck, that starched cuffs peeped from under the well-tailored sleeves of his officer's uniform. Sam Brown belt and puttees, too, were highly polished. On his shoulder was a demure little ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... young scoundrel, knowing well that it is elsewhere, pipes out, "There it is, Fa-ther, there it is, Fa-ther!" with an unctuous humility shading into impatient contempt that is simply indescribable, being indeed too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... political Zionism are that there is a Jewish nation. This is just the point denied by the assimilation Jews, and the spiritless, unctuous, prating rabbis in their pay. Dr. Herzl saw that the first task he had to fulfil was the organizing of a manifestation which should bring before the world, and the Jewish people itself, in modern, comprehensible form the fact of its national existence. He convoked ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... delight was too strong to continue smouldering in a grin—it burst out the next instant in a long-drawn "haw, haw!" followed by a sudden collapse into utter gravity, as the knife and fork darted down on the prey. Martin Poyser's large person shook with his silent unctuous laugh. He turned towards Mrs. Poyser to see if she too had been observant of Tom, and the eyes of husband and wife met in a ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the same, dragged on their standard-bearers, the banners now hanging over their shoulders; and the good, fat priests, red and panting, shoving their vast overworked bellies before them, still found strength to shout into the very ear of the mules, in an unctuous, effusive voice, "Long live our noble Bey!" The rain on all this, the rain falling in buckets, discolouring the pink coaches, precipitating the disorder, giving the appearance of a rout to this triumphal return, but a comic rout, mingled with songs and laughs, mad embraces, and infernal ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... judge, jury, barristers and ushers, rendered the existence of the little parasite and its effective transference from man to man possible. Those pompous emblems of authority, the horsehair wigs—those musty robes of unctuous dignity—were full of dirt, and harboured the wandering bearer of typhus infection. Gaol-fever was due to dirt; its infecting germs were ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... passed from one dead shade to another, until, at last, they gleamed like alabaster from afar with a diamond brilliancy almost painful to the eye. Thus the sun rose like some mighty caldron of fire mounting into the cloudless azure of a perfect sky, showering unctuous rays of light and heat upon the chilled life that was of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... but still showing the work of the axe. And farther, the roots of the stunted trees gripped the foot-high relics of a wall; and a round heap of fallen stones nourished rank, unknown herbs, that smelt poisonous. The earth was black and unctuous, and bubbling under the feet, left no track behind. From it, in the darkest places where the shadow was thickest, swelled the growth of an abominable fungus, making the still air sick with its corrupt odor, and he shuddered as he felt the horrible thing pulped beneath his feet. Then ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... rents; the shutters hanging about the windows in rags of rotten wood; before its gate, the stream which had gladdened it now soaking slowly by, black as ebony, and thick with curdling scum; the bank above it trodden into unctuous, sooty slime: far in front of it, between it and the old hills, the furnaces of the city foaming forth perpetual plague of sulphurous darkness; the volumes of their storm clouds coiling low over a waste of grassless fields, fenced from each other, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... an interesting narrative. On removing the black pall which Herbert described, a plain leaden coffin was found, with the inscription 'King Charles, 1648.' Within this was a wooden coffin, much decayed, and the body carefully wrapped in cerecloth, into the folds of which an unctuous matter mixed with resin had been melted, to exclude the external air. The skin was dark and discoloured—the pointed beard perfect—the shape of the face was a long oval—many of the teeth remained—the hair ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... the purely comic is wide; with an inflection of the voice, a bend of that curious long thin body which seems to be embodied gesture, she can suggest, she can portray, the humour that is dry, ironical, coarse (I will admit), unctuous even. Her voice can be sweet or harsh; it can chirp, lilt, chuckle, stutter; it can moan or laugh, be tipsy or distinguished. Nowhere is she conventional; nowhere does she resemble any other French singer. Voice, face, gestures, pantomime, all are different, all are purely her own. She ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... barked. "One move and it will be your last." Gone was the smooth unctuous speech of former times. His tone now was ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... Brightens his Crest; as when a wandering Fire, Compact of unctuous Vapour, which the Night Condenses, and the Cold invirons