"Elegancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were they not generally known to be amongst the most natural, and (till this later and universal luxury of the whole nation, since abounding in such expenses) the most magnificent that England afforded, and which indeed gave one of the first examples to that elegancy, since so much in vogue and followed, for the managing of their waters and other elegancies of that nature." Before he came into the possession of his paternal estate he resided at Say's Court, near Deptford, an ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... earlier steps in the path of refinement: man may build from a vulgar ambition for distinction, but he seldom plants unless prompted by love of Nature and elevated impulses. Lord Bacon, in his essay "Of Gardens," says, "When ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection." A case which seems to confirm this position occurs to us. The site of a noble building, erected for our Government, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... end of Two Crane Court, in Fleet Street, must not be omitted, though it be much more considerable on account of the learned members who assemble there, and the great advances that have been made by them of late years in natural philosophy, &c., than for the elegancy of the building. ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... to be done by many for the first time. There was much hard work for the women, as it was not a well-proportioned family; pupils and visitors added to the labor, but poetry and enthusiasm changed plain names into elegance, as Deborah into "Ora," and beautified the laundry and kitchen ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... fix our eyes upon the central portion. Here the painter expressed an idea at once noble and original. The figure of the Christ has not the delicate beauty of the dead Christ in the Pieta, or the finished elegance of the Christ Triumphant, but he has the splendid vigor of a forceful character. The Mother, less grand and noble than in the bereavement of the Pieta, less proud than in her young motherhood, is a gentle and lovely creature. Thus the intensely masculine is completed by the delicately feminine, ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... her whereabouts, followed almost instantly by the glad remembrance that she was indeed at home, that the little Elsie awoke the next morning. She sat up in the bed and gazed about her. Everything had a new, fresh look, and an air of simple elegance, that ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... bride, whose features they could distinctly see, seemed not more than sixteen years old, and extremely beautiful. The bridegroom, for some seconds, moved rather with his shoulder towards them, and his face averted; but his elegance of form and step struck the sisters at once with the same apprehension. As he turned his face suddenly, he was frightfully realized, and they saw, in the gay bridegroom before them, Sir Philip Forester. His wife uttered ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... pedants, imagine that they can supply, by the labours of industry, the deficiencies of nature. Paulus Manutius frequently spent a month in writing a single letter. He affected to imitate Cicero. But although he painfully attained to something of the elegance of his style, destitute of the native graces of unaffected composition, he was one of those whom Erasmus bantered in his Ciceronianus, as so slavishly devoted to Cicero's style, that they ridiculously employed the utmost precautions ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... sweet an occupation for lovers, who, as they thus see themselves twice over, imprint the picture still more deeply on their memories. He could guess, too, the stolen kiss snatched as they separated from each other's loved society. The luxury, the studied elegance, eloquent of the perfection of indolence, of ease; the extreme care shown, either to spare the loved object every annoyance, or to occasion her a delightful surprise; that might and majesty of love ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... reflect the highest honor on the laudable enterprize of the present times,—the Iron Bridge, known as Southwark Bridge, leading from the bottom of Queen Street, Cheapside to the Borough. It is constructed of cast-iron, and, from the river particularly, presents an appearance of elegance and magnificence; consisting of three arches only, the spacious span of each, stretching across the Thames in towering majesty, affords an aquatic vista ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... allow her to see this house again, nor the room from which she fled. I mean to place my idol in a new temple, where she may feel that life is altogether new. That house is being made a marvel of elegance and taste. I have been told of a poet who, being almost mad with love for an actress, bought the handsomest bed in Paris without knowing how the actress would reward his passion. Well, one of the coldest of lawyers, a man ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her attention, was the aspect of ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... voracious and destructive waves of tremendous evils, as in the waves of the ocean. For what other[6a] family ought I to reverence yet before that sprung from divine nuptials, sprung from Tantalus?—But lo! the king! the prince Menelaus, is coming! but he is very easily discernible from the elegance of his person, as king of the ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... chemical effect may have been, should the image appear stiff and monument-like, all is lost. "In the masterpiece, grace and elegance must be combined." ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... mental agitation; she forbade her heart to beat, or her inward terrors to betray themselves, and the brave girl appeared before all with a calm and collected aspect. She had declined every ornament of dress, and the very simplicity of her attire added to the charming elegance of her appearance. Her hair was bound with the "snood," the ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... skill to the wealth of beauty in the palace, and we know that he was always a welcome visitor there. From his boyhood Raphael was familiar with these artistic splendors, and how much this early environment contributed to his correct taste and habit of subdued elegance, no man can say. When Giovanni Sanzio realized that death was at his door, he gave Raphael into the keeping of the priest Bartolomeo and the boy's stepmother. The typical stepmother lives, moves and has her being in neurotic novels written by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... with the famous Madame du Barry, like her, a daughter of Lorraine. She was one of those perfect and striking beauties—a woman like Madame Tallien, finished with peculiar care by Nature, who bestows on them all her choicest gifts—distinction, dignity, grace, refinement, elegance, flesh of a superior texture, and a complexion mingled in the unknown laboratory where good luck presides. These beautiful creatures all have something in common: Bianca Capella, whose portrait is one of Bronzino's masterpieces; Jean Goujon's Venus, painted from the famous Diane ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Beast in Revelations,—a horn that has set more sober wits dancing than that of Huon of Bordeaux. Those were days, we are inclined to think, of more solid and elegant hospitality than our own,—the elegance of manners, at once more courtly and more frugal, of men who had better uses for wealth than merely to display it. Dinners have more courses now, and, like the Gascon in the old story, who could not see the town for the houses, we miss the real dinner in the multiplicity of its details. