"Delicate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his for the piano are: "Six Bagatelles," of which the "Caprice" has a charming infectious coda, while the "Humoreske" is less simple, and also less amusing. The "Album Leaf" is a pleasing whimsy, and the "Idylle" is as delicate as fleece. Of the three "Characteristic Waltzes," the "Valse Sentimentale" is by far the most interesting. It manages to develop a sort of harmonic haze that ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... air, there were broad bands of still water of a brilliant blue; others beneath the shelter of the land were of a deep transparent amethyst, while every here and there mountainous islands rose from the sea, lilac, purple, and others of a delicate softened blue, which died away ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... hair that was almost golden, though a lock here and there had deepened to the mother's chestnut tint. Marie-Gaston was slender; he had the delicate features and the subtle grace so charming in Mme. Willemsens. He did not look strong. There was a gentle look in his gray eyes; his face was pale, there was something feminine about the child. He still wore his ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... wide chimney. Flora Lockhart looked up at the speaker, puzzled, but still smiling faintly. Her face was very beautiful and kind—but with an elfin kindness that seemed not all womanly, scarcely all human. Her beauty was almost too delicate, striking and unusual to bear the impress of a common-day kindness. She laughed gently ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... presence of his sister, as well as of Lady Margaret Bellenden (who, in despite of her rheumatism, caused herself to be transported thither when she heard of her granddaughter's illness), rendered a step equally natural and delicate. And thus he anxiously awaited until, without injury to her health, Edith could sustain a final explanation ere his departure on ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... light and spread out the handkerchief. It was a small thing, of almost transparent stuff, with a plain "H.L." and a crown in the corner. The steel pen had torn the delicate fibres ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... government had any important or delicate mission to perform among the Indians, the services of Mr. Carson were sure to be called into requisition. Thus he entered upon the evening of his days, honored and beloved by all who knew him. These peaceful hours were probably the happiest of his life. We have no detailed account of ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... manage more distance in his; that thought fled from me after the first afternoon's ride and never came back. I did not take care for myself; he took care for me. The affection that held me as a part of himself, held me also as a delicate charge more precious than himself; and while he protected me as one who had a right to do it, he guarded me also as one whose own rights were more valuable than his. He never flattered, nor praised, nor complimented me; or with rare exceptions; but he showed me that he lived for me, and sometimes ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 1866; and from this time she wrote for that able journal three hundred and seventy-one articles. She worked rapidly, writing usually with a lead-pencil, on large sheets of yellow paper, but she pruned carefully. Her first poem in the Atlantic Monthly, entitled Coronation, delicate and full of meaning, appeared in 1869, being taken to Mr. Fields, the ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... thought predisposed to find fault with Hayes. Without their votes he could not have become the candidate. "Even the member from Richmond was, I believe, in the end prevailed upon, after much difficulty, to confer his unique and delicate vote also." New York congressmen, with few exceptions, heartily supported the measure without which Hayes would never have been effectually inaugurated. No opposition had come from New York. What, then, is the meaning and purpose of constantly accusing Republicans ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the same time, all of his work breathes forth a deep and tender love for those who suffer. In reality, there is not a single book by Veressayev which might not be a confession; all that he writes he has already experienced himself, and his work vibrates with a delicate and personal emotion. It is only necessary to read "The Memoirs of a Physician," which is almost an autobiography, in order to perceive the moral relationship that exists between Veressayev and the heroes ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... dead. All around, the ground is olive-coloured with unblossomed heath, bright and golden here and there with the flowerets of the prickly gorse. Dense and dismal plantations of black-looking Scotch firs are enlivened at intervals by the delicate and tender green spikelets of a sprouting larch. On we rush for miles through this sombre region, through dank morasses, and past dark and gloomy pools, from one of which a heron rises majestically. On, until, in a broad and airy region, the red coats of soldiers ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... took his wife and a couple of friends one evening to what is known as L'Abbaye, in Montmartre. Knowing