round, Kindled through Agitation to a Flame, (Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends) Hovering and blazing with delusive Light, Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... epilepsy); And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber Headed with diamant and carbuncle. My footboy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons, Knots, goodwits, lampreys. I myself will have The beards of barbels served; instead of salads, Oiled mushrooms, and the swelling unctuous paps Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce, For which I'll say unto my cook, 'There's gold: Go forth, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... however, come to the end of his weird tale—for weird it certainly was, told at the foot of Guidon Mountain itself, and in a region of vast solitudes—the pair of chemists were approaching "the supreme union of unctuous elements," as The Honourable put it, and in the silence that fell for a moment there crept ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... prevailed which imparted itself to the condition of widowhood dug up by the young foreigner from the basement. Sometimes there responded to his summons a clerical, an almost episcopal presence, which was clearly that of a former butler, unctuous in manner and person from long serving. Or sometimes there would be something much more modern, of an alert middle-age or wary youth; in every case the lodging-keeper was skilled far beyond the lodging-seeker in the coils of bargaining, and of ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... some few letters reached her. One of them contained the news that Marshall Wace, surmounting his religious doubts and scruples—by precisely what process remained undeclared—had at last taken Holy Orders. Concerning this joyful consummation Henrietta waxed positively unctuous. "He had gone through so much"—the old cry!—to which now was added conviction that his own trials fitted him to minister the more successfully to his ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... day, and in East Anglia they were more numerous than in London. It may be that they have helped to weaken Dissent in that part of the world. Men of independent intellect must have been not a little shocked by that unctuous familiarity with God and the devil which is the characteristic of that class. On a Sunday morning Jemmy Wells, as his admirers called him, would describe in the most graphic manner what the devil had said to ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... I have experienced great benefit from it in rheumatic pains, particularly those of the fixed kind, and which were seated deep. In these cases I have given from ten grains to a scruple of the fresh root twice or thrice a day, made into a bolus or emulsion with unctuous and mucilaginous substances, which cover its pungency, and prevent its making any painful impression on the tongue. It generally excited a slight tingling sensation through the whole habit, and, when the patient was kept warm in ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... moist, and the heap is again raised to about three feet. About six days later the operation is repeated, and in about three days the manure should be ready for the beds. It is then of a dark brown color mixed with white, free from objectionable odor. It is unctuous, elastic and moist, though not wet, and should not leave any ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... treatment causes the ingredients to amalgamate, and the flavors to harmonize and blend more freely; and when, on Christmas day, you bring out this hermit, after doing a three months' penance in a dark cell, it will come out rich, succulent, and unctuous; you will not only have a luxury, "fit to set before a king," or before the Empress of India, but fit to crown a feast of the very gods themselves, on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... a tenement house next door to a kerosene factory, where, as he vivaciously told them, in the event of a fire, at least one hundred human beings would be slowly done to a turn. After which all three returned from their walk, firmly convinced that an unctuous vein of humor had been conscientiously worked, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... old Provenal house has been written, in a style somewhat unctuous and flowery, by M. Jules Canonge. I purchased the little book—a modest pamphlet—at the establishment of the good sisters, just beside the church, in one of the highest part of Les Baux. The sisters have a school for the hardy little Baussenques, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... her like an unctuous trickle of some acrid oil. The low, voluble delivery was enough by itself to compel ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... pious sentiment—a piece of cant, because he did not feel what he was saying—to deaden the cannon-ball of Christ's word, is only a pattern of a good many of us who think that to say, 'Blessed is he that eateth bread in the Kingdom of God,' with the proper unctuous roll of the voice, is pretty nearly as good as to take the bread that is offered to us. There are no more difficult people to get at than the people, of whom I am sure I have some specimens before me now, who bow their heads in assent to the word