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... eyes were dark, but dull, and without meaning; the hair was black and glossy, but coarse; and there was the admired crop—a long crop, much like the tail of a horse—a switch tail. The fine figure was meagre, prim, and constrained. The beauty, the grace, and the elegance existed, no doubt, in their utmost perfection, but only in the imagination of her partial young sister. Her father, as Harriet told me, was familiarly called 'Jew Westbrook,' and Eliza greatly resembled one of the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Ensom, from the President's picture, full of grace and life, and richly meriting the term exquisite: nothing can be finer than the dark luxuriant hair contrasted with the alabaster delicacy and elegance of the features; the eyes too beam with benignant expressiveness. Wilkie's Bag-Piper has been powerfully engraved by Aug. Fox; and a Portrait of Lady Jane Grey, after De Heere, is an interesting variety. Milton composing Paradise Lost, from a drawing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... attempts to modify nature in the arrangement of the grounds. And there, noble and strong, upon a little eminence swelling at the bottom of the valley's cup, lay the great house, rude, unfinished, yet dignified. If it seemed just this side of elegance, yet the look of it savored of comfort. To a woman distracted and wearied it should have offered some sort of rest. To her who now gazed upon it the sight afforded only horror. This then was the place. Here was to be her trial. This ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... and it is with truth he observes of his "Rambler," "That he had laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations, and that he has added to the elegance of its construction and to the harmony of its cadence." In this description of his own refinement in style and grammatical accuracy, Johnson probably alluded to the happy carelessness of Addison, whose charm of natural ease ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the conversation about murder. Vera belonged to the Hockey Club (in a purely ornamental sense), and she had procured a frock for the ball which was calculated to crown her reputation as a mirror of elegance. The skirt had—but no (see the columns of the Staffordshire Signal for the 9th November, 1901). The mischief was that the gown lacked, for its final perfection, one particular thing, and that particular thing was separated from Vera by the glass front of Brunt's celebrated ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... occupied with the souls before him. He made them feel sympathy with what he spoke, for his own eye and heart were on them. He was, at the same time, able to bring out illustrations at once simple and felicitous, often with poetic skill and elegance. He wished to use Saxon words, for the sake of being understood by the most illiterate in his audience. And while his style was singularly clear, this clearness itself was so much the consequence of his being able thoroughly ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... really very ambitious for the younger members of the family. Jim, with his good looks and the brightness that was akin to wit, was her favourite. Then he took naturally to elegance. ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... went down the hill again, and over the bridge, past the glen and the burnt mill, and began to go up on the other side. Now across the way, at the top of the bank that overhung the dell, there stood a house of more than common size and elegance, in the midst of grounds that seemed to be carefully planted. A fine brick wall enclosed these grounds on the roadside, and at the top of the hill an iron gate gave ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... domestic, and modern Buenos Aires is adorned with many costly and attractive public edifices and residences. French renaissance, lavishly decorated, has become the prevailing style. The Avenida Alvear is particularly noted for the elegance of its private residences, and the new Avenida de Mayo for its display of elaborately ornamented public and business edifices, while the suburban districts of Belgrano and Flores are distinguished for the attractiveness of their country-houses and gardens. A part of the population is greatly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... whose members were the official hostesses of the fair. Everything was to be conducted at this great exposition in the most munificent manner possible. Ceremonies and entertainments which had been given at the dedicatory exercises in 1903 indicated a scale of elegance and boundless hospitality; in fact, hospitality was to be a distinguishing feature of this great exposition at St. Louis. The board of lady managers formed a part of the hospitable equipment, welcoming the world to the official home of the exposition, and were to fulfill one of ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... not form matrimonial alliances without the shogun's permission; that greater simplicity and economy must be obeyed in social observances, such as visits of ceremony, giving and receiving presents, celebrating marriages, entertaining at banquets, building residences, and general striving after elegance; that there must be no indiscriminate intermingling (of ranks); that, as regards the materials of dress, undyed silk with woven patterns (shiro aya) must be worn only by Court nobles (kuge) and others ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... there is a certain charm, and, above all things, he is a great poet—though one might like to deny it. Yes, the Frenchman, the Parisian, as a national figure, was in process of developing into a figure of elegance before we Russians had even ceased to be bears. The Revolution bequeathed to the French nobility its heritage, and now every whippersnapper of a Parisian may possess manners, methods of expression, and even thoughts that are above reproach in form, while all ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... applause of all good citizens, but that they may expect hereafter immortal glory in new forms of being. To illustrate this, he introduces the "Dream of Scipio," in which he explains the resplendent doctrines of Plato respecting the immortality of the soul with inimitable dignity and elegance. This Somnium Scipionis, for which we are indebted to the citation of Macrobius, is the most beautiful thing of the kind ever written. It has been intensely admired by all European scholars, and will be still more so. There are two translations of it in our ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... expression. As to the face in general, it is too narrow and too long at the lower part, too broad and too low in the higher regions of the eyes and the head. The whole picture, as reflected in the glass, represents a woman of some elegance, rather too pale, and rather too sedate and serious in her moments of silence and repose—in short, a person who fails to strike the ordinary observer at first sight, but who gains in general estimation on a second, and sometimes on a third ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... ran round and round the bower, and to and fro through it, gleefully chasing each other. Then they would assemble in groups, and hop up and down, and dance to one another in what Dot thought a rather awkward fashion; but she was thinking of the elegance and grace of the Native Companions, who can make beautiful movements with their long legs and necks, whilst these little bower birds are ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... luxury in the evening of her