that it had a reputation for being expensive, he resisted, somewhat self-consciously, the delicate suggestions of the head waiter and ordered only one bottle of champagne, caviar for four, and a couple of cigars. After watching the dancing for an hour he called for his bill and found that the amount was two hundred ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... an obeisance to her, whereupon she welcomed him and bade him be seated. So he sat down and she said to him, "Allah advance thee to honour! Is all well with thee?" "O my lady," he answered, "all with me is right well." Then she bade bring in food, and they set before her delicate viands; so she sat down to eat, making a show of affection to my brother and jesting with him, though all the while she could not refrain from laughing; but as often as he looked at her, she signed towards her handmaidens as though ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... scanty share in the success of Rienzi. The completeness of my faith in her I proved with an exaggeration by no means advantageous to my own work, by simply forcing the leading male part on Wachter, a once capable, but now somewhat delicate baritone. He was in every respect wholly unsuited to the task, and only accepted it with unfeigned hesitation. On submitting my play to my adored prima donna, I was much relieved to find that its poetry made a special appeal to her. Thanks to ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... considering of representing to Ursula that her conduct was bad taste, bad policy, and, moreover, was doing her mother's spirits and health serious harm; but it was a delicate matter in which to meddle, and the good lady could not make up her mind how far to surrender her brother-in-law's character and allow a partial justification to Ursula. She was a cautious woman, and waited and watched ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... foolish affection and fancy maketh us imagine it. I deny not that it maketh us go much more gay and glorious in sight, garnished in silk—but wool is almost as warm! It maketh us have great plenty of many kinds of delicate and delicious victuals, and thereby to make more excess—but less exquisite and less superfluous fare, with fewer surfeits and fewer fevers too, would be almost as wholesome! Then, the labour in getting riches, the fear in keeping them, and the pain in parting from them, do more than ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... meal, supported by cushions and the arms of her chair. Jack told her he had a great treat in store for her, provided she ate a good dinner. Watching her face as he spoke, with its varying colour and delicate outline, Mrs. Wright ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... save that Bandy-legs himself seemed to be engaged in scrambling about more or less, as though he had suddenly discovered a venomous spider crawling out from under the false bottom of his delicate craft. ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... felt my way to the end of the garden, knowing that the mimosa tree was near the fence, at the turn of the path. Yes, there it was, all quivering in the warm sunshine, its blossom-laden branches almost touching the long grass. Was there ever anything so exquisitely beautiful in the world before! Its delicate blossoms shrank from the slightest earthly touch; it seemed as if a tree of paradise had been transplanted to earth. I made my way through a shower of petals to the great trunk and for one minute stood irresolute; then, putting my foot in the broad space between the forked branches, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... band of faith, as if they were substance, he was not of the excursion. It is well known how fervent, I cannot say devout, a spiritualist Longfellow's brother-in-law, Appleton, was; and when he was at the table too, it took all the poet's delicate skill to keep him and the Autocrat from involving themselves in a cataclysmal controversy upon the matter of manifestations. With Doctor Holmes the inquiry was inquiry, to the last, I believe, and the burden of proof was left to the ghosts and their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with a manly tenderness, giving her the most natural evidences of a cordial, habitual esteem, and expressing a most affectionate sympathy with her under the infirmities of a very delicate constitution, much broken, at least towards the latter years of their marriage. He had at all times a most faithful care of all her interests, and especially those relating to the state of religion in her mind. His conversation and his letters concurred to cherish those sublime ideas ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... appearance, led a very happy life in the conversation of his father and bed-fellow, by whom he enjoyed a son and daughter; and that Morgan had received, in a present from him, a piece of very fine linen of his wife's own making, several kits of salmon, and two casks of pickled pork—the most delicate he had ever tasted; together with a barrel of excellent herrings for salmagundy, which he knew to ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... showed himself to be possessed of honourable, not to say delicate, feelings in his new position. The gothic villa was his paradise, and the gates had been freely opened to admit him whensoever he chose to