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More "Fineness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "that I hain't no kinder use for." His clothes seemed to have been put on him once for all, like the bark of a tree, a long time ago. The observant stranger was sure to be puzzled by the contrast of this realistic and uncouth exterior with the internal fineness, amounting to refinement and culture, that shone through it all. What communion had supplied the place of our artificial breeding ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... modern Roman sculptors. Pacetti having purchased an ancient Greek statue of the best period in Pentelic marble, greatly mutilated, and wishing to repair it, could find nothing among the best products of the Carrara quarries to match the marble in purity and fineness of texture, and was therefore obliged to destroy another Greek statue of inferior merit in order to get materials for the restoration. From this combination he succeeded in producing the sleeping figure known as the Barberini Faun, whose forcible abduction by the Pontifical ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... last the greatness of his sacrifice and the fineness of his soul, and she fell into a passion of weeping and ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... heart-breaking hardness and insensibility. Yet how paint her as she was, without bringing together all the extremes of feminine nature? In a word, the Duchess was anything that she wished to be or to seem. Her face was slightly too long. There was a grace in it, and a certain thinness and fineness that recalled the portraits of the Middle Ages. Her skin was white, with a faint rose tint. Everything about her erred, as it were, by an ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... saw the red slippers, the white shirt falling to the ankles and girdled at the waist, its bosom a capacious pocket, the white and red striped cloak over the shoulders. She marked the material of which they were made, the shirt of selected Angora wool, the cloak of camel's hair, in its fineness iridescent and soft as velvet. She saw in the girdle an empty scabbard for a yatagan elaborately covered with brilliants. She saw on the head a kerchief of mixed silk and cotton, tasselled, heavily striated red and yellow, and secured by the usual cord; ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the Rueful Countenance was still very anxious to find out who the owner of the valise could be, conjecturing from the sonnet and letter, from the money in gold, and from the fineness of the shirts, that he must be some lover of distinction whom the scorn and cruelty of his lady had driven to some desperate course; but as in that uninhabited and rugged spot there was no one to be seen of whom he could inquire, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... their finikin fineness seems to hev done you! So they hain't gin you nuthin' better than their talk, hev ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... climax. The tone rapidly subsided and receded; for the composer had so cunningly scored it that groups of instruments were withdrawn without losing the thread of the musical tale. The tone, spun to a needle fineness, rushed up the fingerboard of the fiddles accompanied by the harp in a billowing glissando and—then on ragged rims of wide thunder a gust of air seemed to melt lights, men, instruments into a darkness that froze the eyeballs. With a scorching whiff of sulphur and violets, a ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... anything but a timid man, the combative and defensive elements were not prominently developed in his character, and could have been made available only when he put an unnatural force upon his instincts. It was on this account, and also because of the fineness of his nature generally, that the English appreciated him no better, and left this sweet and delicate poet poor, and with scanty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... to obtain a thread or yarn of sufficient fineness, it was found necessary to perform some of the attenuation of the cotton sliver as it left the drawing frame and before it reached the final spinning process. To this end, Arkwright adopted the Roving frame, in which the leading feature was again the celebrated drawing rollers. ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... if you let them sing one tune at a service, they will be putting their oar into the other tunes and bothering the choir. There is nothing more annoying to the choir than, at some moment when they have drawn out a note to exquisite fineness, thin as a split hair, to have some blundering elder to come in with a "Praise ye the Lord!" Total abstinence, I say! Let all the churches take the pledge even against the milder musical beverages; for ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... looked at them without delight. The first was soft dead black, the other glittering black, and they were perfectly matched in size, both being high and long-bodied, wide through the shoulders, with lithe, powerful legs. That they were a woman's pets showed in the gloss of skin, the fineness of mane. It showed, too, in the light of big eyes and the ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... a daughter as blooming as his most florid fancies, and with a soul as fervent and imperious as his own. As is usual in such cases, she was the apple of his eye, and was loved by him above all humanity. Among his courtiers was a young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens. This royal maiden was well satisfied with her lover, for he was handsome and brave to a degree unsurpassed in all this ...
— The Lady, or the Tiger? • Frank R. Stockton
... fabric that could not give an account of itself was charged with being a nightcap till it was proved to be a dish-cloth or a cart-rope. I at length surrendered at discretion, and remembered that somewhere in my reading I had met with exquisite lace caps, and I did not that from the combined fineness and strength of their material they might answer the purpose, even if in form they should not be everything that was desirable,—and I determined to ascertain, if possible, whether such things ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... bivouac, and much noise and bustle went to its accomplishment. The young men covertly watched the Gillespie Camp. How would this ornamental party cope with such unfamiliar labors? With its combination of a feminine element which must be helpless by virtue of a rare and dainty fineness and a masculine element which could hardly be otherwise because of ill health, it would seem that all the work must devolve ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... at once discerned. She was charming, friendly, almost affectionate, yet I was conscious all the time that, in spite of herself, she was a little critical, a trifle aloof. Her perfect grooming, the very fineness of her self-possession, her high-bred gallantry of manner, and even the shining gloss on her black, beribboned hair, and her high boots, produced in me a sense of remoteness, which I found it ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... clovers also. But there may be instances in which it would be proper to give more attention to cleaning and pulverizing the soil to properly fit it for receiving the clover seed. The leading essentials in a seed-bed for clover are fineness, cleanness, moistness and firmness. Ordinarily black loam soils, sandy loam soils, sandy soils, humus soils and the volcanic ash soils of the West are made sufficiently fine without great labor. Clay soils may call for the free use of the harrow and roller used in some sort of ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... other conditions, had the effect of focussing all his power on the atoms that went to the making up of the daily record of his days. Had he kept a diary it would have been interesting from its very lack of large interest. And yet, with all this narrowing down, a certain fineness and purpose evolved that were both touching and inspiring. He never complained, not even to himself. After recognizing the power which Ledyard held in his life, he relinquished the one hope that had held him to the past. Then, for ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... estimate of our national advantages, and our civilization has tended to take on a too mechanical and material character. We need to have more time to cultivate the nobler nature, and, by Christian and scholarly associations and more intimate friendships, discover and prize the fineness and sweetness of character in others, which may enrich our own life and incite us to worthy action. It is the province of higher education to help foster those conditions of mind and heart whose flexibility and natural aptitudes lead the individual "to draw ever nearer ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... knew you would be pleased," he said in answer to Walter's exclamation at the fineness of the workmanship. "I bought this a month ago from a Jew merchant who had recently come from Italy. How he got it I know not, but I doubt if it were honestly, or he would have demanded a higher price than ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... you set about the pulverization of the soil. Then go to work with hoe and rake, and reduce it to the last possible degree of fineness, working the fertilizer you make use of into it in such a manner that both are ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... the mood changed and Dorothy felt it first, like a chill mist in the air. Neither dreamed that with the writing of the first paragraph in the book, the spell had claimed one of them for ever—that cobweb after cobweb, of gossamer fineness, should make a fabric never to be broken; that on one side of it should stand a man who had exchanged his dreams for realities and his realities for dreams, and on the other, a woman, blindly hurt, eternally straining to see ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... the young man had passed through a preliminary jungle of birch, cedar, spruce, and hemlock, it ran without a break, clear, clean, of cloud-sweeping altitude, without underbrush. Most of it was good bull-sap, which is known by the fineness of the bark, though often in the hollows it shaded gradually into the rough-skinned cork pine. In those days few people paid any attention to the Norway, and hemlock was not even thought of. With every foot of the way Thorpe became more ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... then that of sharpening a lead pencil, following it up by tracing the outlines of the subject in the lithograph. Then followed in similar pantomime the choosing of a water-color pencil, noting carefully the necessary fineness of the point, and then the washing-in of a drawing, broadly. Miss A. seemed much amused by all this, but as she knew nothing of drawing she understood nothing of it. Then with the pencil and her pocket handkerchief ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the wildest sort of guesses as to the identity of the master mind and hand which had deceived the cashier. He must, they felt sure, have made the forgery with a camel's hair brush of unrivalled fineness. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... I admit," replied Marillac negligently; and he examined the lock submitted to this merciless criticism as if it were simply a piece of goods, of the fineness of whose texture he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and knee-breeches. In this I consider Doctor Plausible was right; the above look much more scientific than Wellington trousers; and much depends upon the exterior. He was quite a ladies' man; talked to them about their extreme sensibility, their peculiar fineness of organic structure, their delicacy of nerves; and soothed his patients more by flattery than by physic. Having discovered that Miss Laura was not inclined to give up her gingerbread, he immediately acknowledged its virtues, but recommended that it should be cut into ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... make a picture of the party, this man came to the front; and when I asked the servant to send off the half-vagrant boys and girls who stood gazing at us, this man came up and said to me in a confidential tone, 'They do not understand the sacredness of the occasion, and the fineness of the conditions.' There was something regal in his audacity, but he was none the less ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... were of the same primitive character. The tools found in the village are all of flint: knives, scrapers, saws, hammers, and heads of lances and arrows. A few vases brought from Egypt are distinguished by the fineness of the material and the purity of the design; but the pottery in common use was made on the spot from coarse clay without care, and regardless of beauty. As for jewellery, the villagers had beads ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Pitched to a really high and serious key, the precept—Be perfect in regard to what is here and now: the precept of "culture," as it is called, or of a complete education—might at least save him from the vulgarity and heaviness [146] of a generation, certainly of no general fineness of temper, though with a material well-being abundant enough. Conceded that what is secure in our existence is but the sharp apex of the present moment between two hypothetical eternities, and all that is real in our experience but ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... she took Tai-yue by the hand, and they came along back to the Hsiao Hsiang Kuan; where lady Feng had indeed sent her two small catties of a new season tea, of superior quality. But Lin Tai-yue sat down, in company with Hsiang Ling, and began to converse on the merits of this tapestry and the fineness of that embroidery; and after they had also had a game at chess, and read a few sentences out of a book, Hsiang Ling took her departure. But we need not speak of either of them, but return now to Pao-yue. Having been found, and brought back home, by Hsi Jen, he discovered ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... earth vergeth towards the southern parts, by reason of the thinness and fineness that is