of the Gospel, and by bowing them escape ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have never heard another word upon the subject from that day to this proves conclusively that the authorities, although doubtless profuse in their apologies and regrets to the Ambassador over the delay, and unctuous in their promises to settle the issue immediately, never really intended to stir another finger in this direction. No one disturbed the official serenity and forthwith the whole question was permitted to slide and to be forgotten in accordance with ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... laughed shrilly. And only when I had moved my chair, and thrown down my book, had the laughter and unctuous whispering died away, and given place to ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... hair And ragged beard, to Vladislaw. He sat Expectant in his cabinet. On one side His secular adviser, Narzerad, Quick-eyed, sharp-nosed, red-whiskered as a fox; On the other hand his spiritual guide, Bishop of Olmutz, unctuous, large, and bland. "So these twain are chief culprits!" sneered the Duke, Measuring with the noble's ignorant scorn His masters of a lesser caste. "Stand forth! Rash, stubborn, vain old man, whose impudence Hath choked the public highways with thy brood Of nasty ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... pity," Mrs. Madgwick was remarking in her unctuous voice. "I always felt there was something just a little—well, what shall I call it?—second-rate about the girl. Mr. Rose being a gentleman in every sense of the word makes the whole thing so ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... according to the laws of art, that is to say, so resting one upon the other that the flames could play freely through them, in order that the metal might heat and liquefy the sooner. At last I called out heartily to set the furnace going. The logs of pine were heaped in, and, what with the unctuous resin of the wood and the good draught I had given, my furnace worked so well that I was obliged to rush from side to side to keep it going. The labour was more than I could stand; yet I forced myself to strain every ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Scotsman and personally thanked him for his good offices in settling the strike. Both sorts were there—the kind and the unkind, the gentleman and the churl—but all alike united in grateful praise for the mediation which Angus had accomplished. Many unctuous things were said, but when one tyrant arose to speak his gratitude, Angus's face bore a look ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... impassable, the sluicing adrift, and the trails and wagon roads to Rough and Ready knee-deep in mud. The stage-coach from Sacramento, entering the settlement by the mountain highway, its wheels and panels clogged and crusted with an unctuous pigment like mud and blood, passed out of it through the overflowed and dangerous ford, and emerged in spotless purity, leaving its stains behind with Rough and Ready. A week of enforced idleness on the river "Bar" had ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... is the purest and noblest of all Elements, full of adhesive unctuous corrosiveness, penetrant, digestive, inwardly fixed, hot and dry, outwardly visible, and tempered by the earth.... This Element is the most passive of all, and resembles a chariot; when it is drawn, it moves; when it is ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... meshes of some antiquated law, was doomed to administer in some measure to their need by the payment of a penalty and costs. The fat old fellow who presided as judge, and beneath whose robe of office an unctuous leathery surtout was all too visible, peered in vain through a pair of massive horn-spectacles into a huge timber-swathed volume in search of the act, the provisions of which I had violated. At length, the schoolmaster—a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... recognized the rector's foot on the resounding steps of the portico. He bowed respectfully to the three occupants of the room, and addressed them in phrases of that unctuous civility which priests are accustomed to use. To the rather absent-minded greeting of the mistress of the house, he replied by an ecclesiastically ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... friendly rivalry between these two masters, but which do not help us much in imagining their artistic qualities. As regards technique, it seems likely that both of them practiced principally "tempera" painting, in which the colors are mixed with yolk of eggs or some other sticky non-unctuous medium. [Footnote: Oil painting was unknown in ancient times.] Both Apelles and Protogenes are said to have written technical treatises on the ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Buprestis (B. octoguttata) in the old stumps of pine-trees left standing in the ground, hard outside but soft within, where the wood is as pliable as tinder. In this yielding substance, which has a resinous aroma, the larvae spend their life. For the metamorphosis they leave the unctuous regions of the centre and penetrate the hard wood, where they hollow out oval recesses, slightly flattened, measuring from twenty-five to thirty millimetres[1] in length. The major axis of these cells is always vertical. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... the office was quiet, but none the less thrilling on that account. Mr. Raider received her cordially, and with a great deal of unctuous fatherly advice. He took her into his office, which was one corner of the press room glassed in by itself, and talked over her duties, which, as far as Lark could gather from his discourse, appeared to consist in doing as she ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... the syllable with unctuous relish. "They'll rip the town inside out. They'll do worse. There'll be a string of detectives across the country—yes, and at intervals to China—so tight you couldn't step from Kalamazoo to Oshkosh without ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... was really laughing, as he said, fit to break his jaws. And he was no longer the timid little unctuous and obsequious provincial usher, but a well-set-up fellow, who, after reciting and mimicking the whole scene with impressive ardour, was now laughing with a shrill laughter the sound of which made ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... to show signs of breaking down, and the situation was fast becoming acute, when the unexpected tones of an unctuous voice suddenly ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... world's wide festival, Men, whom a weird and fate-ordained bale, Had smitten with the hate of cakes and ale, A soda-water, syphon-squirting crew, Guilty of treason to the revenue: Their lurid language and their unctuous warnings, Their moral-pointings and their tale-adornings, And, worst of all, their shameful waste of ink In signing pledges to abstain from drink, Proved them a witless and a churlish band, Unfit to dwell in any ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... it would appear that even human sacrifices were offered, but this custom was obsolete except on rare occasions, and lambs, oxen, sometimes swine's flesh, formed the usual elements of the sacrifice. The gods seized as it arose from the altar the unctuous smoke, and fed on it with delight. When they had finished their repast, the supplication of a favour was adroitly added, to which they gave a favourable hearing. Services were frequent in the temples: there was one in the morning and another in the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... these government laboratories seemed to close in on his mind in boiling, chaotic waves of frustration. What was the good of his work, all this great installation, all the gleaming expensive equipment in the lab around him? He was alone. None of them seemed to share his problem, the unctuous, always correct Gordon, the easy-mannered, unbearable Mason, all of them gave him a feeling ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... Pullman porter had mentally summed up as, "Po' white trash"; but the Yiddish shopman could not place his prospective customer under any head or type with which he was familiar. He was neither "kike," "wop," "rough-neck," nor beggar, and, as the proprietor laid out his wares with unctuous solicitude, he was, also, studying his unresponsive and early visitor. When Samson, for the purpose of trying on a coat and vest, took off his own outer garments, and displayed, without apology ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... joined hands, until a grand anthem in honor of the sacrament had been intoned. The scene had been well studied, and it made the desired impression upon the by-standers. "There was no one among the people," say the registers of the Hotel de Ville in unctuous phrase, "be he small or great, that did not shed warm tears and pray God in behalf of the king, whom he beheld performing so devout an act and worthy of long remembrance. And it is to be believed that there lives not ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... source of all beauty,—that small and light body, capable of being suspended for a great length of time in the air by those broad wings, so that, as a bird of prey, it should watch for its food without the aid of a perch; the feathers, supplied by an unctuous substance, to enable them to throw off the water and keep the body dry; the web-feet for swimming; and the long legs, which it uses as a kind of stay, by turning them towards the head when it bends the neck, to apply ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... of his must have brought the unctuous fingers of many masters, spiritual and otherwise, down upon it in commendatory pats. . . . I daresay that it was his mother's pleasure in it and the way she enjoyed running her fingers through it that made him realize—subconsciously at least—that his hair was a very magnificent ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... woman, with powdered hair and imposing presence, who presented a striking contrast to the meagre personage engaged in conversation with her. The Duke de Riancourt was a small, nervous man of thirty years or thereabouts, with a sanctimonious, unctuous mien, shifting eyes and long, smooth hair, carefully parted near the middle of the forehead, and a rigidity of movement that showed great ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... hath left me. For I will even confess that while Galatea possessed me Neither care of my flock nor hope of liberty was there. Though