come. Georgy was just the sort of person from whom people take ells after having asked for inches; ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... lest his abode should be discovered by those who might make awkward use of the knowledge. He had, moreover, to keep Clara in the dark as to his real occupations and prevent her from knowing his resorts in town. Lastly, as Mr. Robert Delancey he had to deal with matters of a very delicate nature indeed, in themselves quite enough to occupy a man's mental energy. But our friend was no ordinary man. If you are not as yet satisfied of that, it will ere long be ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they?" And again He said, "Consider the lilies of the field"—not the pale, delicate blossom we know so well, but "the scarlet martagon" which "decks herself in red and gold to meet the step of summer"—"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; yet I say unto you that even Solomon, in ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... had been used to teach the little delicate son of the purse-proud lady, and that he had taken great interest in the little fellow both on account of his backwardness and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... one of its scenes as the more widely admired "Manon" is in its best scene. It has its weak spots as have all of Massenet's operas, despite his mastery of technique, but its music will always appeal to refined artistic sensibilities for its lyric charm, its delicate workmanship, its splendid dramatic climax in the duo between Werther and Charlotte, beginning: "Ah! pourvu que de voie ces yeux toujours ouverts," and its fine scoring. It smacks more of the atmosphere of the Parisian salon than of the sweet breezes with which ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... held him with her soft arms and twiddled the gun-metal buttons of his blouse. And when at length she must make an end of farewells she hugged him with all her might and was glad that the hard buttons hurt the delicate breast that he felt against him smotheringly ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... a delicate flush of tender enthusiasm on her face, a sparkle in her eyes. "Dr. Stone says he's mending twice as fast at our house because the little fellow is so happy there. When I'm off at work he's petted half to death by them two old women who haven't had anything better than a cat ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... delicate pink shades, and upon a pedestal beneath Aunt Marcia's portrait, stood a huge jardiniere filled with roses the glowing petals of which seemed to repeat the color of the brocaded ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... delicate looking child,' said the woman from London; 'she looks more like a gentleman's ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... occurred to his mind as constituting the principle of stability, and he hence deduced the necessary velocity. The velocity thus found was exactly equal to that which Herschel subsequently deduced from a course of extremely delicate observations. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... adhered to Protestantism, and preferred that the succession should pass out of his own family, rather than into Catholic dominion again. Hence his naming of Jane Grey instead of his own daughter Mary, in case of the death of his delicate son Edward. ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... box contained a bewildering array of spring flowers. Delicate blossoms of jonquils, hyacinths, lilacs, daffodils, and other dainty, fragile flowers that ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... had cooled. As he crossed the park the heat of his soul had turned to fear, and while he stood in the hall below, with an atmosphere of perfume about him, and even a delicate sense of a feminine presence, his fear had turned to terror. On that account he had refused to send up his name, and on going up the staircase, lined with prints, he had been tempted to turn about ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... a beautiful, pale woman, delicate in health and melancholy in spirit, sat on a rustic seat with a book in her hand; not reading, but musing with an absent mind. As the child approached, she held out her hand to welcome her, but neither smiled ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... sweet creation altogether."] "I said, that's poetic justice, that's the refinement of retribution. Any other yarn-spinner would have killed the male idiot by murder, or a drop from a precipice, or a lingering fever; but Clovelly did the thing with delicate torture. He said, 'Go to blazes,' and he fixed up that marriage—and there you are! Clovelly, I drink to you; you are ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... eh?" replied Mr. Smith, stepping in at the low window. "Well, what's the business, little ones?" and he took a seat on the side of the bed, and regarded them curiously. But here Diddie stopped, for she felt it was a delicate matter to speak to this genial, pleasant-faced old man of cruelty to his own slaves. Dumps, however, was troubled with no such scruples; and, finding that Mr. Smith was not so terrible as she hid feared, she approached him boldly, ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... until the paste is evenly distributed throughout. Roll the candy into a sheet one-fourth an inch thick, then cut out into small rounds or other shape with any utensil that is convenient. Color the second part a very delicate pink, flavor with rose extract and cut out in the same manner as the first. To the last part add one or two squares of Baker's Chocolate, melted over hot water, and flavor with peppermint. Add also a little water, as the chocolate will make the mixture thick and crumbly. Begin ...
— Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes • Miss Parloa
... boy learned to think of life, not as something settled, but as a place for adventure. One must seek and seek; and in the end the way of truth would be revealed to him. He could see this zeal in his mother's face, beautiful and delicate, even in the crude picture; and Samuel did not know that the picture was crude, and wove his dreams about it. Sometimes at twilight old Ephraim would talk about her, and the tears would steal down his cheeks. The one year that he had known ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... up to his laboratory behind the hangars, where he had equipment ranging from an astronomical telescope to a delicate seismograph. He brought back as much electrical equipment as he could carry. He had me touch an insulated wire to the frost-covered stone from space, while he put the other end to one post ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... whose only symphonies are love. When indulged, the frown of the holy universe is fastened upon us. It is violating the laws of our mental frame,—an instrument so exquisitely attuned that the slightest vibration of its delicate chords awakens notes of joy or wailings of sorrow; and it thus becomes the source of irritation and remorse here, and of disquieting premonitions of the most appalling woes in the world to come. Hear what God hath spoken: "But fornication and all uncleanness ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... kind eyes and a sweet voice; a ruddy freckled cheek and a round white neck, on which, out of a little cap such as misses wore in those times, fell rich curling clusters of dark brown hair. She was not a delicate or sentimental-looking person. Her arms, which were worn bare from the elbow like other ladies' arms in those days, were very jolly and red. Her feet were not so miraculously small but that you could see them without a telescope. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... endowed with the graces of humanity, whether in the enjoyment of great honour or condemned to obscurity, experiences that yearning for glory which alone begets virtuous endeavour.' The paper, still preserved at Hatfield, is a model of calligraphy; every letter is shaped with delicate regularity, and betrays a refinement most uncommon in boys of thirteen. {376a} Southampton remained at the University for some two years, graduating M.A. at sixteen in 1589. Throughout his after life he cherished for his college ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... firm and erect; he was tall in stature, and his whole presence commanding. His constitution, naturally robust, was impaired by his severe austerities and severer cares; and, in the latter years of his life, was so delicate as to be extremely sensible to the vicissitudes and inclemency of the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... stirrings of thought and feeling as may flow out in musical expression. Any such tuggings of mind or heart as would ruffle and discompose the smoothness of lyrical division would be quite out of keeping in a course of dream-life. The characters here, accordingly, are drawn with light, delicate, vanishing touches; some of them being dreamy and sentimental, some gay and frolicsome, and others replete with amusing absurdities, while all are alike dipped in fancy or sprinkled with humour. And for the same reason the tender distresses of unrequited or forsaken love here ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... heard it said that the world is simple; that health is simple; that it is the folly of man that causes all complications, and that it is the delicate task of the true physician to reduce everything to its original simplicity. Heaven knows that our great Master, Boerhaave, has solved life's problem. To me this truth is well worth the 7,000 Gulden I pay to secure it; while to you, my friends, who ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... you, Lady Caroline; but my friend makes the subject delicate. Let us change it. Did you observe the steeple upon the hill, at the end of the ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... covering all the piers (SCHAFTE, interspaces of the walls), to an uncommonly splendid pitch; and shows the painting of the ceiling, which again is by the famous Pesne, to much perfection. The Artist himself, too, has managed to lay on his colors there so softly, and with such delicate skill, that the light-beams seem to prolong themselves in the painted clouds and air, as if it were the real sky you had overhead." There in that cloud-region "Mars is being disarmed by the Love-goddesses, and they are sporting with his weapons. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... the guarantee that she (prak@rti) will not bind the wise again and will emancipate him once for all? Why did the puru@sa become bound down? Prak@rti is being utilized for enjoyment by the infinite number of puru@sas, and she is no delicate girl (as Sa@mkhya supposes) who will leave the presence of the puru@sa ashamed as soon as her real nature is discovered. Again pleasure (sukha), sorrow (du@hkha) and a blinding feeling through ignorance (moha) are but the feeling-experiences of the ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... not unwelcome. I know, as well as I know anything, that no other woman will ever hold a place in the heart of Meriwether Lewis. There is a memory there which will shut out all other things on earth. We deal now in delicate matters, it is true; but I have been frank with you, because, knowing your loyalty and fairness, knowing your ambition, even-paced with mine, none the less I know your discretion and your generosity as well. ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... necessary in every investigation in the field of science, and that such accuracy must be extended to the construction of the instruments used in these investigations and observations. In astronomy it is obvious that instruments of delicate exactness are most essential; yet Tycho Brahe, who lived in the sixteenth century, is credited with being the first astronomer whose instruments show extreme ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... vibrated between that city and Outpost; for Dora, while choosing to superintend the building of her house and opening of the farm operations in person, had not wished to expose her cousin or the delicate child to such discomforts as she cheerfully and even ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... overflowing with flaming orange-red; a basket heaped with sunset, not the dawn! They were very near me when I guessed what it was; so near that I could see the happy smile on Lucindy's parted lips, and note how high the rose flush had risen in her delicate cheek, with ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... looked as if it were made of a million dewdrops turned to diamonds and sprinkled over a lacy spider-web; the web swathing the tall and wandlike figure of Miss Billie Brookton in a way to show that she had all the delicate perfections of ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... $50,000,000 of gold additional by the sale of bonds. As to the kind of bonds that I would sell, and as to how I would sell them, etc., I ought not to say anything on that subject at present, because you ought to allow me, as an executive officer, in the exercise of a very delicate discretion, free power to act as I think right at the moment, holding me responsible for my action afterward. As to what bonds I will sell, or where I will sell them, or how I will sell them, as that is a discretionary power left with the secretary, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... fell at that, and she seemed to be very contrite. She went quickly across the room and never paused until she found herself in the woman's arms, and showed her love by so many quaint and delicate little caresses, and had such a dainty and bewitching way about her, that no human could have held out against her. The woman's face had cleared on the instant and was no more clouded with grief and anxiety. "You see how she is," said the woman to me; "hurting you ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... own salvation. For indeed she used this pearl but for to get them to drink of her fornication, that they might drink and spew, and fall and never rise more. But now when he saith, the gates are pearl, it is as if he had said, this woman is stript of her beauty and delicate ornaments; the pearl is taken from her, and is set in its right place, even to be for the gates of Jerusalem (Rev 18:12,22,23). Wherefore it is to be expected, that many should be taken with the way of entrance into this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a frail and delicate little woman about forty years of age. She had come to Brussels some years before the war to exercise her calling as a trained nurse. She soon became known to the leading physicians of the capital ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... was undoubtedly possessed of that invaluable secret; at least, he was never known to betray the faintest symptom of transport, except one evening at the club, where he observed, with some demonstrations of vivacity, that he had dined upon a delicate loin of veal. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... yes!" Andy assented emphatically. And that was the nearest they came to discussing a delicate matter which was ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... the great audience chamber of Dumbarton Castle sat King Alexander the Third. By his side stood two youthful pages, one a lad of sixteen or so, whose delicate complexion and habit of dress proclaimed him to be English; the other a lad of perhaps the same age, whose clear blue eyes, flaxen hair, and ruddy cheeks betokened northern blood. Sitting apart were the King's justiciary and the sheriff of Dumbarton. At the far end of ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... be a parallel sort of sensibility, an imageless awareness of the presence and character of other things, with a superhuman ability to change oneself so as to meet them. Do we not feel something of this sort ourselves in love, in art, in religion? M. Bergson is a most delicate and charming