in the south; the northern parts are more compacted, they being congealed by a rigorous cold, but those parts of the world that are opposite are enfired. Democritus, because, the southern parts of the air being the weaker, the earth as it enlarges bends towards the south; ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... not very old; but he was different from young Ben. He was a pointer of the old-fashioned, stocky-built, enduring type common—and serviceable—before our bench-show experts began to breed for speed, fineness, small size—and lack of stamina. Ben proved in the event to be a good all-round dog. He combined the attributes of pointer, cocker spaniel, and retriever. In other words, he would hunt quail in the orthodox fashion; or he would rustle into the mesquite thorns ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... that not wholly one of fear. He found himself thinking of Queen Katharine and understanding a little better how it was that the refined, delicately nurtured and devout woman, so constant in her prayers, so full of the peculiar fineness of character that gentle birth and religion alone confer, could so cling to this fierce lord of hers, throw herself at his feet with tears before all the company, and entreat not to be separated from him, calling him ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... keeping of the deposit may be considered as a sort of warehouse rent; and why this warehouse rent should be so much dearer for gold than for silver, several different reasons have been assigned. The fineness of gold, it has been said, is more difficult to be ascertained than that of silver. Frauds are more easily practised, and occasion a greater loss in the most precious metal. Silver, besides, being the standard metal, the state, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... long, this otter had to be worth a good high price. Its coat, chestnut brown above and silver below, would have made one of those wonderful fur pieces so much in demand in the Russian and Chinese markets; the fineness and luster of its pelt guaranteed that it would go for at least 2,000 francs. I was full of wonderment at this unusual mammal, with its circular head adorned by short ears, its round eyes, its white whiskers like those on a ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... change in the quality of the particles deposited, but from two other causes entirely distinct, and which I conceive to be these—first, from a tendency in earthy matter, subjected to the filtering, soaking, and washing of water for a considerable period, to arrange itself according to its degree of fineness, or, perhaps, according to the specific gravity of the particles, and thus form strata; and, secondly, from a tendency in earthy matter, consolidated both by water and subsequent exsiccation, to divide, independently of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... we should be able to take the garrison of the redoubt at least partially by surprise; but the fineness and silence of the night rendered this impossible; as soon, therefore, as everything was ready, the party moved forward toward the farther end of the ravine, the soldiers leading the way, in accordance with the proviso of Major- General ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... with Aldus. From 1494, the date of his first productions, until 1501 he printed his books in folio and quarto. But in the first year of the new century he began to use his famous cursive type, now called italic. The fineness of the new type, as has been suggested, called for a smaller size of book, which was also favored by considerations of economy and convenience; and so Aldus made up his sheets in a form which the fold compels us to call octavo, but which to-day would be called ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... journey to Devonshire was a dispiriting one despite the fineness of the day. T. X. had an uncomfortable sense that something distressing had happened. The run across the moor in the fresh spring air revived ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... wishes to have its ideals confused by a vulgar display of wealth or by loud or conspicuous behaviour. Yet many a school, with ideals all that they should be, is misjudged in public places because of some thoughtless or unreliable girls. This doesn't seem like fair-play or team-play, does it? The fineness of life ought to be felt and expressed in student behaviour. Yet how often ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... typical time-killing dandy of the times. His superb proportions made him look smaller, lighter than he really was, and his lean features, which under the I.F.P. skullcap would have looked hawk-like, were sufficiently like the patrician fineness of the character part he was playing. Young men of means in the year 2159 were by no means without their good points. They indulged in athletic sports to counteract the softening influence of idleness, and ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... discriminate them." He adds of the dog of the Hare Indians, a distinct breed, that it is almost the same as the prairie wolf (Canis latrans), the skull of the dog appeared to him a little smaller, otherwise he could detect no difference in form, nor fineness of fur, nor the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... to govern himself by any religious obligation; and a certain fineness of nature gave him such an instinctive view of the extent of the requirements of Christianity, that he shrank, by anticipation, from what he felt would be the exactions of his own conscience, if he once did resolve to assume them. For, so inconsistent ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... from being built of the cedars of Lebanon, and among groves of trees. Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, book 8, chapter 6, section 5, states that when the Queen of Sheba came to Judea, she was amazed at the wisdom of Solomon, and surprised at the fineness and largeness of his royal palace; 'but she was beyond measure astonished at the house which was called the forest of Lebanon.' Matthew Henry follows the opinion of Bunyan; 'I rather incline to think it was a house ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bench be of any value," the Colonel remarked in a low tone to some of his officers, "I could give you some interesting information about that scout," looking towards Annette, "and this other one as well," meaning Julie. "These boys, trust my word, are no more Crees than I am. Note the fineness of their features, and the well-bred air and the grace of the one on horseback." The remarks of the Colonel were brought to an end by the appearance of Browninge, who saluted, and announced that he was ready ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Puritanism, Franklin stands for the worldly and secular side of American character, and he illustrates the development of the New England Englishman into the modern Yankee. Clear rather than subtle, without ideality or romance or fineness of emotion or poetic lift, intensely practical and utilitarian, broad-minded, inventive, shrewd, versatile, Franklin's sturdy figure became typical of his time and his people. He was the first and the only man of letters in colonial America who acquired a cosmopolitan fame ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... fast disappearing type of gentleman, and I knew that for him this was possible through an extraordinary suppleness of mind, fineness of tact and feeling, and a philosophic ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... upon a large scale. Granted that no one can draw a clear line and define the limits within which a miracle is healthy working and beyond which it is unwholesome, any more than he can prescribe the exact degree of fineness to which we must comminute our food; granted, again, that some can do more than others, and that at all times all men sport, so to speak, and surpass themselves, still we know as a general rule near enough, and find that the strongest can do but very little at a time, and, to return to Mr. Spencer, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... whether our journey ends not here," Archie said, "seeing that these hounds, when they taste blood, seem for a time to lose their fineness of scent; ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... king favours a person, that incident (of royal favour) bringeth in all others and holdeth them together. He that performeth ablutions winneth these ten, viz., strength, beauty, a clear voice, capacity to utter all the alphabetical sounds, delicacy of touch, fineness of scent, cleanliness, gracefulness, delicacy of limbs, and beautiful women. He that eateth sparingly winneth these six, viz., health, long life, and ease; his progeny also becometh healthy, and nobody reproacheth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... wool. As they need less woollen cloth than is used anywhere else, so that which they make use of is much less costly. They use linen cloth more; but that is prepared with less labour, and they value cloth only by the whiteness of the linen, or the cleanness of the wool, without much regard to the fineness of the thread: while in other places, four or five upper garments of woollen cloth, of different colours, and as many vests of silk, will scarce serve one man; and while those that are nicer think ten ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... 63. What is the fineness and goodness of the Ore, by which the Mine is wont to be estimated? And what are the marks and {339} characters, that distinguish one sort ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... latitude 36 degrees bordering up on the west of the province of Namking, near the city of Lucheu, the Island Ladrones, and Japan, and is called ' ChA.' Of this famous leaf there are divers sorts (though all one shape), some much better than others, the upper leaves excelling the others in fineness, a property almost in all plants; which leaves they gather every day, and drying them in the shade or in iron pans, over a gentle fire, till the humidity be exhausted, then put close up in leaden pots, preserve them for their drink, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... recognizes it in the word on which the book closes—"We shall never be again as we were." Whether they accept the situation, whether they try to patch up their old alliance—these questions are no affair of the story. With Kate's word the story is finished; the first fineness of their association is lost, nothing will restore it. Milly has made the change by being what she was, too rare an essence for vulgar uses. Those who wanted the intelligence to understand her must pay their penalty; at least they are intelligent ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... the highest quality of product. Thus he was led to originate innovations in processes, some of which have been preserved as trade secrets; but of the others there are two deserving special notice—namely, the accuracy of mixing and the fineness of grinding. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... even plants seem to revive and get new life from the touch of her small fingers, as though feeling the necessity of growing like her. Her beauty may not last. It is not of the imperious kind, nor even quite classic, but it has a wonderful fineness and delicacy. Her soft brown hair coils closely on her small, well-shaped head; her gentle, serious blue eyes look tenderly on all that lives and has being within the circle of her sight; her small mouth smiles graciously and readily, though sometimes ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... shield,—rubric and arabesque of Christian scripture; in fine, all enlargement, and all diminution of adorning thought, from the temple to the toy, and from the mountainous pillars of Agrigentum to the last fineness of fretwork in the Pisan Chapel of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... highest was occupied by the fine castle of Saint George, which was indeed the principal object that attracted the eye anywhere from the city. The great squares contained some magnificent edifices, noteworthy for the fineness of their pillars. The streets were narrow and winding and dirty, and indeed after the French had left the whole city was in a most desolate state; but the general view of the city and its environs from the harbour at a distance was very beautiful, the sides of the ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... it is much easier to keep the demand for them and the supply of them at a level all over the world, than it is the demand and supply of most other commodities. And this all the more as there are not different kinds of gold and silver, but only different qualities of their fineness.