days. She was a handsome old lady; her refined features, soft blue eyes and white hair were a "composition" for an eighteenth-century French miniature, and her dress combined quiet elegance with careful taste. She was inflexibly loyal to her stated position; she neither "questioned" nor "controlled" Morgana, or attempted to intrude an opinion as to her actions or movements,—and if, ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... own self-supported basis, but resting on, and upheld by, some internal principle of necessity. I regretted in it the total absence of what I desired to find; and thus it seemed a mere work of art, serving only by its elegance and exquisite finish to captivate the eye. Nevertheless, I listened with pleasure to this eloquently gifted man, who diverted my attention from my own sorrows to the speaker; and he would have secured my entire acquiescence if he had appealed ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... its varnished elegance, with its Watteau dames and courtiers, and perhaps the knowledge that it enjoys widespread approval among the elect,—this is a different matter. In every American home that is a home, to-day, it demands attention. The visitor, after eyeing it with cautious ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... magnificence discoverable in these curious remains must lead to the conclusion that they could not have committed them to slight or ordinary buildings, for they were decorations which the experience of more than fourteen hundred years has scarcely surpassed. Even the looms of modern Brussels, in elegance and beauty of pattern, cannot fairly outvie the Mosaic Carpets of the ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... smile serene would have hailed the barbarous prodigy, or not consigned him to utter neglect and derision? But the Rev. Edward Irving, with all his native wildness, "hath a smooth aspect framed to make women" saints; his very unusual size and height are carried off and moulded into elegance by the most admirable symmetry of form and ease of gesture; his sable locks, his clear iron-grey complexion, and firm-set features, turn the raw, uncouth Scotchman into the likeness of a noble Italian picture; and even his distortion of sight only redeems the otherwise ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... childhood—one hears his nurse cry out—one is afraid—and the impression sticks. But if you should consider the spider with a strong microscope, you would be astonished at the finish of his members, at their admirable arrangement, and even at their elegance." ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... development of language is simply due to the beauty of Lucretius' poetry. But his main weapon was ridicule, and in this he showed himself a master. He tells the world, "The following paraphrase has nothing of the elegance of Horace or Lucretius, but seems to have all the elegance that so ridiculous a ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... ever say such things. If one meets with rudeness, take no revenge, cast no aspersions. Wit and tact, accomplishments and social talents, may have elevated some woman to a higher popularity than another, but no woman will gain that height by complaining. Command of temper, delicacy of feeling, and elegance of manner—all these are demanded of the persons who become leaders of society, and would remain so. They alone are "good society." Their imitators may masquerade for a time, and tread on toes, and fling ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... will know very well the Reason why one of these Verses is printed in Roman Letter; [3] and if he compares this Translation with the Original, will find that the three first Stanzas are rendred almost Word for Word, and not only with the same Elegance, but with the same short Turn of Expression which is so remarkable in the Greek, and so peculiar to the Sapphick Ode. I cannot imagine for what Reason Madam Dacier has told us, that this Ode of Sappho is preserved entire in Longinus, since ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... not counting the Portuguese discoverers early in the sixteenth century, is a mixed but very comfortable code of manners and customs. One has not here to struggle against the ignorance and incapacity of native servants. The clever, quick Indian has learned the polish and elegance of his French masters, and the first thing which struck me was the pretty manners of the native—or, as they are called, creole—inhabitants. Everybody has a "Bon soir!" or a "Salaam!" for us as we pass them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... what evoked in him wonder still more intense, was the sight, at an early period, of a girl seated in the room, who, in the freshness of her beauty and winsomeness of her charms, bore some resemblance to Pao-ch'ai, while, in elegance and comeliness, on the other hand, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... here." He led her towards the footlights, and, pulling back the edge of the curtain, allowed her to peep past him out into the dance-hall. She had never pictured a place like this, and in spite of her agitation was astonished at its gaudy elegance. The gallery was formed of a continuous row of compartments with curtained fronts, in which men and women were talking, drinking, singing. The seats on the lower floor were disappearing, and the canvas cover was rolling back, showing the polished hardwood underneath, while out through the wide folding- ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... was that I learned something about the couple who had preceded us in the use of these rooms. They were of middle age and of great personal elegance, but uncertain pay, the husband being nothing more nor less than a professional gambler. ...
— The Gray Madam - 1899 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... and even the Times must sometimes thank its stars that new plays are not produced every day, since after each such event its gravity is compromised, its platitude turned to epigram, its portentousness to wit, its propriety to elegance, and even its decorum into naughtiness by criticisms which the traditions of the paper do not allow you to sign at the end, but which you take care to sign with the most extravagant flourishes between the lines. I am not ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... nerve in me that had n't been twisted. Nanine alone could have made me cry. I loved Nanine tenderly; and Gaston, how one clung to that good fellow! The New Year's presents were not too much; nothing could be too much now. I wept unrestrainedly. Even the handkerchief in my breast-pocket, worn for elegance and not at all for use, was wet through by the time that moribund woman sank for the last time into ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... neighbours and prosecuting suits against up-state newspapers, stealing into New York for a glimpse of his first city residence down in Beach Street in Greenwich Village, where he wrote "The Pilot," and "Lionel Lincoln," and incidentally satisfying his curiosity as to the new developments in urban elegance and fashion. I can see FitzGreene Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake, a mile or two away from their accustomed haunts; and any one else whom it pleases me to see; our foreign guests and critics, Dickens, looking about superciliously, or Anthony Trollope, breathing ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... terms. But the more appreciative describers recognise the curiously combined humour, shrewdness, and kindliness which animated features naturally irregular and quite devoid of what his own generation would have called 'chiselled elegance.' He himself asserts—and it seems to be the fact—that from the time of the disappearance of his childish maladies to the attack of cramp, or gallstones, or whatever the evil was which came on in 1818, and from which he never really recovered, his health was singularly robust; ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... which would satisfy the most fastidious. Are not the Denslows enormously rich? Is not Dalton a sovereign of elegance? It was I who gave the fame of these qualities to the world, in true colors, not flattered. And they know it, and love me. Honoria Denslow is the most beautiful and truly charming woman of society. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... soften our slavish dependence, and despising that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners, supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex; and that secondary views should be brought to ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... grand attraction, the young man pressed onward with that alert and active step peculiar to Spaniards—unquestionably the best walkers in the world—joyfully fingering his ticket of Sombra por la tarde.[11] It entitled him to a place close to the barrier; for Andres, despising the elegance of the boxes, preferred leaning against the ropes intended to prevent the bulls from leaping amongst the spectators. Thence each detail of the combat is distinctly seen, each blow appreciated at its just value; and in consideration of these ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Hone, one of the most efficient and energetic Mayors the City of New York has ever had. He is best known to-day by his remarkable diary, edited by Bayard Tuckerman, which is a veritable storehouse of events relating to the contemporary history of the city. Mr. Hone had a fine presence with much elegance of manner, and was truly one of nature's noblemen. Many years ago Arent Schuyler de Peyster, to whom I am indebted for many traditions of early New York society, told me that upon one occasion a conversation occurred between Philip Hone and his brother ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... distinguished his public ministrations, as well as for the gentleness of his manners and the generosity of his heart. Of domestic animals he was devotedly fond. He took delight in pastoral scenery, and in solitary musings among the hills. His poetry is pervaded by elegance of sentiment and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... bribers ever punished, their illicitly gotten charters declared forfeited, and themselves placed under the ban of virtuous society? Far, very far, from it! The men who did the bribing were of the very pinnacle of social power, elegance and position, or quickly leaped to that height by reason of their wealth. They were among the foremost landholders and traders of the day. By these and a wide radius of similar means, they amassed wealth ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... abounds in the tourist season) one readily distinguishes the American lady; but here specific distinctions are obsorbed in generic identity, and the only difference between American and English ladies of which I am habitually conscious lies in the added touch of Parisian elegance which one notes in the costumes on Fifth Avenue. The average of beauty is certainly very high in New York. I will not say higher than in London, for there too it is remarkable; but this I will say, that night after night I have looked round the audiences in ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... sacred mansions of the dead.— Not that the monumental bust Or sumptuous tomb HERE guards the dust Of rich or great: (Let wealth, rank, birth, Sleep undistinguish'd in the earth;) This simple urn records a name That shines with more exalted fame. Reader! if genius, taste refined, A native elegance of mind; If virtue, science, manly sense; If wit, that never gave offence; The clearest head, the tenderest heart, In thy esteem e'er claim'd a part; Ah! smite thy breast, and drop a tear, For, know, THY Shenstone's ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... they knew her in their various ways—by small scratching noises, by ruffling of feathers, and tiny squeaks. The jackdaw, who was free, at once came down from the rafters, and, standing before her in slim elegance, raised his blue-grey crest and said "Jark," the only word he knew. They all gave ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... the pieces have a very classical air, and all are marked with an unusual degree of elegance and power."—Guardian. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... generation to the next, and you should aim at conformity to the canons of your own age. Those early masters of the short story, Irving, Hawthorne and Poe, had a tendency toward a diffuse, almost discursive style, which is not much in vogue now. Their ease and elegance are most commendable, but they lost somewhat more in force and conciseness than is thought ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... kinds of composition, should possess the qualities of style known as Clearness, Force, and Elegance, and should in all respects observe the principles of Unity, Selection, Coherence, Proportion, Emphasis, and Variety. Since the student from his study of Rhetoric is already familiar with these matters, it would be superfluous to dwell upon them in this book. A ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... but increasing with the advance, Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise, Deceived by its gigantic elegance; Vastness which grows, but grows to harmonize, All musical in its immensities: Rich marbles, richer painting, shrines where flame The lamps of gold, and haughty dome which vies In air with earth's chief structures, though the frame Sits on the firm-set ground—and ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... surrounded by a host of servants. I have heard an American complain, that in the best houses of Paris the society was rather mixed; the taste which prevails there was not pure enough for him; and he ventured to hint that, in his opinion, there was a want of elegance of manner; he could not accustom himself to see wit ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... leaned back in her chair to laugh at that, greatly to the surprise of the little girls, who were much impressed with the elegance ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... cities of Richmond and Petersburg. His estates were large, and at Westover—where he had one of the finest private libraries in America—he exercised a baronial hospitality, blending the usual profusion of plantation life with the elegance of a traveled scholar and "picked man of countries." Colonel Byrd was rather an amateur in literature. His History of the Dividing Line is written with a jocularity which rises occasionally into real humor, and which gives to the painful journey through the wilderness the air of a holiday expedition. ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... twenty-four or twenty-five years; and this conformity of age was the only point in which the two travellers resembled each other. The new-comer was somewhat above medium stature, with a figure combining both elegance and strength. His features were regular and well defined; his eyes black and brilliant; his moustache thick and curving, and his complexion deeply embrowned with the sun. All these circumstances tended to show that he was a man of action; while a certain air of energy ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... sufficiently comfortable and of good dimensions, had nothing too much of elegance about it. For example, the floor was uncarpeted; in France, however, a carpet is frequently dispensed with. The windows, too, were without curtains; the shutters, being shut, were securely fastened with iron bars, applied diagonally, after the fashion of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... French well. He conversed about his studies, his horses, &c., and had his favourite grey led under the window where the party were assembled. Mr Thurburn was present. They afterwards went over the Pasha's palace, were much pleased with the building, and admired the elegance with which it was furnished. In the evening Monsieur and Madame Laurin, Monsieur and Madame Cremieux, Captain Lyons, Captain Austin, and Mr Thurburn dined with us. They told Sir Moses that the Count de Walewski, a natural son of Napoleon, had arrived from France, and it was ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... svindlin' never ought to be formiliar with elegance and wirtew,' replied Mr. Weller. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... frame. But the delicate features of the Egyptian, the long, slim fingers, the narrow foot, were absent. In this man's countenance there was majesty instead of grace; in his figure, might, instead of elegance. The expression had need of only a little emphasis in either direction to become benign or terrible. Kenkenes caught a single glance of the eyes under the gray shelter of the heavy brows. Once, the young man had seen hanging from Meneptah's neck the rarest ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... woman of six-and-twenty, well-bred, and graceful in address, but deficient in frankness, warmth, or anything to say for herself. She piqued herself upon the elegance of her table appointments and of all her domestic arrangements; and this kind of vanity it was that constituted her greatest enjoyment in any of their parties. Sir John was a sportsman; Lady Middleton a mother. He hunted and shot, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... garden he met with beauty and elegance at every step; gold and silver apples glittered among the green leaves, and even the fir and pine cones were of gold, while birds of golden plumage hopped among the twigs and branches. Two maids came from behind a bush, who were commissioned to show his lordship round the garden, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... of withstanding the heat of fire when used for cooking. Their boat-builders constructed sea-going canoes capable of travelling long distances. They also made a delicate cloth from the bark of the mulberry tree, upon which they printed from wooden blocks patterns of great elegance. Their spears and clubs also showed much taste in their construction and ornamentation. The women made fishing nets of coconut fibre, with which they captured an abundance of fish. The tribes on the different islands kept up a system of barter ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... that of a woman wonderfully clad in gold-spangled, veil-like garments with round bosses shaped to the breast, covered with thin plates of gold fashioned like the scales of a fish which showed off the extraordinary elegance of her lithe form. The low lamp-light shone upon her face and the coronet of gold set upon her dark hair. What a face it was! Never in all his days had he seen its like for evil loveliness. The great, languid, oblong eyes, the rich red lips bent ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... he asks you "if you sign without fear or compulsion," say yes, boldly, as we do. Then, too, the right to will is ours. Now what becomes of the "tenant for life"? Shall he, the happy husband of a millionaire, who has lived in yonder princely mansion in the midst of plenty and elegance, be cut down in a day to the use of one-third of this estate and a few hundred a year, as long he remains her widower? And should he, in spite of this bounty on celibacy, impelled by his affections, marry again, choosing for a wife a woman as poor ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... finding things out for themselves. Puff now turned his attention to the country, or rather to the advertisements of estates for sale, and immortal George Robins soon fitted him with one of his earthly paradises; a mansion replete with every modern elegance, luxury, and convenience, situated in the heart of the most lovely scenery in the world, with eight hundred acres of land of the finest quality, capable of growing forty bushels of wheat after turnips. In addition to the estate there was a lordship or reputed lordship to shoot over, a river ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... generally began at the breakfast table, where she came looking as beautiful as a picture; the loveliest hue of the rose on her face, the freshness of the morning in her dark eyes and on her lips; dressed with great elegance, always with one lovely flower in her hair, and a knot of fresh, fragrant blossoms at her breast; the fairest of women, but how I disliked her. I can imagine that to any gentleman her society must have ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... From that moment, she not only knew what love was like, but she knew love's dear ambitions. To have come from a stony hill-farm and a bare small wooden house, was like a cave-dweller's coming to make a permanent home in an art museum, such had seemed the elaborateness and elegance of Miss Pyne's fashion of life; and Martha's simple brain was slow enough in its processes and recognitions. But with this sympathetic ally and defender, this exquisite Miss Helena who believed in her, ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... disgust must be abandoned. It is the natural order of things. From old production as of universal literature survive the forgetfulness of the rough productions, destined to excite laughter (Aristophanes, Rabelais, etc.), or lascivious things, but written with an elegance (Boccaccio). Not one book written in order to excite nausea outlived. Zola, for the sake of the renown caused by his works, for the sake of the scandal produced by every one of his volumes, killed his future. On account of that ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... together over muslins and silks, and were very good friends. Lizzie could scarcely help wondering at Mrs. Ford's zeal on her behalf. Might she not have referred it to her guardian's principles? Her wardrobe, hitherto fashioned on the Glenham notion of elegance, was gradually raised to the Leatherborough standard of fitness. As she took up her bedroom candle the night before she left ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... constantly taking off and putting on one of those slouched sombreros which are the traditional property of the Virginian or Carolinian of romance. When this was on, he was very picturesque, in spite of his mock elegance; and when it was off, and he sat nursing it and turning it about and not knowing what to do with it, he could hardly be said to be awkward. He evidently had a natural relish for brilliant accessories, and appropriated what came to his hand. This was visible in his talk, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... faculties. Byron had not yet done, this, when he was rushing about between London, Brighton, Cambridge, and Newstead—shooting, gambling, swimming, alternately drinking deep and trying to starve himself into elegance, green-room hunting, travelling with disguised companions,[1] patronizing D'Egville the dancing-master, Grimaldi the clown, and taking lessons from Mr. Jackson, the distinguished professor of pugilism, to whom he afterwards affectionately refers ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... us are passed in the enjoyment of all that art can win from nature; when, if the elaborate repast be more deeply relished than sages might approve, it