poet on this theme, and a plausible psychologist; his method of accumulating and varying his metaphors, and leaving our intuition to itself under that artful stimulus, is the only judicious and persuasive method he could have employed, and his knack at it is wonderful. We recover, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... minds may well be apprehended. The financial honor of a great commercial nation, largely indebted and with a republican form of government administered by agents of the popular choice, is a thing of such delicate texture and the destruction of it would be followed by such unspeakable calamity that every true patriot must desire to avoid whatever might expose it to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... had answered the wild rhapsody which I wrote to tell her how much in love I was with Elena Barry-Smith. And in the nature of things I had not written Bettie again to tell her I was, and by a deal the more, in love with Avis Beechinor. The task was delicate, the reasons for my not unnatural change were such as you must transmit in a personal interview during which you are particularly boyish and ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... that she was a real princess, for through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds she had felt the pea. No one but a real princess could be so delicate. ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... little aside out of the course of his radiance, and let him look full into the room. Only Wynnie sat back in a dark corner, as if she would get out of his way. Below him the sea lay bluer than you could believe even when you saw it—blue with a delicate yet deep silky blue, the exquisiteness of which was thrown up by the brilliant white lines of its lapping on the high coast, to the northward. We had just sat down, when Dora ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... necessary to remark that drug-taking is the most inefficient way of handling the situation. Everybody knows that narcotics are harmful to the delicate cells of the brain and that the dose has to be continuously increased in cases of chronic insomnia. If a person realizes that the drug is far more harmful than the insomnia itself, he is weak indeed ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... spectator's eye by building the side porches narrower, and crowning them with lower crests than is the case in the central entrance. The central tympanum represents the Last Judgment, with the Pelican above it that typifies the Resurrection. You may appreciate at once the delicate tracery of lacework in stone which covers this exterior and also the affection felt for its beauties by their guardians, if you will examine the model laboriously built up in wood and paper by an old vicar in the sixteenth century. His ten years of loving toil have been preserved in the Musee ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... amendments, and so has the Executive by the power given him to return them to the House of Representatives with his objections. It is in his power also to propose amendments in the existing revenue laws, suggested by his observations upon their defective or injurious operation. But the delicate duty of devising schemes of revenue should be left where the Constitution has placed it—with the immediate representatives of the people. For similar reasons the mode of keeping the public treasure should be prescribed by them, and the further removed it may be from the ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... her a particular and never-flagging interest. And now, without thinking, purely instinctively, she leaned forward and laid her hand caressingly on the lump of wax. There was something about the yielding, velvety texture that fascinated her, as though in her slim fingers some delicate nerves were responding to ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... after the ground has become warm and the heavy frosts are over. The planting may be done in rows far enough apart for cultivation, the tubers being set about a foot apart in the row. This tuber grows like a potato, but is more delicate than the potato. It is inclined to decay when out of the ground, but will not start growth as early as the potato, and therefore it is not desirable to start it early in the winter if the winters are cold and the ground apt to be very wet. Do not cut ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... through which the roadway wound like a shelf. Streaks of sunlight filtered through them; the September air was soft and sweet. The forest was like an old friend to Alix, and the time she spent in it was always her quietest time. The tempered light, the air scented with piney sweetness, the delicate summer humming of tiny forest voices, the brief snap of twigs, and the rustling of tiny bodies in the underbrush, these made the world in which she ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... Hurry, she's seen no little service in her time, I'm thinking; and if so be there comes a gale of wind, she'll require delicate handling, or she'll be apt to go t'other way to what the schooner we last took did. Now, to my mind, sir, the weather doesn't look at all pleasant like, and I shouldn't be surprised but what we get a pretty heavy gale of wind ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... opportunity. I was not the least in love with her—except by a very generous interpretation of the word, but I did not think that this unfortunate fact would seriously disturb my conscience. A life sentence for what you haven't done is apt to rob one's sense of honour of some of its more delicate points. ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... Lottery. Captain Byron on this, as well as on many another occasion, showed himself to be as humane as he was brave and skilful. Captain Southcomb, mortally wounded, was taken on board Byron's frigate, where he was treated with the greatest attention and most delicate courtesy, and when he died his body was sent ashore with every mark of the respect due to so brave an officer. Captain Stewart (of the Constellation) wrote Captain Byron a letter of acknowledgment for his great courtesy and kindness. [Footnote: The correspondence ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and delicate health, and met with one or two severe accidents. His career is a wonderful illustration of the power of the mind over the body. An amusing incident is told of him in regard to his size. He was attending ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... with a sharp knife, he cuts up into very small pieces, until several hundred pounds are thus prepared. Sometimes a small portion of the meat is boiled; but this cooked meat is only intended for cats who are not very well, and who need something more delicate than raw meat. Once a week—on Thursdays—the cat's-meat man cuts up fish instead of meat; for on Fridays all his cats have a meal of fish, of which they are very fond, and which is very ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... glass suddenly and wrenched the silk folds off her shoulder. She looked at the marks of his fingers on the delicate skin with a twist of the lips, then shut her eyes with a little gasp and hid her bruised arm hastily, her mouth quivering. But she did not blame him, she had brought it on herself; she knew his mood, and he did not ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... they set her down on the bare floor. She was extraordinarily beautiful, and shamed the glorious sun. The king ordered a hundred stripes to be laid on her tender body; she sighed a long sigh. Food was called for and table-cloths were spread. Delicate meats were set before the dog, and water given it in a royal cup of Chinese crystal. When it had eaten its fill, its leavings were placed before the lovely woman and she was made to eat of them. She wept and her tears were pearls; she smiled and her lips shed ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... lack of courage which was the principal fault, even if they had lost morale from being the under dog and lacked British and French initiative, but numbers and material. It was resource against resource again; a fight in the delicate business of the manufacture of the fragile framework, of the wonderful engines with their short lives, and of the skilled battalions of workers in factories. The Germans had to bring more planes from another front in order to restore the balance. The Allies foreseeing this brought still more themselves, ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... family of Thessalians, rugged mountaineers, in some respects resembling animals—the first mortals who had learned to manage a horse. But the bride, who had sprung from this race, was not at all like the men of her people. She was of noble form, with delicate youthful face, so beautiful that all the guests praised Pirithous ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... Heptameron, her principal work—a collection of prose tales in which are reflected the customary conversation, the morals of polite society, and the ideal love of the time. They are a medley of crude equivocalities, of the grossness of the fabliaux, of Rabelais, and of the delicate preciosity of the seventeenth century. Love is the principal theme discussed—youth, nobility, wealth, power, beauty, glory, love for love, the delicate sensation of feeling one's self loved, elegant love, obsequious love; perfect ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... out over the side to gaze in wonder through the perfectly limpid medium at what seemed to be a garden of flowers of the most beautiful and varied tints. There were groves, too, of shrubs, whose branches were of delicate shades of lavender, yellow, orange, and purple, and through the waving sea growths fishes, gorgeous in gold, orange, scarlet, and blue, flashed in the softened sunshine, as they were startled by the coming of ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... after toiling all night at sea endeavouring for subsistence, were obliged to yield their exhausted frames to the labours of the day. Even female labour could not be dispensed with; the strong as well as the weak, the delicate and sickly, and (shame to their oppressors) even the pregnant, barefooted and scantily clothed, were obliged to join in those rugged, unfeminine labours. In one instance I saw the husband quarrying stones, and the wife ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... remind himself of his old four-poster; Mr. Pickwick's first night in the marshal's room, Sam Weller entertaining Stiggins in the snuggery, Jingle in decline, and the chancery prisoner dying; in all these scenes there was writing of the