from my wattled folds there went forth many a victim, And the unctuous cheese was pressed for the city ungrateful, Never did my right hand return home ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... seldom that Turgenev reminds us of Dickens; but Sipyagin and his wife might belong to the great Dickens gallery, though drawn with a restraint unknown to the Englishman. Sipyagin himself is a miniature Pecksniff, unctuous, polished, and hollow. The dinner-table scenes at his house are pictured with a subdued but implacable irony. How the natural-born aristocrat Turgenev hated the Russian aristocracy! When Solomin appears in this household, he seems like a giant among manikins, so truly ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... Fact always vindicates her claim to be more satiric than Fiction. But when Mr. Cushing speaks with exultation of the past and with confidence of the future of the Original Democratic Party, we can think of nothing like it but Charles II. taking the Solemn League and Covenant, with an unctuous allusion to the persecutions WE Covenanters have undergone, and the triumphs of vital piety to which WE ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... laughed on them, they believed it not." "His very countenance carried the force of a sermon with it." [Footnote: Parentator, p. 40.] He kept a strict account of his mental condition, and always was pleased when able to enter in his diary at the end of the day, "heart serious." He was unctuous in his preaching, and wept much in the pulpit; he often mentions being "quickened at the Lord's table [during which] tears gushed from me before the Lord," [Footnote: Parentator, p. 48.] but of his self-sacrifice, his mercy, and his truth, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... was found to be more savory; the cakes were lighter; and the pork less greasy. On this subject of grease, however, we could wish that a sense of right would enable us to announce its utter extinction in the American kitchen; or, if not absolutely its extinction, such a subjection of the unctuous properties, as to bring them within the limits of a reasonably accurate and healthful taste. To be frank, Dorothy carried a somewhat heavy hand, in this respect; but pretty Margery was much her superior. How this difference in domestic discipline occurred, is more than we can ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... He was a globular, unctuous little man, this Carbajal; he reminded O'Reilly of a drop of oil. He evinced an unusual interest in the affairs of his American guest, and soon developed a habit of popping into the latter's room at unexpected moments, ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... the coal-strata of Greensburg, in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania; and I had an opportunity of examining them when in that country in 1846. The footmarks were first observed standing out in relief from the lower surface of slabs of sandstone, resting on thin layers of fine unctuous clay. I brought away one of these masses, which is represented in Figure 438. It displays, together with footprints, the casts of cracks (a, a') of various sizes. The origin of such cracks in clay, and casts of the same, has before ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... and could neither have her rent raised nor be evicted before Michaelmas. Hester would have been puzzled to say precisely what sealed her lips from inquiry. Partly, no doubt, she shrank from discovering a fresh obligation to Mr. Sam, whose unctuous handshake she was learning to detest. Tom Trevarthen had disappeared. His mother kept house unmolested. Why not let sleeping dogs lie? For the rest, the school absorbed most of her thoughts, and paid back interest in cheerfulness. The children were beginning ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nests. During these busy reaping-fits the lizards and birds have a good time of it, and enjoy a rich feast at the expense of thousands of hapless workmen; and when they swarm they are caught in countless numbers by the natives, and their roasted bodies are spoken of in an unctuous manner as resembling grains of soft rice fried in ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... of the time for future generations! To be exact, it took these generations eighteen centuries to discover and to appreciate the heritage that was theirs, buried at the foot of Vesuvius. During these long dark and dusky centuries charming goat herds had rested unctuous shocks of hair upon mysterious columns that, like young giant asparagus, stuck their magnificent heads out of the ground. Blinking drowsily at yonder villainous mountain, the summit of which is eternally crowned with a halo of thin white smoke, such as we are accustomed ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... can never read far in Spenser without taking a rest—as we farmers lean upon our spades, when the digging is in unctuous fat soil ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... a deep, hearty, unctuous laugh that came from the very depths of the man's chest. It was a laugh with no trace of merely superficial joy. He who uttered it laughed because his heart and soul were in it. It was a laugh of mirth, relief and triumph, all carried to the highest degree. It was a long laugh, rising ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... few strides, and stopped again. Suddenly, changing my attitude, I fold my hands, hold my head to one side, and ask, with an unctuous, sanctimonious tone of voice: "Hast thou appealed also to him, my child?" ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... where the red rocks catch the fierce beams of the blazing sun, bowery valleys, broad lakes, gigantic trees, and gushing rivers bursting from rocky gorges, are crowned with a purple and ever cloudless sky. Summer, in its most unctuous state and most mellow majesty, is here perpetual. So intense and overpowering, in the daytime, is the rich union of heat and perfume, that living animal or creature is never visible; and were you and I ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... the good doctor's sermon and benediction, wishing to make enquiry of the rector touching the movements of his clerk, whose place was provisionally supplied by a corpulent and unctuous mercenary from Dublin, whose fat presence and panting delivery were in signal contrast with the lank figure and deep cavernous tones of the absent official, loitered in the church-yard to allow time for the congregation to disperse, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... we'll leave it go at the reglar price. So, just you skin off six hundred an' thirty bucks, an' eighteen more, an' pass 'em acrost. An' do it pronto or somethin' might happen to Fatty right where he's thickest." The cowpuncher emphasized his remarks by boring the muzzle even deeper into the unctuous periphery of the proprietor. The croupier shot a ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... Bernard did a better thing. The only emigrant in his party was Leonora, and I like to think they lived happily ever after on his little orange-farm. I can only hope that his rival, Pike-Sarpe, a horrible little unctuous cad of a solicitor, will shortly do something to attract the official attention of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... it might, always came back to two subjects. They seemed never to tire of them. Three talked of their daughters-in-law, and bitterness rasped their throats. One talked of her son, and her voice was unctuous ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... throb of spring in the earth, rising in a potent mist, sap pervaded and tangible, having a clinging, unctuous softness like the touch of unfolding beech leaves, lured me out to finish the transplanting of the pansies among the hardy roses, while the first brown thrasher, high in the bare top of an ash, eyes fixed on the sky, proclaimed with many turns and changes ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... is able to tell us that Monsieur Bergeret made some naive remark, or the Abbe Jerome Coignard uttered some unctuous sally, in so large and deliberate and courtly a way that the mere "he said" or "he began" falls upon us like a papal benediction or like the gesture of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... cambric, which disguised what is really splendid in the physique of these oarsmen, at once slender and sinewy. Both bride and bridegroom looked uncomfortable in their clothes. The light that fell upon them in the church was dull and leaden. The ceremony, which was very hurriedly performed by an unctuous priest, did not appear to impress either of them. Nobody in the bridal party, crowding together on both sides of the altar, looked as though the service was of the slightest interest and moment. Indeed, this was hardly ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... entrusted his ship more and more to the ever swelling current of the political parties of the proletariat, and hoped to find his profit where, in a half-hearted way, his convictions lay. He exhibited a rebel's front to the middle-classes, and held out a hand of unctuous fellowship to the toiler. He knew how to make his way! Many an insignificant shop-keeper had been known to exchange his musty rooms for a villa in the suburbs, to furnish it pretentiously, and to send his sons ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... a real spiritual teacher. Archbishop Thomson will never get within a million miles of their meaning; nor will anybody be deceived, by the unctuous "Oh that" with which he concludes his discourse, like a mental rolling of the whites of ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... smoke becomes a kitchen fane better than a dining chamber: and yet it makes a kitchen oftentimes in the inward parts of men, soyling and injecting with an unctuous oyly kind of roote as hath been found in some great tobacco takers, that after death were opened. A custom loathsome to the eye, harmful to the braine, dangerous to the lungs, and the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... happened to think just here of the injunction against throwing pearls before swine, and so turned to Humphreys, who made his heart glad by witnessing a good confession, in soft and unctuous tones, and couched in the regulation phrases which have worn smooth in ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... Canarsee tribe, in western Long Island. John Underhill, whose unctuous piety and profligate life have an important place in Winthrop and other New England historians. With