(726) It also contributes to the uniformity of their value in exchange, that they minister mainly only to wants of luxury. The most indispensable commodities are subject to the greatest variations in price (see ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... stopping at intervals to place the grain between the stones. As the grinding proceeds the grist is passed from one compartment to the next until, in passing through the series, it becomes of the desired fineness. This tedious and laborious method has been practiced without improvement from time immemorial, and in some of the arts the Zunyians ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... slice gives a good notion of the manner in which the components of the chalk are arranged, and of their relative proportions. But, by rubbing up some chalk with a brush in water and then pouring off the milky fluid, so as to obtain sediments of different degrees of fineness, the granules and the minute rounded bodies may be pretty well separated from one another, and submitted to microscopic examination, either as opaque or as transparent objects. By combining the views obtained in these various ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the great moral conceptions are securely established, and the only possible improvement in them must come from the increased fineness and subtlety ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... his first great sorrow fell upon Lamb. His sister Mary suddenly developed insanity, attacked a maid servant, and when the mother interfered the insane girl fatally wounded her with a knife. In this crisis Lamb showed the fineness of his nature. Instead of permitting poor Mary to be consigned to a public insane asylum, he gave bonds that he would care for her, and he did care for her during the remainder of her life. Although ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... must be content to write and to read their writing. This is true; but I have already found reason to question whether such delicate and complicated organizations of thought have a right to the name of Sermons at all. In truth, a discourse, which, from its fineness and precision of ideas, is too difficult for a preacher to deliver without such extraneous assistance, is too difficult for a hearer to follow; and, if a book be imperative for teaching, it is imperative for learning. Both parties ought to ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... command. Finally he escaped further interrogatories by snatching up the passport I had signed and departing hastily. But instead of the usual military salute at parting, he courtesied. This, when I reflected on the fineness of his speech, the fullness of his breast, his attitudes and his short steps, led me to believe the person was a woman instead of a lieutenant. Gen. Winder coming in shortly after, upon hearing my description of the stranger, said he would ascertain all ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... fine and delicate article is chiefly made from the salt springs in Cheshire, and differs from the common brine salt, usually called sea salt, not only in its whiteness and purity, but in the fineness of its grain. Some families entertain prejudices against basket salt, notwithstanding its superior delicacy, from an idea, which does not appear warranted, that pernicious articles are used in ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... for, owing to certain rock fissures, which, by acting as drains for the rainwater on the surface, would have much interfered with the durability of the inscription. The available space for the panel remains 3 feet 7 in length by 1 foot 9 inches in depth. Owing to the fineness of the grain of the stone, it may be quite possible to letter the native rock; but it has been difficult to fix on a style of lettering for the inscription that shall be at once in good taste, forcible, and plain. It was proposed that the Script type of letter which was made use of in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... feeling. Their scales were in true intervals; they had really major and minor tones; we have neither, but a confusion of both. They had both sharps and flats: we have neither, but a mere set of semitones, which serve for both. In their enharmonic scale the fineness of their ear perceived distinctions which are lost on the ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... builds, or let us rather say, on this rocking harmonic fluid he sets afloat a charming melody, which is soon joined by a self-willed second part. Afterwards, this melody is dissolved into all kinds of fioriture, colorature, and other trickeries, and they are of such fineness, subtlety, loveliness, and gracefulness, that one is reminded of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... inaugural suit was made. A few Merino sheep had been imported from France, and Scholfield, obtaining the wool, and mixing it with the coarse wool of the native sheep, produced what at that time was regarded as cloth of superior fineness. The spinning ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... out a deprecatory hand. "You are wrong; no one has paid such a price. There are some natures so clear and fine that chance and extremity can put them anywhere—in any company—without taking one whit from their fineness or leaving one atom of smirch. Do you think I would have brought you here and risked your trust and censorship of my honor if you had not been—what you are? A decent man has as much self-respect as a decent woman, and the same wish to ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... mingled with the air, and the dust, and tossed up by the stampede of the horses and the combatants. And you must treat this confusion in this way: dust being an earthly thing has weight, and although owing to its fineness it is easily lifted up and mingled with the air, it nevertheless falls readily to the earth again, and it is its finest part which rises highest, therefore that part will be the least visible and will seem to be almost of the same colour as ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... arm, felt the vessel under his feet dart forward smoothly, and the deck become less slanting—the speed of the brig running off a little now, easing the overturning strain of the wind upon the distended surfaces of the sails. It was only the fineness of the little vessel's lines and the perfect shape of her hull that saved the canvas, and perhaps the spars, by enabling the ready craft to get way upon herself with such lightning-like rapidity. Lingard drew a long breath and yelled jubilantly at Shaw who was struggling up against ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Portugal. On one remarkably fine day, when the ship was stealing through the water under the influence of a gentle breeze, the people were all below at their dinners, and scarcely a person left on deck but officers, of whom the captain was one. Two little ship-boys had been induced, by the fineness of the weather, to run up from below the moment they had dined, and were at play on the spare anchor to leeward, which overhangs the side of the ship. One of them fell overboard, which was seen from the quarter-deck, and the order was given ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... gives strength and skill in the use of the body, but develops a physiological habit of surplus power that may be called quantity of energy. Life is not alone in quality, in delicacy of adjustment, in accuracy, in fineness of feeling; it is also in quantity. The poet who, with frail physique and feeble pulse, sits in his quiet retreat and puts his fine fancies into the rhythms of verse has quality. But in the stress and rivalry of life that awaits the majority of men, there is a need for quantity of energy, such ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... for the prolonged sojourn at Tahiti, and he should have remembered that time and distance are powerful solvents, and that between Portsmouth Hard and the untracked waters of the Pacific, "all Arcadia" had intervened. He was a man of imperfect sympathies, wanting in tact and fineness, but in the hour of need he behaved like a hero, and saved himself and others by submission to duty and strenuous self-control. Moreover, he "helped England" not once or twice, "in the brave days of old." (See A Narrative, etc., 1790; The Naval History of Great Britain, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Romantic poet. Hawthorne and Poe read him, and he was felt by the French to be one of the first Germans whom they understood. It was not merely that his clear reason appealed to the French, but that they saw in him one endowed as with a sixth sense. He has a fineness of observation, especially for the ridiculous sides of humanity, together with a tenderness of spirit, that was new in German literature as such men as Sainte-Beuve and Gautier saw it. The soul at war ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... of ceremony, with new and elaborate toilettes for each visit; there were numberless beautiful presents, the families represented and their many connections vying with each other in the richness and fineness of their gifts. Diamonds and jewels in settings of quaint design were among them, and besides all these there were the ancestral jewels of Julie de la Riviere, the mother of Lafayette, to be received by the new bride, and by her ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... hear Marian called a flirt. It seemed so out of keeping with her letters and the womanly delicacy and fineness revealed in them. But I reflected that women sometimes find it hard to forgive another woman who absorbs more than her share of lovers, and generally take their revenge by dubbing her a flirt, whether she deserves the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Moore's opinion, was what he magniloquently calls the great robbery of an express car. Here, too, he proved the fineness of his craft. He left nothing to chance, and he foresaw, with the coolness of a practised hand, every step which his adversaries would take. His first care was to obtain the assistance of the messenger who travelled ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... since she had Marian's letters for a background. What she saw was a tall man, slender, and about him there was to Linda a strong appeal. As she looked into his eyes, she could feel the double hurt that Fate had dealt him. She thought she could fathom the fineness in his nature that had led him to made home-building his chosen occupation. Instantly she liked him. With only one look deep into his eyes she was on his side. She stretched out both her hands ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... stayed behind at the camp for some purpose or other and did not afterwards come up; I am afraid he has missed the tracks as it is stony and rocky. This large hill is composed of sandstone of various degrees of fineness, quartz, pebbles, etc., principally; distance travelled six miles direct. Here the creek or river is timbered across with the narrow-leafed papery-barked tree; some short distance up the stream from here this description ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... for his parents but without success. The Viceroy finding none to claim the bright-faced baby, had given him a name and had caused him to be brought up in his own household. There was nothing in his apparel to distinguish him save the exquisite fineness and richness of the material. Thrown around his neck had been a curiously wrought silver crucifix on a silver chain, and that crucifix he had worn ever since. It lay upon his breast beneath his clothing now. It was the sole object which connected him ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... he stammered; and then he said something about the fineness of the evening, and the possibility of his father coming in in time for ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... of the great painter's life and works. They have recently placed in a tiny oratory, scooped by Guidobaldo II. from the thickness of the wall, a cast of Raphael's skull, which will be studied with interest and veneration. It has the fineness of modelling combined with shapeliness of form and smallness of scale which is said to have ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the gallery of the college chapel. An amiable and modest fancy gives to them all a sweet classic grace. The very atmosphere of these courts, wakened with high metaphysic discourse, seems to lend them a Greek beauty and fineness; and you attach to the prettiest, that your eye can reach, all the charms of some Sciote maiden, and all the learning of her father—the professor. And as you lie half-wakeful and half-dreaming, through the long Divisions of the Doctor's ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... has therefore achieved his end. But in what imaginable circumstances can you say: "Yes, this idea is fine, but the style is not fine"? The sole medium of communication between you and the author has been the form of words. The fine idea has reached you. How? In the words, by the words. Hence the fineness must be in the words. You may say, superiorly: "He has expressed himself clumsily, but I can *see* what he means." By what light? By something in the words, in the style. That something is fine. Moreover, if the style is clumsy, are ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... It is not in these establishments that you can watch national life or discover much about the Germans, except that they are good hotel-keepers; and this you probably discovered long ago abroad or at home. If you are a woman, you may be impressed by the fineness, the whiteness, the profusion, and the embroidered monograms of the linen, whether you are in a huge caravanserai or a wayside inn. Otherwise a hotel at Cologne or Heidelberg has little to distinguish ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... the use of the fuel Nature has so bountifully stored there and granted a fair measure of encouragement to transportation, those great inland tundras would be as populous as Sweden; as progressive as Germany." His glance moved to the jury; all the nobility, the fineness, the large humanity of the man was expressed in that moment in his face; a subdued emotion pervaded his voice. "We know the men who forged a way through that mighty bulwark of mountains to the interior were brave, resourceful, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... the scheme himself, but for various reasons he did not venture to upset it. He had the patent prepared, and consulted Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the Mint, with regard to the objects which the Government had in view, and the weight and fineness of the coin which Wood was to supply. The halfpence and farthings were to be a little less in weight than the coin of the same kind {241} current in England. Walpole considered this necessary because of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the Hanoverian strain in his nature had not been toned to the degree of fineness needful for the kingly office in these islands. In a time of peculiar difficulty he sought to govern almost absolutely by means which ensured the temporary subservience of Parliament, and in a spirit ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... simple peace of enjoyment and natural gift of truth, in her sight and in her mind. And many pretty things are in my mind and heart about it, if my hands were not too cold to shape words for them. The book shall be kept with my Bewicks; it is in nowise inferior to them in fineness of work. The finished proof of next "Proserpina" will, I think, be sent me by Saturday's post. Much more is done, but this number was hindered