is redeemed from sensuality by the presence of elegance and beauty. What is the American pendant to this? I will not draw any comparisons between a good dinner party in the two countries; I have heard American gentlemen say, that they could perceive no difference between them; but in speaking of general manners, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... stranger is in their gates, the two prettiest girls in their possession sit at his right and left, the two less attractive next again, et seriatim. So at once a damsel of comely mien, arrayed in black silk attire, of faultless elegance, cried to me, pointing to a chair by her side, "Bersh tu alay, rya!" (Sit down, sir),—a phrase which would be perfectly intelligible to any Romany in England. I admit that there was another damsel, who is generally regarded by most people as the true gypsy ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... beautiful as ever, and even more captivating; for she has now a look of ease and happiness that animates her whole face. Miss Linley was with her; she is very handsome, but nothing near her sister; the elegance of Mrs. Sheridan's beauty is unequalled by any I ever saw, except Mrs. Crewe. I was pleased with her in all respects. She is much more lively and agreeable than I had any idea of finding her; she was very gay, and very unaffected, and totally free from airs ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... brink of an inaccessible precipice. On a rocky eminence, in the vicinity of a battery close to Prescott Gate, erected in 1797, was an old stone building, generally known as the Bishop's Palace. Like all the ancient structures of Quebec, this building had no claims to elegance of form, although much labour and expense had been bestowed on its construction. The chapel of this building, situated near the communication with the lower {306} town, was converted into a chamber, in which were held the first meetings of the ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... distinguished. His domed forehead, great white moustache, lean cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering sunshine by an old brown Panama hat. His legs were crossed; in all his attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who every morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief. At his feet lay a woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a Pomeranian—the dog Balthasar between whom and old Jolyon primal aversion had changed into attachment ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... by the Captain was arranged with much elegance. Hothouse flowers and fruits; wines with the icedew sparkling on the dark glass; chickens and tongue, idealized by the confectioner's art, and scarcely recognizable beneath rich glazings and embellishments of jellies and forcemeats; the airiest ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... delivered entire, but the greater part of the book was given piecemeal during a period of twenty-three years. The Koran is written in Arabic prose, but its sentences generally conclude in a long-continued rhyme. The language is considered to be of the utmost elegance and purity, and it has become the standard of the Arabic tongue. Muhammadans pay it the greatest reverence, and their most solemn oath is taken with the Koran placed on the head. Formerly the sacred book could only be touched by a Saiyad or a Mulla, and an assembly always rose when ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... liquid and transparent. And from that time she often observed that her gaiety was more gentle, her smile more frequent, her laugh less bell-like; and although she was as wild as ever, there was more elegance in her motions, and more music in her voice. And she clung to her sister with far greater ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... full of canned vegetables and cracker boxes. The only point in favor of a life at the grocery was that I would have been nearer to the woods; but if I could not be in the woods, of what avail was that? The Morrises were people of elegance and refinement, and their home expressed their culture. I had made a pleasant exchange, and I felt it was wise to be ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... set rules for drawing the general form of the pallet arms, only to be governed by and conforming to about what we would deem appropriate, and to accord with a sense of proportion and mechanical elegance. Ratchet-tooth pallets are usually made in what is termed "close pallets"; that is, the pallet jewel is set in a slot sawed in the steel pallet arm, which is undoubtedly the strongest and most serviceable form of pallet made. We shall next consider ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... speculation, and with his increased profits, himself and his children assumed a higher and more important tone and bearing in society. In fact, his sons and daughters passed as ladies and gentlemen, not only in external appearance, but in elegance of manners and cultivation of mind; for he spared no expense on their education, as well in his original as in his subsequent condition of life; besides that at this period, and for a long time previous, the County of Limerick was the great ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... suggested by the affectionate sentiments of our nature—a desire to preserve as long as possible the mortal remains of loved ones; but MM. Volney and Pariaet think it was intended to obviate, in hot climates especially, danger from pestilence, being primarily a cheap and simple process, elegance and luxury coming later; and the Count de Caylus states the idea of embalmment was derived from the finding of desiccated bodies which the burning sands of Egypt had hardened and preserved. Many other suppositions have arisen, but it is thought ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... Gunther presents himself. "I heard you lauded far down the Rhine," Siegfried says; and, with the fresh directness again of ancient manners: "Either fight with me, or be my friend!" As we see him for the first time among common mortals, we perceive the effect of high elegance which pertains to Siegfried's calm, his careless perfect strength and simplicity. Gutrune who has not removed her marvelling gaze from him since his entrance, withdraws—to prepare the drink. As Hagen takes his horse to stable, Siegfried charges him, while a dear memory sings ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear," by showing that the head and front of our offending, "the Unconditioned," is no modern invention of Teutonic barbarism, but sanctioned even by the Attic elegance of a Plato. And in the second place, it contains almost a history in miniature of the highest speculations of philosophy, both in earlier and in later times, and points out, with a clearness and precision the more valuable because uninfluenced by ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... his mind any of those sublime ideas which he invariably experiences while contemplating the works of the ancients, or the modern productions of Michael Angelo Buonarotti. Canova, in fact, though he possessed the grace, the elegance, and the liveliness of the greatest masters of Italy, could never surmount a certain degree of littleness, which failure predominates in most of his works. The calm, tranquil, and dignified pathos of Leonardo di Vinci cannot be traced in Canova's countenances, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... boasted at the table of the British governor that a regiment, just landed from England, contained among its officers some of the finest specimens of martial elegance in his Majesty's service; in fact, the most superb-looking fellows ever landed upon the shores of the new World. 