Captain John Mason he had the leading part in the crushing of the Pequots in 1637. Banished from Massachusetts and restored, this amusing reprobate had ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... flaky, unctuous substance, prepared from an oil of the same name, drawn from a particular kind of whale, distinguished from the common whale by having teeth, and a hunch on ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... was holding, Trotty made no pause in his attack upon the savory meat before him, but cut and ate, and cut and drank, and cut and chewed, and dodged about, from tripe to hot potato, and from hot potato back again to tripe, with an unctuous and unflagging relish. But happening now to look all round the street—in case anybody should be beckoning from any door or window, for a porter—his eyes, in coming back again, encountered Meg: sitting opposite to him, with her arms ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... religious things would often take possession of me; sometimes at church especially where the gray light fell upon me and chilled me I felt it most. The awful tediousness of some of the Sunday sermons; the emptiness of the prayers, written in advance and spoken with conventional unctuous voice, and gestures to suit; and the apathy of the people who, dressed out in their best, came to listen,—how early I divined its hollowness,—and how deep was my disappointment, and how cruel the disillusionment—oh! the disheartening ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... simplicity of his nature, never dreamed of this, but, on the contrary, when our adventurer dilated in the fatherly manner already adverted to, be looked upon himself as particularly favored of Heaven, in falling upon a youth, as a pupil, of such unctuous moral delivery. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... place about eleven; perfect unanimity, with some haziness and dimness, before twelve. N. B.—My single affection is not so singly wedded to snipes; but the curious and epicurean eye would also take a pleasure in beholding a delicate and well-chosen assortment of teals, ortolans, the unctuous and palate-soothing flesh, of geese wild and tame, nightingales' brains, the sensorium of a young sucking-pig, or any other Christmas dish, which I leave to the judgment of you and ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... exhausted and trembling, into the gathering dusk, a lowering assemblage of darkling mountains, and at a little distance the shacks of the construction gang. The doors were aflare with flickering lights from within, and the unctuous smell of frying pork was on the air. It was well for his enterprise that at the critical moment the camp was discussing its well-earned supper and had scant attention to ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... her long golden locks. He checked his palfrey, and murmured some Latin words which the knight beside him recognised as a prayer, and to which, doffing his cap, he added an Amen, in a tone of such unctuous gravity, that the royal saint rewarded him with a faint approving smile, and an affectionate "Bene ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... quantity of earth. We found heaps of earth-balls in their huts, piled up in pyramids three or four feet high. These balls were five or six inches in diameter. The earth which the Ottomacs eat is a very fine and unctuous clay of a yellowish grey colour; and, when being slightly baked at the fire, the hardened crust has a tint inclining to red, owing to the oxide of iron which is mingled with it. We brought away some of this earth, which we took from the winter-provision of the Indians; ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... and elegant conduit in Oxford. So much have all times attributed to this element, to be conveniently provided of it: although Galen hath taken exceptions at such waters, which run through leaden pipes, ob cerussam quae in iis generatur, for that unctuous ceruse, which causeth dysenteries and fluxes; [2916]yet as Alsarius Crucius of Genna well answers, it is opposite to common experience. If that were true, most of our Italian cities, Montpelier in France, with infinite others, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... hesitant upon the threshold a rather rotund figure of medium height, clad in an expressionless gray lounge suit, with a brown "bowler" hat held tentatively in one hand, an umbrella weeping in the other. A voice, which was unctuous and insinuative, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... his mood to theirs; if they were frank and sincere, he met them halfway; he was so patient and considerate, so entirely devoted to pleasing the critical trout, and so successful in his efforts,—surely his heart was upon his hook, and it was a tender, unctuous heart, too, as that of every angler is. How nicely he would measure the distance! how dexterously he would avoid an overhanging limb or bush and drop the line exactly in the right spot! Of course there was ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... right! There were tyrants of souls as well as tyrants of sword. Prayers were uttered that were fitter for hearing in hell than in Heaven. Good men could deceive themselves into crime cloaking spiritual malice, sect jealousy, race