by the revisal of the Dean of Christ Church, which puts me at rest about mistakes in ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... fire, as though embalmed, as though alive, as though lingering to accuse and to convict, lay the body of Greathouse, the missing man. Not merely a charred, incinerated mass, the figure lay in the full appearance of life, a cast of the actual man, moulded with fineness from the white ashes of the fire! Not a feature, not a limb, not a fragment of clothing was left undestroyed; yet none the less here, stretched across the bed of the burned-out fire, with face upturned, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... thinking of the whole five volumes so emphatically extolled by their author, one feels the necessity of some apology for this admission of inadequate sympathy. There is a vigour of feeling, an originality of character, a fineness of style which makes one understand, if not quite agree to, the audacious self-commendation. Part of the effect is due simply to the sheer quantity of good writing. Take any essay separately, and one must admit that—to speak only of his ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... room consists of one motor-driven, baby hammer crusher, which has a capacity of about 1 ton per hour and crushes to a fineness of -in. mesh; one adjustable chipmunk jaw crusher, for 5- and 10-lb. samples; one set of 4 by 7-in. rolls, crushing to 60 mesh, for small samples; one large bucking board, and several different sizes of riffle samplers for reducing ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... can hardly speak with the same authority as a breeder, generally, that I can as a feeder; yet I have been a close observer now for many years, and devoted my earnest attention to the improvement of the Aberdeen and Angus polled breed of cattle, with respect to size, symmetry, fineness of bone, strength of constitution, and disposition to accumulate fat, sparing no expense in obtaining the finest animals ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... long thin knife, and with many bows, grins, and apologies for disturbing me, begged that I would go and cut up a sheep for him. My first impulse of course was to decline the very unusual task offered me with mingled horror and amusement. Abraham, however, insisted and besought, extolled the fineness of his sheep, declared his misery at being unable to cut it as I wished, and his readiness to conform for the future to whatever patterns of mutton 'de missis would only please to give him.' Upon reflection I thought I might very well contrive to indicate upon the sheep the size and ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... early in May that Martha first began to notice the white lisle socks marked E.G. She picked them from among the great heap at her work table because of the exquisite fineness of the darning that adorned them. It wasn't merely darning. It was embroidery. It was weaving. It was cobweb tapestry. It blended in with the original fabric so intimately that it required an expert eye to mark where darning finished and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... three anas a day: bricklayers two anas and a half: goldsmiths, for every two Mohurs weight of gold they work up, are allowed four anas: for working silver, they receive one-sixteenth part of the metal. According to the fineness of the work, the labourers obtain from one to two Mohurs for every Darni of copper ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... embalmed, as though alive, as though lingering to accuse and to convict, lay the body of Greathouse, the missing man. Not merely a charred, incinerated mass, the figure lay in the full appearance of life, a cast of the actual man, moulded with fineness from the white ashes of the fire! Not a feature, not a limb, not a fragment of clothing was left undestroyed; yet none the less here, stretched across the bed of the burned-out fire, with face upturned, with one arm doubled beneath the head ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... of their gallery than their government: and surely nothing made by man ever so completely answered a raised expectation, as the apparent contest between Titian's recumbent beauty, glowing with colour and animated by the warmest expression, and the Greek statue of symmetrical perfection and fineness of form inimitable, where sculpture supplies all that fancy can desire, and all that imagination can suggest. These two models of excellence seem placed near each other, at once to mock all human praise, and defy all future imitation. The listening slave appears disturbed ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the essence of things; if it disappears, like the gold or azure thread of the tapestry, it is only to emerge in the pattern farther on; and the victory is not to attach ourselves to the particular touches of beauty and fineness which we see in the familiar scene and the well-loved circle, but to recognise beauty as a spirit, a quality which is for ever making itself felt, for ever beckoning and whispering to us, and which will not fail us even if for a time the urgent wind drives us far ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... person, and to keep her, even now that she knew the worst, unwilling to relinquish the thought of him. His depravity loomed to her enormous; but was that all there was to be said of him? Did his delicacy, his insight, his tempered fineness, count for nothing beside it? Must their talks, their walking through the trees, the very memory of his voice, be ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... for life, partly in the natural revolution of poetic taste, partly for its faults. Faults and all, however, Gaston loyally accepted it; those faults—the lapse of grace into affectation, of learning into pedantry, of exotic fineness into a trick—counting with him as but the proof of faith to its own dominant positions. They were but characteristics, needing no apology with the initiated, or welcome even, as savouring of the master's peculiarities ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... curiosity. Their deeds of persistent kindness are all performed impersonally. It's the same with the doctors. This is a military hospital where discipline is firmly enforced; any natural recognition of common fineness is discouraged. These women who have pledged themselves to live among suffering, never allow themselves for a moment to guess what the sight of them means to us chaps in the cots. Perhaps that also is a part of their sacrifice. ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... to me that Palgray did not see this through every lineament of her marvelous beauty. There was a glow under her skin, but no color—an effect of paleness—fair as the lotus-leaf, but warmer and brighter, and which came through the alabaster fineness of the grain, like something the eye cannot define, but which we know by some spirit-perception to be the effluence of purer existence, the breathing through, as it were, of the luminous tenanting of an angel. To this glowing paleness, with golden hair, I never had ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... the copy showing behind it and hiding its defects, but it is a different thing when held up to the searching daylight. This must not, however, discourage you. No one, not the most skilful, could expect to make a perfect copy of an original (if that original had any fineness of line or sensitiveness of touch about it) by merely tracing it downwards on the bench. You must put it upright against the daylight, and mend your drawing, freehand, faithfully by ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... (says Pliny) for the elegancy and fineness of the wood, is next to the very cedar it self. There are several kinds of it, especially the white, which is wonderfully beautiful; this is call'd the French-maple, and grows in that part of Italy, that is on the other side of Po beyond the Alpes: The other has ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... and game in great variety. Woodcock, snipe, hares, and venison are cheap, and all of excellent quality. The beef and mutton are also good, as are the vegetables. Turnips, radishes and carrots are enormous, owing, I suppose to the depth and fineness of the soil. Vandy measured some of each, and reports: "Radishes, eighteen inches, and beautifully white; carrots, twenty inches, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... be free from very decided laminations, for these constitute planes of weakness and are often indications of the deposition of varying materials, or the same material in various grades of fineness. It must also not be full of argillaceous and iron-oxide infillings. It should possess a homogeneous texture. The best way to study building stones is to study them in old buildings, for nature ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... who remain in China. They leave China with the permission and license of the Chinese viceroys and mandarins. The merchandise that they generally bring and sell to the Spaniards consists of raw silk in bundles, of the fineness of two strands [dos cabecas], and other silk of poorer quality; fine untwisted silk, white and of all colors, wound in small skeins; quantities of velvets, some plain, and some embroidered in all sorts of figures, colors, and fashions—others with body of gold, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... casket, indicates the diversity of the art-impulses that affected the two lands. It does not appear, however, to have been exactly at Rome that Latin art put forth its freshest vigour; the Roman -asses- and Roman -denarii- are far surpassed in fineness and taste of workmanship by the Latin copper, and the rare Latin silver, coins, and the masterpieces of painting and design belong chiefly to Praeneste, Lanuvium, and Ardea. This accords completely ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... stupid youths gaped; and a few impudent ones smiled. Lucian would gladly have kicked them all, without distinction. He at last suggested that they should leave the path, and make a short cut across the green-sward. As they emerged from the shade of the trees he had a vague impression that the fineness of the weather and the beauty of the park made the occasion romantic, and that the words by which he hoped to make the relation between him and his cousin dearer and closer would be well spoken there. But he immediately began to talk, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... a weddin' dress," she exclaimed as she held it excitedly up to the light and appraised the fineness of the ancient silk with eyes more accustomed ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... exceptional fineness. Sterlings: sterling coins; not "luxemburgs", but stamped and authorised money. See note 9 to the Miller's Tale and note 6 to the Prologue to the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... contemplations a tincture of melancholy, which, however, was not gloomy, but tempered with a flattering hope. The ringing of bells, which ever particularly affects me, the singing of birds, the fineness of the day, the beauty of the landscape, the scattered country houses, among which in idea I placed our future dwelling, altogether struck me with an impression so lively, tender, melancholy, and powerful, that I saw ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Russula in many respects resemble Lactarii without milk. Some of them are dangerous, and others esculent. Amongst the latter may be enumerated Russula heterophylla, Fr., which is very common in woods. Vittadini pronounces it unsurpassed for fineness of flavour by even the notable Amanita caesarea.[h] Roques gives also an account in its favour as consumed in France. Both these authors give favourable accounts of Russula virescens, P.,[i] which ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... fiddle in the Turkish tale where even the headsman forgot his business—despite such evidence there are persons who affect to despise its melody. These claim such perceptivity of the outer ear and such fineness of the channels that the tune is but a clack when it gets inside. God pity such! I'll not ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... nobleman of the high rank and ancient descent of the proprietor, and in admirable keeping with its exterior. The rooms are fitted up with light Gothic tracery on the walls, very chaste and elegant; and the colors are so delicate and subdued, that you are not offended with that feeling of over-fineness that is felt ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... begins by closing the channels of cerebro-spinal fluid in neck, which fluid stands as one of, if not the most highly refined elements in animal bodies. Its fineness would indicate that it is a substance that must be delivered in full supply continually to keep health normal; if so, we will for experimental reasons look at the neck ligated, as found in measles, croup, colds and eruptive fevers. Supply is stopped from passing below atlas for three days. During ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... Compare with them the heads of the wits and statesmen of Charles II.'s time. See the difference;—the high, wide arch of the skull is lowered or narrowed; the broad brow cramped; the features finer cut, but losing in force what they gain in fineness. Look, for instance, at this Vandyck of Sir John Suckling,—only the next generation after the great men; but his portrait is that of an idler, his head that of a man without great thoughts or great interests. The age of imagination had passed; the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Patience as night might walk beside day, for she was as brown o' skin as a mountain stream, and her hair like a cloud at even-tide, dark, but of no certain color, albeit as soft as ravelled silk, and marvellous hard to comb on account o' its fineness. Mistress Marian was full head and shoulders taller than her cousin, the Lady Patience, and she could lift her aloft in her arms, and swing her from side to side, as a supple bough swings a bird. And her eyes were dark, and cool to gaze into, like a pool o' clear water o'er autumn ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... first