first order, a deep feeling of character, that delicate form of humor which has a quaintly pathetic turn in it as well, comedy of the richest and broadest kind, and the easy handling throughout of a master in his art. We place the picture by the side of those of the great writers of this ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... wistfully added: "Why wouldn't you have told me? Why do you try to keep people from seeing when you do good things, and only show the—the not so good?" He did not answer, and she spoke again with a new and delicate caress in her voice: "You haven't deceived me utterly—there are times when I've ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... which was scarcely beauty, and yet stood in place of it, attracted me to-day as it had done when we first met. She was a woman who, I could imagine, might be more admired than many handsomer women. There was a distinction, an originality about the pale delicate face, dark arched brows, and gray eyes—eyes which were at ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... of this odd-tempered, shabby old man was sometimes sought by the jeweller who kept the more ostentatious shop in the High Street; but before Darley would undertake any 'tickle' piece of delicate workmanship for the other, he sneered at his ignorance, and taunted and abused him well. Yet he had soft places in his heart, and Hester Rose had found her way to one by her patient, enduring kindness ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... relation of the sexes in very much the same way that the ancient poets and romance writers used to think. And they can do things which English writers can not do, because their language has power of more delicate expression. ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... then just coming to the end of his thirty-second year. In physical appearance he was not like either the Norman or the Angevin type, but was taller and of a more delicate and refined cast, and his portrait shows a rather handsome face. In character and ambitions also he was not a descendant of his father's line. The humdrum business of ruling the state, of developing its law and institutions, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... be used in surface fishing, but only the most skillful anglers should expect success, as the manipulation of them requires exceedingly delicate service. ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... but sometimes the boy invited the journalist to his cabin and, boy-like, exhibited his treasures. He had two sisters at home; and of Olivia, the youngest, he had brought a dainty miniature done on ivory in delicate tints—a sweet-pictured countenance, fine and spiritual. On that fateful day in the day of Smyrna, Samuel Clemens, visiting in young Langdon's cabin, was shown this portrait. He looked at it with long admiration, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... substitution of a spider's long threads for wires in micrometer scales, intended for delicate astronomical observations. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... a delicate thermoscope, was constructed in 1878, and is the outcome of Edison's experiments with the carbon button. Knowing the latter to be extremely sensitive to minute changes of pressure, for example, those of sonorous ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Little, delicate twitterings vibrated on the air—the sleepy chirrup of awakening birds, the rustle of a fallen leaf beneath the pad of some belated cat stealing back to the domestic hearth, the stir of a rabbit in ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... might be witnessed on many a European vessel. The Corsairs of Algiers only served their enemies as they served them: their galley slaves were no worse treated, to say the least, than were Doria's or the King of France's own. Rank and delicate nurture were respected on neither side: a gallant Corsair like Dragut had to drag his chain and pull his insatiable oar like any convict at the treadmill, and a future grand master of Malta might chance to take his seat on the rowing ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... could have been so easily cast away at such an age. It is wonderful to me that, even after my descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion enough on me—a child of singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally—to suggest that something might have been spared, as certainly it might have been, to place me at any common school. Our friends, I take it, were tired out. No one made any sign. My father and mother ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... to hold any position, and especially one so peculiarly delicate in its relations to the public service, under suspicion of any sort of evil practice. And therefore he was willing to resign at once if the investigating committee and the mayor thought they were warranted even in assuming his guilt, although he himself would ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... never met a man so free from all self-consciousness, and yet so delicate and diffident the combination is a rare one. We went up a steep staircase to a room on the second floor. My companion threw the shutters open, setting all the flies buzzing. The top of a plane-tree was on a level ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