hatred with an unctuous text. Here, in New England, where men had come for freedom, was tyranny masking in the guise of religion. Preachers as jealous of the power slipping from their hands as ever was primate of England! A poor gentleman hounded to his death because he practised ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... after the "instrument" was signed, Gorman had a visit from Goldsturmer, the well-known jeweller. The man, a rather unctuous, but very suave and polite German Jew, was shown ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... supposed to be the lover of Madame de Maine. He was a handsome prelate, from forty to forty-five years of age; always dressed with the greatest care, with an unctuous voice, a cold face, and a timid heart; devoured by ambition, which was eternally combated by the weakness of his character, which always drew him back where he should advance; of high birth, as his name indicated, ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... you think, far more right," answered Claudius. "And I thank you for the kind thought of help. It is very good of you." He turned towards her, and leaned upon his hand as he sat. Still the fog rolled up, and the lifeless sea seemed overshed with an unctuous calm. They were almost in the dark on their strip of beach, and the moisture was already clinging in great, thick drops to their clothes, and to the rocks where they sat. Still Claudius looked at Margaret, and Margaret ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... leave the shop when some one came bustling in. Berry was between Ingolby and the door, and for an instant he did not see who it was. Presently he heard an unctuous voice: "Ah, good day, good day, Mr. Berry. I want to have my hair cut, if you ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... else of a disturbing character is now visible upon his smooth, glistening, somewhat feverish face. That face is wholly occupied by his official smile, a thing of oil and honey all compact, a balmy, unctuous illumination—the secret of his success in life. Slowly his cheeks puff out, gleaming like soap-bubbles. Slowly he lifts his prayer-book from the prie-dieu and holds it droopingly. Slowly his soft caressing eyes engage it. There is an almost ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... then, my right worshipful lord, this Farnoo is an unctuous, argillaceous substance; in its natural state, soft, malleable, and easily worked as the cornelian-red clay from the famous pipe-quarries of the wild tribes to the North. But though mostly found buried in terra-firma, especially ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... weeds, and studded with slate stones, bounded by a ruinous brick wall, and having an entrance through a dilapidated gateway. One or two melancholy-looking cows were feeding on the rank herbage that sprang from the unctuous soil, spurning many a hic jacet with their cloven hoofs. But afar, in the most distant part of the field, I espied the figure of a man who was busily occupied in digging a grave. There was something within that impelled me to stroll ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... pp. 88. 153.).—I venture to suggest, that in this phrase the allusion is to a rich and unctuous morsel, which, when assisted by a little salt, will be tolerated by the stomach, otherwise will be rejected. In the same way an extravagant statement, when taken with a slight qualification (cum grano salis) will be tolerated by the mind. I should wish to be informed what writer first ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... detect hot biscuits distinctly; the sausage asked a foremost place; pancakes, griddle-cakes, dough-nuts, gravies, and sauces, all struggled for precedence; the land and the sea waged internecine war for place, through their representative fries of steak and mackerel; and as the unctuous pork—no nursling of the flock, but seasoned in ripe old age with salt not Attic—rooted its way into the front rank, I thought of the wisdom of Moses. All these were, so to speak, the mere outlying flakes, the feathery curls, of the balmy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Vitriol, or with another Liquor I could Name. Nay, that Black Mineral Antimony it self, being reduc'd by and with the Salts that concurr to the Composition of common Sublimate, into that Cleer though Unctuous Liquor that Chymists commonly call Rectifi'd Butter of Antimony, will by the bare affusion of store of Fair Water be struck down into that Snow-white Powder, which when the adhering Saltness is well wash'd off, Chymists are pleas'd to call Mercurius Vitae, though the like Powder ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... a juredivino one,—but a de-facto upper stratum of being, which floats over the turbid waves of common life like the iridescent film you may have seen spreading over the water about our wharves,—very splendid, though its origin may have been tar, tallow, train-oil, or other such unctuous commodities. I say, then, we are forming an aristocracy; and, transitory as its individual life often is, it maintains itself tolerably, as a whole. Of course, money is its corner-stone. But now observe this. Money kept for two or three generations transforms ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