place, we must call attention to the extreme care he gave to his linen, the only distinction that well-bred men can nowadays exhibit in their clothes. The linen of the chevalier was invariably of a fineness and whiteness that were truly aristocratic. As for his coat, though remarkable for its cleanliness, it was always half worn-out, but without spots or creases. The preservation of that garment was something marvellous ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... night; I established myself out of sight under the doorway of an unfinished house opposite, and waited. I don't know why; perhaps I fancied that when his friends were gone, the fineness of the night might induce Monsieur Steinmetz to take a stroll, and that then I should be able to gratify my curiosity. You see, I knew that if he were my man, I should know him directly. I waited a good while: ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... take note of the form of a creature which gives us a singular example of the unity of what artists call beauty, with the fineness of mechanical structure, often mistaken for it. You cannot but have noticed how little, during the years of my past professorship, I have introduced any questions as to the nature of beauty. I avoided them, partly because they are treated of at length ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... in finer condition. A few years ago, nobody could grow roses fit to be seen in pots; many said it was impossible to do so: now, one can scarcely imagine anything finer than they are seen at the metropolitan flower-shows. Both in healthy appearance, and in fineness of flower, they exceed those which we admire so much in the open garden in summer. One or two are conspicuous, though all are beautiful. Souvenirs d'un ami has pale flesh-coloured flowers, exceedingly delicate; nor is the perfume they emit less attractive. Niphetus, pure ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... altogether back if she thought she were doing it for his own good. But with a conception of marriage so uncomplicated and incurious as hers such a crisis could be brought about only by something visibly outrageous in his own conduct; and the fineness of her feeling for him made that unthinkable. Whatever happened, he knew, she would always be loyal, gallant and unresentful; and that pledged him to the practice of ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... a tall, well-proportioned young man, quite unusually dark for a Russian from the Central Provinces. His good looks would have been unquestionable if it had not been for a peculiar lack of fineness in the features. It was as if a face modelled vigorously in wax (with some approach even to a classical correctness of type) had been held close to a fire till all sharpness of line had been lost in the softening of the material. But even thus he ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... appointment of the Cabalists of Sanlouand. As for the rings which his father would have him to wear, to renew the ancient mark of nobility, he had on the forefinger of his left hand a carbuncle as big as an ostrich's egg, enchased very daintily in gold of the fineness of a Turkey seraph. Upon the middle finger of the same hand he had a ring made of four metals together, of the strangest fashion that ever was seen; so that the steel did not crash against the gold, nor the silver crush the copper. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... considered that certain of the precepts instilled during childhood were of admirable practical value). The best thing in life was its morning: he did not like evening shadows and autumn twilights. There was nothing that could compare with the sweetness and fineness of the flavor of novelty. When it was practicable to take advantage of one's impulses one had a brief draught of true philosopher's happiness. And, at all events, this girl was a lady, high-born, high-bred, ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... mirrors are no longer made, and the glass has deteriorated in quality, as well as in the beauty of the thousand curious forms it took. The test of the old glass, which is now imitated a great deal, is its extreme lightness. I suppose the charming notion that glass was once wrought at Murano of such fineness that it burst into fragments if poison were poured into it, must be fabulous. And yet it would have been an excellent thing in the good old toxicological days of Italy; and people of noble family would have found ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... to be desired of science is a false hand, or a spectral arm, that shall reach miraculously about,—not a fruit-picker or a carpet-sweeper, but something working with the fineness of an elephant's trunk,—thus to end the discomfort of those orange-seeds spilled on the far side of the room, while, lying inactive, one reaches, reaches, with a patient power which, if transformed into the practical, would push an army ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... legs, the thin-soled low boots—all proclaimed him the typical time-killing dandy of the times. His superb proportions made him look smaller, lighter than he really was, and his lean features, which under the I.F.P. skullcap would have looked hawk-like, were sufficiently like the patrician fineness of the character part he was playing. Young men of means in the year 2159 were by no means without their good points. They indulged in athletic sports to counteract the softening influence of idleness, and so Quirl Finner had no misgivings about ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... choose between Caslon's Roman and that of Baskerville, while the italic of Baskerville was unquestionably the most beautiful type that had ever been seen in England; and the ridiculous criticism passed on it that its very fineness was injurious to the eyesight, was shown to be utterly worthless by Franklin's letter to the printer, which is printed in Reed's Old English Letter Foundries. But there are also other features of excellence about these books ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... usually for the material in woman, and I wondered if in her case outward appearances were as deceptive as they were in my wife—with her saint's eyes, and her distorted moral vision. Perhaps I was intuitively right, and that beneath Delilah Jeliffe's exterior there is a certain fineness, and that these funny fads of dress and decorations are merely in some way her striving toward the expression ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... the realm; that provision ought to be made for the repayment of L10,000,000, being part of the sum due to the Bank on account of advances for the public services; that from the 14th of February, 1820, the Bank shall be liable to deliver on-demand, gold of standard fineness, having been assayed and stamped at the mint, a quantity of not less than sixty ounces being required in exchange for notes at the rate of L4. 1s. per ounce; that from the 1st of October, 1820, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... literature, it is true, by the universality of its appeal or by the character of the persons whom alone that appeal reaches. The message of literature as art may thus be to the crowd or to a select few. I could even imagine intellect and feeling of such exquisite fineness, such acknowledged superiority, that appeal to it alone might be enough to fix the status of a work of art, though it might leave all others cold. Still, in general I believe, that the greatest literature appeals to the ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... with an old woman who was left in charge. To his inquiries she made answer that Protogenes was not at home; and then asked whom she should name as the visitor. "Here he is," was the reply of Apelles; and seizing a brush, he traced with color upon the panel an outline of a singularly minute fineness. Upon his return the old woman mentioned to Protogenes what had happened. The artist, it is said, upon remarking the delicacy of the touch, instantly exclaimed that Apelles must have been the visitor, for that no other person was capable of executing anything so exquisitely perfect. So saying, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... some sort of its anguish. Everything about her, moreover, was in keeping with these thoughts which she inspired. Like almost all women who have very long hair, she was very pale and perfectly white. The marvelous fineness of her skin (that almost unerring sign) indicated a quick sensibility which could be seen yet more unmistakably in her features; there was the same minute and wonderful delicacy of finish in them that the Chinese artist gives to his fantastic figures. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... though but a short interval had been allowed to elapse, it seemed odd that another bottle was not instantly called for. Instead of this our landlord went on expatiating on the beauties of the Lough, and the fineness of the season in general, and the sunset in particular, for full five minutes after the wine had disappeared; when he suddenly said, with a half-hesitating tone, towards my English friend, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... in moments of repose. As a child her hair was curly and almost blond, her straight nose was neither too pointed nor too flat, while her mouth with the merry dimples at the corners recalled the small and pleasing one of her mother, her skin had the fineness of an onion-cover and was white as cotton, according to her perplexed relatives, who found the traces of Capitan Tiago's paternity in her small and shapely ears. Aunt Isabel ascribed her half-European features to ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... prized, passed on from generation to generation, the most precious heir-loom of the English tongue, to-day as fresh as on the morning when the paper was moist with the ink wherewith they were first written? Because they have in them more fullness and fineness and fidelity than any others. The poet has more life in him than other men, and Shakespeare has in him more life than any other poet, life manifested through power of intellect exalted through union with power of sympathy, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... and crossed the room to the wall of book- shelves. And Tembarom's eye was caught again by the fineness of movement and line the evening clothes made manifest. "What a swell he looked when he moved about like that! What ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... man of forty so hard hit was likely to do or say. The turn of mind of the generation of Frenchmen grown up during the years of his exile was almost unintelligible to him. Their sentiments appeared to him unduly violent, lacking fineness and measure, their language needlessly exaggerated. He joined the general on the road, and they made a few steps in silence, the general trying to master his agitation and get proper ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... who did not seem to see him at all. Presently he sat down in George's vacated seat beside another man, who said something to him with a coarse chuckle. The man growled in response, and continued to scowl furtively at George, who stood talking to Maria. He said something about the fineness of the day, and Maria responded rather gratefully. She was conscious of an inward tumult which alarmed her, and made her defiant both at the young man and herself, but she could not help responding to the sense of protection which she got from his presence. She had not been accustomed ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to Veto and his wife," was read upon another. A gang of butchers carried a calf's heart on the point of a pike, with "The Heart of an Aristocrat" for a motto. A band of crossing-sweepers, or of men who professed to be such, though the fineness of their linen was inconsistent with the rags which were their outward garments, had for their standard a pair of ragged breeches, with the inscription, "Tremble, tyrants; here are the Sans-culottes." One gang of ruffians carried a model of a guillotine. ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... else have concurred in the opinion that the power to regulate coin is, in substance and effect, a power to regulate currency, and that the framers of the Constitution so intended. It may well enough be admitted that while Congress confines its regulation to weight, fineness, shape, and device, banks and individuals may issue notes for currency in competition with coin. But it is difficult to conceive by what process of logic the unquestioned power to regulate coin can be separated from the power to maintain or restore its circulation, by ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... In fineness of tone and exquisite felicity of phrasing, ASQUITH excelled himself. The first time the House of Commons caught a glimpse of profound depths of a nature habitually masked by impassive manner and curt speech was when he talked to it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... an Indian fails at times to discriminate them." He adds of the dog of the Hare Indians, a distinct breed, that it is almost the same as the prairie wolf (Canis latrans), the skull of the dog appeared to him a little smaller, otherwise he could detect no difference in form, nor fineness of fur, nor the arrangement ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... up, then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar, they ascended through the field. The sun was almost level in their faces now, and he could see, not only those silver threads, but little lines, just deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like fineness—the special look of life unshared with others. "I'll take her in by the terrace," he thought: "I won't make ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... stiff, sharp bodies, it is easie to conceive, how with rubbing they might easily be thrust into the tender parts of the skin, and there, by reason of their exceeding fineness and driness, not create any considerable trouble or pain, till by remaining in those places moistned with the humours of the body, some caustick part sticking on them, or residing within them might be dissolv'd and ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... Mary was still called a bastard, though most men thought that that hardship would soon be reversed. It was said that great honours had been shown her, and that was apparent in the furnishing of her rooms, the fineness of her gear, the increase in the number of the women that waited on her, and the store of sweet things that was provided for her to eat. A great many men noted the chair with a dais that was set up always where she might ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... perfect gradations, and defined by sharp shadows at the edge, such inner anatomy and minuteness of outline as would have been utterly vain and valueless under the gloom of a northern sky; while again the fineness of material both admitted of, and allured to, the precision of execution which the climate ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... made visible, tangible, in the struggles, in the contacts of the fine consciences, in their perplexities, in the sophism of their mistakes. For a fine conscience is naturally a virtuous one. What is natural about it is just its fineness, an abiding sense of the intangible, ever-present, right. It is most visible in their ultimate triumph, in their emergence from miracle, through an energetic act of renunciation. Energetic, not violent: the distinction is wide, enormous, like that ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... of this kind that were affixed to the current metals, seem in many cases to have been intended to ascertain, what it was both most difficult and most important to ascertain, the goodness or fineness of the metal, and to have resembled the sterling mark which is at present affixed to plate and bars of silver, or the Spanish mark which is sometimes affixed to ingots of gold, and which, being struck ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... a most amiable, genial, and benevolent being. He was sometimes subject to melancholy—unlike many of the blind, and one especially, whom we name not, but who, still living, bears a striking resemblance to Blacklock in fineness of mind, warmth of heart, and high- toned piety, but who is cheerful as the day. As to his poetry, it is undoubtedly wonderful, considering the circumstances of its production, if not per se. Dr Johnson says to Boswell,—'As Blacklock had the misfortune to be blind, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... now in the sky only the soft vaporous color of pale citron—the last reflection of the sun which plunges into the dark blue of the night, going from green tones to a pale turquoise of an unheard-of fineness and a fluid delicacy quite indescribable.... The fields lose their color, the trees form but gray or brown masses.... the dark waters reflect the bland tones of the sky. We are losing sight of things—but one still feels that everything is there—everything is vague, confused, and Nature grows ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... shivering in the rain! Indeed, the facts of aboriginal life seem to indicate that dress is developed out of decorations. And when we remember that even among ourselves most think more about the fineness of the fabric than its warmth, and more about the cut than the convenience—when we see that the function is still in great measure subordinated to the appearance, we have further reason for inferring such ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Walpole had not approved of the scheme himself, but for various reasons he did not venture to upset it. He had the patent prepared, and consulted Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the Mint, with regard to the objects which the Government had in view, and the weight and fineness of the coin which Wood was to supply. The halfpence and farthings were to be a little less in weight than the coin of the same kind {241} current in England. Walpole considered this necessary because of the difference in exchange between the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... small angular pieces of hard rock. Have a few samples from different places brought to school, note fineness and colours, examine with a lens and note resemblance to pieces of broken stone. Draw a magnet through the sand and note black particles adhering, showing presence of iron in some form. Show the hardness by rubbing against the surface of a piece of glass. Sand is used for mortar, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... younger than Madeline, and a slender, pretty girl. She did not resemble her sister, except in whiteness and fineness of skin, being more of a brown-eyed, brown-haired type. Having recovered her breath soon after Madeline took her to her room, she ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... health being granted me, persevere in it; for my own leaf and branch studies express conditions of shade which even these most exquisite botanical plates ignore; and exemplify uses of the pen and pencil which cannot be learned from the inimitable fineness of line engraving. The frontispiece to this number, for instance, (a seeding head of the commonest field-thistle of our London suburbs,) copied with a steel pen on smooth grey paper, and the drawing softly touched with white on the nearer thorns, may well surpass ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... and of the many high enjoyments which the varied action of our faculties places in our power: we should not, in short, have been human beings, but merely on a level with the inferior animals. Thus, it appears, that the very fineness of man's constitution, that which places him in such a high relation to the mundane economy, and makes him the vehicle of so many exquisitely delightful sensations—it is this which makes him liable to the sufferings of disease. It might be said, on the other hand, that the noxiousness ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... the background and the charm and execution of the design must be taken into account, whether it is done by hand or stenciled. Nearly all kinds of woods are used, the difference in cost being caused by the grade and amount of labor needed, the kind of wood chosen and its abundance and the fineness of grain and the seasoning. Mahogany costs more than stained birch, and walnut than gum wood, but there are certain people who for some strange reason feel that they are getting something a little smarter and better if ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... belonged to the tribe and were accounted Hurons; I considered Rafael's proud carriage, his classic head and carved features, his Indian austerity and his French mirth weaving in and out of each other; I considered the fineness and the fearlessness of his spirit, which long hardship had not blunted; I reflected on the tales he had told me of a youth forced to fight the world. "On a vu de le misere," Rafael had said: "One has seen trouble"—shaking his head, with ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... tree—unity in the trunk, infinity in the foliage—any one is able to understand it. We perceive that all things grow as a tree grows, from unity to multiplicity, from simplicity and strength to beauty and fineness. The generation of the line from the point, the plane from the line, and from the plane, the solid, is a matter, again, which chiefly interests the geometrician, but the inevitable sequence stands revealed in seed, stem, leaf, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... when they took their departure. She wanted to be alone to think. In spite of the relief of which she was conscious, her thoughts were far from pleasant. Foremost among them figured a crushing sense of shame. She had wickedly misjudged a man who had given her many proofs of the fineness of his character; the evil she had imputed to him was born of her own perverted imagination. She was no better than the narrow-minded, conventional Pharisees she detested, who were swift to condemn out of the uncleanness of their self-righteous hearts. Then, as she began ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... round the dishes at a big Parisian dinner- party! All these young ladies' coquetry had gone to the dressing of their woolly hair, which was clipped, like garden shrubs, into the most fanciful shapes, and to the fineness of their skins, which were as soft and shiny as satin. This resulted from the daily baths they were in the habit of taking, rubbing themselves also with fine sand. But, unluckily, the rubbing could not get rid of the negro scent. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... McGuire noted the fineness of the silky robe. Like the others this was made of one piece, loosely fitting, but its bright vivid scarlet made the first seem drab and dull. A belt of metal about his waist shone like gold and matched the emblem of precious metal in the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... marvelous. The engraver passes his hand over the plate, and is able to distinguish the slightest imperfection. And the handler of cloth and fabrics is able to distinguish the finest differences, simply by the sense of touch. Wool sorters also exercise a wonderfully high degree of fineness of touch. And the blind are able to make up for the loss of sight by their greatly increased sense of Touch, cases being recorded where the blind have been able to distinguish color by the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... under this impulse throws off a vibrating portion of itself, shaped by the nature of the vibrations—as figures are made by sand on a disk vibrating to a musical note—and this gathers from the surrounding atmosphere matter like itself in fineness from the elemental essence of the mental world. We have then a thought-form pure and simple, and it is a living entity of intense activity animated by the one idea that generated it. If made of the finer kinds of matter, it will be of great power and energy, and may be used as ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... earlier period of his life had been passed in more stately society than could be found in Shepperton, and that his slipshod chat and homely manners were but like weather-stains on a fine old block of marble, allowing you still to see here and there the fineness of the grain, and the delicacy of the original tint. But in his later years these visits became a little too troublesome to the old gentleman, and he was rarely to be found anywhere of an evening beyond the ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... here the fineness of Shakspeare's sense of musical period, which would almost by itself have suggested (if the hundred positive proofs had not been extant,) that the word 'aches' was then 'ad libitum', a dissyllable—'aitches'. For read it, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... feeling for rank from Mel, his father, or that the Countess had succeeded in instilling it, but Evan never took Republican ground in opposition to those who insulted him, and never lashed his 'manhood' to assert itself, nor compared the fineness of his instincts with the behaviour of titled gentlemen. Rather he seemed to admit the distinction between his birth and that of a gentleman, admitting it to his own soul, as it were, and struggled simply as men struggle against a destiny. The news Miss Bonner had given him sufficed to break ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... morning, he sprang up and was soon following them. He was so sore and stiff that every movement was torture at first, but he grew easier, and shortly did not suffer so much. McLean scolded him for coming, yet in his heart triumphed over every new evidence of fineness ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... encircled the weather rail with his arm, felt the vessel under his feet dart forward smoothly, and the deck become less slanting—the speed of the brig running off a little now, easing the overturning strain of the wind upon the distended surfaces of the sails. It was only the fineness of the little vessel's lines and the perfect shape of her hull that saved the canvas, and perhaps the spars, by enabling the ready craft to get way upon herself with such lightning-like rapidity. Lingard drew a long breath and yelled jubilantly ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... regard he holds conniving at the rape of his daughters. Blow, Wind, blow harder! Rise, Fire, and spread—be a thousand lions in roaring till these tremble like hunted curs! The few innocent are not more in the account than moths burrowed in woven wool and feeding on its fineness. Already the guilty begin to pray—but to whom? Blow, O Wind! Spread and spare not, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... some directions, and undertake some messages, so that she could not return to her own room till after Anne had gone down-stairs. She herself was not ready till just as the elders were setting off to the dinner-party at Marlowe Court, and rejoicing in the cessation of the rain and the fineness of the evening. ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... With new processes in manufacture, involving chemical and mechanical transformations, and other uses of new substances and new uses of old substances, explosions increase. The flour-dust of the miller, the starch-dust of the confectioner, increase in fineness and quantity, and they explode; so does the hop-dust of the brewer. In 1844, for the first time, Professors Faraday and Lyell, employed by the British government, discovered that explosion in bituminous coal mines was the quickening of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... found us once more housed under the neat roof of our farmer host at the Keene Flats, and not only Elsie and myself, but also sundry friends, drawn thither by our praise of the beauty of the land and the fineness of the air. There were the brilliant M. W. C., learned in all philosophical lore, and with feeling and imagination sufficient to furnish out half a dozen poets; the staid but energetic M. T., whose portrait in our gallery occupies, a conspicuous place in the small niche devoted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... abruptly invited, fixed itself on the effigies of a youth eminently handsome, and of that kind of beauty which, without being effeminate, approaches to the fineness and brilliancy of the female countenance,—a beauty which renders its possessor inconveniently conspicuous, and too often, by winning that ready admiration which it costs no effort to obtain, withdraws the desire of applause from successes to be achieved by labour, and hardens egotism by the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... coolness and decisiveness, the retrospect of which he actually enjoyed. "It was truly awful!" he would say, with a shiver of pleasing horror. But it was all worked into a rich and glowing tapestry, which he wove with all his might, and the fineness of his life seems to me to consist in this, that he made his own choices, found out the channels in which his powers could best move, and let the stream gush forth. He did not shelter himself fastidiously, or creep away out of the glare ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... strain of Indian in me, sir," he explained, "my hair would be straight, thick, coarse, and blue-black. You will observe that it is wavy, a medium crop, of average fineness, and jet black." ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... an apothecary's son, a regular shop-drudge," he raged inwardly, watching the youth of the Faubourg Saint-Germain pass under his eyes; graceful, spruce, fashionably dressed, with a certain uniformity of air, a sameness due to a fineness of contour, and a certain dignity of carriage and expression; though, at the same time, each one differed from the rest in the setting by which he had chosen to bring his personal characteristics into prominence. Each one made ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... the leading articles. In spite of such admirable qualities, there is an element of frivolity, a lack of seriousness (I speak of the typical Boulevard sheet) that is at first rather shocking to a British reader. He finds grave subjects treated with a fineness of touch and a lucidity of reasoning at once charming and full of edification: but, lo! a pun trails accidentally off the journalist's pen, or an odd collocation of ideas jostle each other in his brain: the writer at once stops his instructive ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... there is a fineness and a delicacy of touch that baffles a satisfactory analysis. She has the power to call forth Columbus from the past to reenact his great discovery in the imagination of her pupils—all without noise, or bombast, or gesticulation. She does what she does because ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... is the distant horizon that nothing less near than Queen Mab and her chariot can equal its fineness. Here on the edges of the eyelids, or there on the edges of the world—we know no other place for things so exquisitely made, so thin, so small and tender. The touches of her passing, as close as dreams, or the utmost vanishing of the forest or the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... gravel walks of which you speak. The aim is to saturate the gravel with the hot tar without surplus. The interstices of the gravel are simply to be filled, and the amount required to do this depends wholly upon the coarseness or fineness of the gravel employed. ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... light. It made Aurora's red dress brilliant, and played and sparkled on the gold she wore. Twenty little golden chains of Venice hung around her neck, slender thread after thread from throat to girdle, invisible now with fineness, and now showing a misty flash in the sun. There was a gold filigree rose in her hair, which at certain movements changed to a red rose, and then to a pallid flame, and in the shadow it had all the softness of a yellow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... timid man, the combative and defensive elements were not prominently developed in his character, and could have been made available only when he put an unnatural force upon his instincts. It was on this account, and also because of the fineness of his nature generally, that the English appreciated him no better, and left this sweet and delicate poet poor, and with scanty laurels ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... or two ago. The reverent scientist affirms that he believes in a God whose omniscience keeps track of every particle of matter in a universe whose spaces are measured by billions of miles, a God whose omnipresence implies the interlacing of forces whose sweep and fineness seen through the telescope and microscope astonish us. Moreover, the modern doctrine of evolution shows us that the entire material system is moving on and up from lower to higher forms. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be," but we shall clearly be something ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... which sleep is an impossibility. Any one who has watched such moments in other men remembers the brightness of the eyes and the strange definiteness that comes over coarse features from that transient influence. It is as if a new fineness of ear for all spiritual voices had sent wonder-working vibrations through the heavy mortal frame—as if "beauty born of murmuring sound" had passed into ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... visitation from Heaven? Adamnan continues "The unknown one has told me that he visited each cell and each bed, and found the monks, either wrapt in slothful sleep, or awake, eating irregular meals and engaged in senseless gossip; while the nuns employ their leisure in wearing garments of excessive fineness, either to attire themselves, as if they were the brides of men, or to bestow them on people outside." One must admit that here and there in the writings of the period, there are references to this worldliness in some monasteries; ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney
... is now taught a new movement. Where before he had to touch, he must now feel the stuffs, which, according to the degree of fineness or coarseness from coarse cotton to fine silk, are felt with movements correspondingly decisive or delicate. The child whose hand is already practised finds the greatest pleasure in feeling the stuffs, and, almost instinctively, in order to enhance his appreciation of the tactile ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... so designated the principal complication of Balaklava Place. Miss Rover was a little actress who played at Miriam's theatre, combining with an unusual aptitude for delicate comedy a less exceptional absence of rigour in private life. She was pretty and quick and brave, and had a fineness that Miriam professed herself already in a position to estimate as rare. She had no control of her inclinations, yet sometimes they were wholly laudable, like the devotion she had formed for her beautiful colleague, whom she admired not only as an ornament of the profession but as a being ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Rue du Parvis, several young girls were laughing and chatting with every sort of grace and mirth. From the length of the veil which fell from their pointed coif, twined with pearls, to their heels, from the fineness of the embroidered chemisette which covered their shoulders and allowed a glimpse, according to the pleasing custom of the time, of the swell of their fair virgin bosoms, from the opulence of their under-petticoats ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... possess with the next and following generations is another and rather sterile question, which we are not now concerned to discuss. The unrestrained eccentricities which Mr. Carlyle's strong individuality has precipitated in his written style may, in spite of the poetic fineness of his imagination, which no historian or humorist has excelled, still be expected to deprive his work of that permanence which is only secured by classic form. The incorporation of so many phrases, allusions, nicknames, that belong only to the hour, inevitably makes the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... hands lay on the rough stone parapet of the Castle wall. He had inherited from his mother a fineness of mould, so that his hands were small and vigorous. Hers were large, to match her large limbs, but white and powerful looking. As Paul looked at them he knew her. "She is wanting somebody to take ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... image. Elephants possess not only force, but poise and fineness of control. They can lift a straw, a child, a tree with perfectly judged control and effort. So the simile is a good one. By detachment, by withdrawing into the soul's reservoir of power, we can gain all these, force ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... and dark as Englishmen are dark; jaw and chin shaven; his mouth hidden by the straight droop of his moustache. From the eyes downwards the outlines of his face and features were of an extreme regularity and a fineness undestroyed by the work of the strained nerves on the sallow, delicate texture. But his eyes, dark like an animal's, were the eyes of a terrified thing, a thing hunted and on the watch, a thing that listened continually ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... was immensely productive. "The wide plains through which the Guadalquiver flows produced the finest wheat, yielding an increase of a hundredfold; the oil and the wine, the growth of the hills, were equally distinguished for their excellence. The wood was not less remarkable for its fineness than in modern times, and had a native colour beautiful without dye."[5170] Nor were the neighbouring sea and stream less bountiful. The tunny was caught in large quantities off the coast, shell-fish were abundant and of unusual size,[5171] while huge eels were sometimes ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... me to sit thus motionless beside a beautiful woman (for such I then thought her)—so near that I could feel the warmth of her body strike like sunshine through the silken fineness of her sea-green gown. I glanced up at her eyes. They were fixed, and, as it seemed, glazed also. But the emerald in them, usually dark as the sea-depths, had opal lights in it, and her lips moved like those of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... at her and could not help marking again the fineness and firmness of her skin. Her hair was dark, as were her eyebrows, which were almost straight and rather low over her long eyes. Gray her eyes were, a warm gray, and very steady and direct in expression, intelligent and alive. Perhaps, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... about four miles, when the boats were finally laden. The river in Wellington Valley had been swelled by the late rains, insomuch that the water below its junction with the Macquarie was quite discoloured. From the fineness of the soil, the rain had made the ground very soft, rendering it difficult for ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... no sense of humour. Lack of this sense is everywhere held to be a horrid disgrace, nullifying any number of delightful qualities. Perhaps the most effective means of disparaging an enemy is to lay stress on his integrity, his erudition, his amiability, his courage, the fineness of his head, the grace of his figure, his strength of purpose, which has overleaped all obstacles, his goodness to his parents, the kind word that he has for every one, his musical voice, his freedom from aught that ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... appreciate fineness of character and respectability," he sighed. "Effie is heartless. I didn't dare admit it to myself, but she is, she's absolutely heartless. But even if she hasn't got the right feelings, she ought to have the good sense to ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... and whatever would unpleasantly affect her by its contact; to be in some sort as a brother to her, seeing there was no brother in the house. But from this it must not be inferred that Grace Anna is less gifted with the distinctive qualities of her sex. For the native fineness of her spiritual texture, her gentle dignity and feminine delicacy and grace, mark her as "every inch" a true and noble woman. In her combine in happy union the calm strength of soul and self-reliance of her younger, with the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... chalices they once contained had been carried off by Mexican thieves. The man in charge of the building showed me three immense drawers full of gold- and silver-embroidered silken robes of exquisite fineness and great variety. There were at ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... my family sat at tea in our parlour, an hour or two after we had taken possession of our lodgings, the door of the room and that of the entrance to the house being open, on account of the fineness of the weather, a poor black cat entered hastily, sat down on the carpet by the table, looked up towards us, and mewed piteously. I never had seen so wretched a looking creature. It was dreadfully attenuated, being little more ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... cedars of Lebanon, and among groves of trees. Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, book 8, chapter 6, section 5, states that when the Queen of Sheba came to Judea, she was amazed at the wisdom of Solomon, and surprised at the fineness and largeness of his royal palace; 'but she was beyond measure astonished at the house which was called the forest of Lebanon.' Matthew Henry follows the opinion of Bunyan; 'I rather incline to think it was a house built in the forest of Lebanon ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... advises the sportsman carefully to consider the size, shape, colour, constitution, and natural disposition of the dog from which he breeds, and also the fineness of the nose, the evident strength of the limb, and the good temper and devotion to his master which he displays. The faults or imperfections in one breed may be rectified in another; and, if this is properly ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... success. The Viceroy finding none to claim the bright-faced baby, had given him a name and had caused him to be brought up in his own household. There was nothing in his apparel to distinguish him save the exquisite fineness and richness of the material. Thrown around his neck had been a curiously wrought silver crucifix on a silver chain, and that crucifix he had worn ever since. It lay upon his breast beneath his clothing now. It was the sole object which ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... his treatise on this subject, estimates that a cubic mile of Krakatoa was propelled in the form of the finest dust into the higher regions of the atmosphere—probably about thirty miles! The dust thus sent into the sky was of "ultra-microscopic fineness," and it travelled round and round the world in a westerly direction, producing those extraordinary sunsets and gorgeous effects and afterglows which became visible in the British Isles in the month of November following the eruption; and the mighty waves ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... divined some fineness of feeling in this coarse man. He wanted to spare her not only pain, but the necessity of watchful eyes on her every moment. Lucy did not like to promise not to try to escape, if opportunity presented. Still, she reasoned, that once deep in the canyons, ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... city of Lucheu, the Island Ladrones, and Japan, and is called ' ChA.' Of this famous leaf there are divers sorts (though all one shape), some much better than others, the upper leaves excelling the others in fineness, a property almost in all plants; which leaves they gather every day, and drying them in the shade or in iron pans, over a gentle fire, till the humidity be exhausted, then put close up in leaden pots, preserve them ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... a hatred of muddle and was a little severe on men, though acknowledging that "young men are the kindest members of the human race." True this, I should say, who am no longer young. "The war is fine, fine, FINE, though I don't get near the fineness except in the pages of Punch." Charming ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... and Negroes so much as my gloves. Am obliged to put them on and off frequently a dozen times a day, for their especial gratification. My Leghorn hat, on the contrary, here, as in The Mountains, is an object of admiration, on account of the fineness of the platting. It astonishes them how it could be done. The large straw hats, with huge broad brims, worn in The Desert, are ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... nothing nowhere. She was touchy, and jealous, and said things that disgusted me; never did anything for anybody; and though she hunted religious ideas most, never seemed to imagine they could have anything to do with her life. It was only the fineness of a good thought even that she seemed to prize. She would startle you any moment by an exclamation of delight at some religious fancy or sentimentality, and down it most go in her book, but it went no further than her book: ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... properly begins with Aldus. From 1494, the date of his first productions, until 1501 he printed his books in folio and quarto. But in the first year of the new century he began to use his famous cursive type, now called italic. The fineness of the new type, as has been suggested, called for a smaller size of book, which was also favored by considerations of economy and convenience; and so Aldus made up his sheets in a form which the fold ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... the strings of his tongue were loosened as they had never been before. His woman, too (as we say in those parts, Melody; wife is the more genteel expression, but I never heard Ham use it. My father, on the other hand, never said anything else; a difference in the fineness of ear, my dear, I have always supposed),—his woman, I say, or wife, had not "turned up her toes," but recovered, and as he was a faithful and affectionate man, his heart was enlarged by this also. ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... In an age when unscrupulous English merchants were hurting the market with poorly woven fabrics, French weavers were given careful orders about the quality of the thread, the breadth of the cloth, and the fineness of the weave. It is said that in 1787 the regulations for French manufactures filled eight volumes in quarto; and other governments, while less thorough, were equally convinced of the wisdom of such ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... corrupt. The dialogue in the best of these plays was easy, lively, and witty; the situations in some of them audacious almost beyond belief. Under a thin varnish of good breeding, the sentiments and manners were really brutal. The loosest gallants of Beaumont and Fletcher's theater retain a fineness of feeling and that politesse de coeur—which marks the gentleman. They are poetic creatures, and own a capacity for romantic passion. But the Manlys and Homers of the Restoration comedy have a prosaic, cold-blooded profligacy that disgusts. Charles Lamb, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... exception, his plumage is the richest brown I am acquainted with in Nature, and is unsurpassed in the qualities both of firmness and fineness. Notwithstanding the disparity in size and color, he has certain peculiarities that remind one of the Passenger-pigeon. His eye, with its red circle, the shape of his head, and his motions on alighting and taking flight, quickly suggest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... put aside the idea that he was merely the Incarnation, the mouthpiece, the medium of overwhelming powers. The idea of Revelation in the mind describes exactly the state of affairs—that suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and fineness, something became visible and audible, something that shakes and pervades one to the depths. One hears—he does not seek; he takes—he does not ask who gives; like lightning gleams out a thought, of necessity, formed without hesitation—I ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... was the letter to be written to his parents. Three Tommies who knew him best were to attempt this. They made innumerable beginnings. Each of them was afraid of blundering, of causing unnecessary pain by an indelicate revelation of the facts. There was a feminine fineness about their concern which was beautiful to see. The final draft of the letter was a little masterpiece, not of English, but of insight; such a letter as any one of us would have wished his own parents to ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... dictates it, is a second sight, looking through these, and using them as types or words for thoughts which they signify." Using these faculties and not mere eyesight, one must surely say: "Since this world, in power, fineness, finish, beauty, and adaptations not only surpasses our accomplishment, but also is past our finding out to its perfection, it must have been made by One stronger, finer, and ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... marsh and pond water to be bad? A. By reason they are phlegmatic, and do corrupt in summer; the fineness of water is turned into vapours, and the earthiness ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... producing workman's wages fixed, so as to define the master's profits within limits admitting only such variation as the nature of the given article of sale rendered inevitable;—yet, in the production of other classes of articles, whether by skill of applied handicraft, or fineness of material above the standard of the guild, attaining, necessarily, values above its assigned prices, every firm should be left free to make its own independent efforts and arrangements with its workmen, subject always to the same penalty, if it could be proved to have consistently ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... satisfaction for him in the thought that, though he had all but completed the purchase of the noble Pellesley estate for Edith Cressage, he had never yet kissed her. The reserve he imposed upon himself gave him a certain aristocratic fineness in his own eyes. It was the means by which he could feel himself to be most nearly her equal. But he remained very lonely in London, none ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... "Yes, this idea is fine, but the style is not fine"? The sole medium of communication between you and the author has been the form of words. The fine idea has reached you. How? In the words, by the words. Hence the fineness must be in the words. You may say, superiorly: "He has expressed himself clumsily, but I can see what he means." By what light? By something in the words, in the style. That something is fine. Moreover, if the style ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... than he is," said Rita fiercely—"with all your fineness and loyalty and divine sympathy and splendid humility—with your purity and your loveliness; and in spite of his very lofty intellect and his rather amazing genius, and his inherited social respectability—you are the more important ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... penetrates, where the earlier mind passed roughly by, is a large element in the complexion of modern poetry." We recognize at once the truth of this characterization as applied to Wordsworth. But there is something more distinguished about this poet's sensibility even than its extreme fineness and delicacy; a quality that is suggested, though not made explicit, by Shelley's allusion to Wordsworth's experience as "a sort of thought in sense." Nature possessed for him not merely enjoyable and describable characters of great variety and minuteness, but an immediately ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... and silt, not only in size of particles, but also in properties and formation. It is said that clay particles reach a degree of fineness equal to 1/2500 of an inch. Clay itself, when wet and kneaded, becomes plastic and adhesive and is thus easily distinguished from sand. Because of these properties, clay is of great value in holding together the larger soil grains in relatively large aggregates ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... way?" Cameron was turning the leaves curiously, enjoying the silky fineness and the clear-cut print and soft leather binding. Life in the barracks was so much in the rough that any bit of refinement was doubly appreciated. He liked the feel of the little book and had a curious longing to ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... head are classed the method of assaying tin ores, known as vanning, and the amalgamation assay for gold. A set of sieves to determine the relative proportion of powders of different degrees of fineness is sometimes useful. A set with 10, 20, 40 and 80 meshes ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... Cashmere goat is perhaps the most celebrated of the tribe; its celebrity arising from the fineness of its wool, out of which are manufactured the costly Cashmere shawls. An attempt was made to introduce this variety into England; but it has not been successful, though the cause of its failure has not been communicated to the public. We can easily find a very good ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... writers, animated by a living faith, have also demanded liberty for all: the fact is not less certain. Some years ago, at nearly the same epoch, the Pere Lacordaire and our own Alexander Vinet consecrated to this noble cause, the former the attractive brilliancy of his eloquence, the latter all the fineness of his delicate analyses. The friends of Lacordaire are gathering up the vibrations of that striking utterance which proclaimed: "Liberty slays not God."[33] Let us gather up also the good words, which, uttered on the borders of our lake, have gained ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... the former, close to the surface of the skin, and not seen externally; and this beautiful fur constitutes an article of very increasing importance in commerce; but not only does the clothing of the seal vary materially in colour, fineness, and commercial situation, in the different species, but not less so in the age of the animal. The young of most kinds are usually of a very light colour, or entirely white, and are altogether destitute of true hair, having this substituted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... one, a boy in looks, with smooth face and white skin healthily flushed in places like a baby's. His face, too, was hard and set in sternness like a mask, as if life had used him badly; but behind it was a fineness of feature and spirit that could not be utterly hidden. They called him the Kid, and thought it was his youth that made him different from them all, for he was only twenty-four, and not one of the rest was under forty. They were doing their best to help him get over that ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... payable in money, so the valuation of the land is expressed in money. Since the establishment of this valuation, the value of silver has been pretty uniform, and there has been no alteration in the standard of the coin, either as to weight or fineness. Had silver risen considerably in its value, as it seems to have done in the course of the two centuries which preceded the discovery of the mines of America, the constancy of the valuation might have proved ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... these fine Watches the Company have devoted all the science and skill in the art at their command, and confidently claim that, for fineness and beauty, no less than for the greater excellences of mechanical and scientific correctness of design and execution, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... like, would question her more searchingly, more embarrassingly, with an ill-concealed note of jealousy in every word. Even at twelve years Mathilde was shocked by the strain of hatred in her father's new wife, who seemed to reproach her for fashion and fineness and fastidiousness, qualities of which the girl was utterly unaware. She could have loved her little half-brother when he appeared upon the scene, but Mrs. Severance did not encourage the bond, and gradually Mathilde's visits ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
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