'I wager your excellency a pair of gloves,' said Mrs. Morris, an American lady, 'that I will show you a finer man in the procession ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... late portraits are even more energetic than those of his early maturity. He shows himself a wise man of the world. "Do not be a grovelling sycophant," some of them seem to say, "but remember that courtly manners and tempered elegance can do you no harm." Titian, then, was ever ready to change with the times, and on the whole the change was toward a firmer grasp of reality, necessitating yet another advance in the painter's mastery of his craft. Titian's real greatness consists in the fact that he was as able to produce ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... and sixpence, he glanced at himself in the mirror, which he was splashing. A stoutish, broad-shouldered, fair, chubby man, with a short bright beard and plenteous bright hair! His necktie pleased him; the elegance of his turned-back wristbands pleased him; and he liked the rich ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... a want of picturesque beauty in the woods. The young growth of timber alone has any pretension of elegance of form, unless I except the hemlocks, which are extremely light and graceful, and of a lovely refreshing tint of green. Even when winter has stripped the forest it is still beautiful and verdant. The young beeches too are ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... wares in Europe. The products of Damascus, Mosul, Alexandria, Cairo, and other great cities were carried across the Mediterranean to the Italian seaports, whence they found their way into all European lands. The elegance of the Orient, with its silks, tapestries, precious stones, perfumes, spices, pearls, and ivory, was so enchanting that an enthusiastic crusader called ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... the full significance of 'lamiter' came to her. He was covered, however, as Salemina had supposed, and the occurrence gave us a precious opportunity of chaffing that dungeon of learning. He was tolerably alert and vigorous, too, although he certainly did not impart elegance to a vehicle, and he knew every street in the court end of Edinburgh, and every close and wynd in the Old Town. On this our first meeting with him, he faltered only when Francesca asked him last of all to drive to 'Kildonan House, Helmsdale'; supposing, not unnaturally, that ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... blue-and-white room——" repeated Juliet. Then she came over and dropped on her knees by her friend in her impulsive way and put both arms around her. The plain little going-away gown touched folds with the one whose elegance was equalled only by its cost. Anthony Robeson's wife looked straight up into the eyes of her ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... Queenston to Toronto, or to that in which we travelled from the latter place to Kingston, or I have no doubt I may add to any other in the world. This steamboat, which is called the Burlington, is a perfectly exquisite achievement of neatness, elegance, and order. The decks are drawing-rooms; the cabins are boudoirs, choicely furnished and adorned with prints, pictures, and musical instruments; every nook and corner in the vessel is a perfect curiosity of graceful comfort and beautiful contrivance. Captain Sherman, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... for fears. From the crown of her dainty bonnet to the point of her boot she was the picture of exquisite refinement; tall, beautifully formed, carrying her head like a queen, gowned in perfect, quiet elegance, she appeared more like Ruth's older sister ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... mother, he said, "I'm in earnest, mother, about your carrying so many useless things. We don't want them. Our house is full now, and besides that, Mrs. Livingstone is very particular about the style of her furniture, and I am afraid yours would hardly come up to her ideas of elegance." ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... man had been full of his message a moment before, but now he stammered and hesitated because of something cold in the other's eye as it seemed to note the unwonted elegance of his attire. He took a quick breath ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... attention essential to the best use of words. Perhaps few are endowed with both the inventive and the critical faculty. A certain inner sense enables one to know, according to his lights, whether the story itself is true or false; but elegance of style is due chiefly to training, to a cultivation like that of the ear for music. Possibly we are entering on an age in which the people care less for form, for phraseology, than for what seems to them true, real—for what, as they would express it, "takes hold of them." ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... office in Clifford Street, in the centre of the luxurious, pleasure-mad, love-mad West End of London seemed shocking and contrary to nature, and Lilian certainly so regarded it. She pictured the shut shops, and shops and yet again shops, filled with elegance and costliness—robes, hats, stockings, shoes, gloves, incredibly fine lingerie, furs, jewels, perfumes—designed and confected for the setting-off of just such young attractiveness as hers. She pictured herself rifling those deserted and silent shops by some magic means and ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... king. I have, however, reason to be thankful to you; this house which you have built in Jager Street is stately and handsome, and large enough for a cavalier of my pretensions. You have, also, at the cost of the king, furnished it with such princely elegance that it is in all things an appropriate residence for a cavalier. Do you not remember my description of such a house? The king called it then a Spanish air-castle. You, great-hearted man, have made my castle in the air a splendid reality, ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... faintly. He looked almost handsome there in the moonlight, but under his evening dress the square build of the Prussian trooper, the rigid back, and sturdy limbs were perhaps too apparent for ideal civilian elegance. Dorothy looked into his serious young face. He touched his blond mustache, felt unconsciously for the sabre that was not dangling from his left hip, remembered, coloured, and stood up ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... influence he is able to exercise from the first over such a character as Mademoiselle de Courteheuse. His charm, in fact, is in the union of that gay and apparently wanton nature with a genuine power of appreciating devotion in others, which becomes devotion in himself. With all the much-cherished elegance and worldly glitter of his personality, he is capable of apprehending, of understanding and being touched by the presence of great matters. In spite of that happy lightness of heart, so jealously fenced about, he is to be wholly caught at last, as he is worthy to be, by the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... for the first time to perform, one of its dictates caught him to despise that species of mechanical knowledge which it was, just at this moment, so important to the commander of la Fontange to possess. He could dance to admiration, did the honors of his cabin with faultless elegance, and had caused the death of an excellent mariner, who had accidentally fallen overboard, by jumping into the sea to aid him, without knowing how to swim a stroke himself,—a rashness that had diverted those exertions which might ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... giving a dewy freshness and tranquillity to the scene,—an air of solitude, which reminds one of a convent of Carthusians, and all the more because, on an artificial island in the river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior elegance of which is worthy of the luxurious financier who constructed it. Les Aigues, my dear Nathan, once belonged to that Bouret who spent two millions to receive Louis XV. on a single occasion under his roof. How many ardent passions, how many distinguished minds, how many fortunate circumstances ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Mrs. Coiler, "after her early disappointment (not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in that), requires so much luxury and elegance—" ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Ellison, and the more than ordinary concern that appeared in the former lady's countenance whenever the masquerade was mentioned, and which; unfortunately, was the principal topic of their discourse; for Mrs. Ellison gave a very elaborate description of the extreme beauty of the place and elegance of the diversion. ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the special qualities that have made Freytag's literary work so enduring, so dear to the Teuton heart, so successful in every sense of the word? For one thing, there are a clearness, conciseness and elegance of style, joined to a sort of musical rhythm, that hold one captive from the beginning. So evident is his meaning in every sentence that his pages suffer less by translation than is the case with almost any ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... of his way to the Brewster House, the elegance and newness of which the citizens of Freeport openly boasted. Mr. Lincoln had preceded him, and was even then listening to a few remarks of burning praise by an honorable gentleman. Mr. Lincoln ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... unequivocal admiration as a perfect model of the florid style: and from the inferences deducible from the dimensions and relative position of the three columns and their entablature, it is clear that the elegance and propriety of their arrangement, as members of an entire edifice, were equal to the grace of the proportions of the still existing parts, and to the beauty, however exquisite, of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... perhaps be well to preserve beside this paragraph another cutting out of my store-drawer, from the 'Morning Post,' of about a parallel date, Friday, March 10th, 1865:- "The SALONS of Mme. C-, who did the honours with clever imitative grace and elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, marquises, and counts—in fact, with the same MALE company as one meets at the parties of the Princess Metternich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some English peers and members ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... accept a gingham frock which I made for her, and some stockings and shoes. Such dainty little feet as hers are, and such a lovely child! I have scarcely ever seen one so beautiful, and it is not common beauty, but of the rarest sort, with elegance and refinement in every feature and movement. It is a thousand pities that she should be left here to grow up in poverty without education, or any of the things she was born to, for, as I told you in my last, the family was once wealthy, and Annie herself would be a great ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... opportunity. Its material was some tweed mixture; it had gone inconceivably shabby, it was shrunk from old age, it was ragged at the elbows; but any one could see at a glance that it had been made in London by a celebrated tailor, by a distinguished specialist. Blunt came towards me in all the elegance of his slimness and affirming in every line of his face and body, in the correct set of his shoulders and the careless freedom of his movements, the superiority, the inexpressible superiority, the unconscious, the unmarked, ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... one merchant. These added to the already fairly complete plenishings, many of which had come over the mountains from Virginia when Sevier opened up the new State, gave an air of abundance, even of sober elegance to the room. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... their expression more naive than her daughter's—this had proved too difficult a problem for the usually facile technique of Falcroft. Give him a brilliant virtuoso theme and he could handle it with some of the sweep and splendour of the early Carolus Duran or the brutal elegance of the later Boldini. But Madame Mineur was a pastoral. She did not express nervous gesture. She was seldom dynamic. To "do" her in dots like the pointillistes or in touches after the manner of the earlier impressionists would be ridiculous. Her abiding charm was her ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... they not much entering oftentimes into the real contents of their authors, and judging which were the most accurate discoverers of truth, and most to be depended on in the several histories, but rather inquiring who wrote the finest style, and had the greatest elegance in their expressions; which are things of small consequence in comparison of the other. Thus you will sometimes find great debates among the learned, whether Herodotus or Thucydides were the finest historian in the Ionic and Attic ways of writing; which signify little as to the ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... worth a hundred times its weight in gold. They are all choice and rare tulips, I may say the choicest and rarest in the kingdom. I prize them above precious stones, for what ruby or sapphire can be compared to them for beauty and elegance? You will learn in time to appreciate them, whatever ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... labour themselves. There was also, what I cannot help disliking at breakfast, cheese: it is the custom over all the Highlands to have it; and it often smells very strong, and poisons to a certain degree the elegance of an Indian repast[500]. The day was showery; however, Rasay and I took a walk, and had some cordial conversation. I conceived a more than ordinary regard for this worthy gentleman. His family has possessed this ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of antique vases have been found; and it is said that the general taste of the inhabitants is apparently influenced by them; insomuch that strangers coming to Naples, are commonly struck with the diversity and elegance even of the most ordinary vases for common uses. See D'Hancarville's preliminary discourses to the magnificent collection of Etruscan vases, published by Sir ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... parallel passages, and an analysis of the context. As the book is one of ready access, I need not trouble you with a quotation; but I may mention that Mr. Gilchrist has added, in a MS. note in my copy, that "Among the poems appended to those of Lord Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt, is one of considerable elegance in the same measure as those of Milton, nor is it unlike in its subject: the following lines may throw some light on the present ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... green-house adjoining the apartment. The King made me sit beside him and talk a great deal—too much, perhaps—for he has the art of raising one's spirits, and making you forget the retenue which is prudent everywhere, especially at court. But he converses himself with so much ease and elegance, that you lose thoughts of the prince in admiring the well-bred and accomplished gentleman. He is, in many respects, the model of a British monarch—has little inclination to try experiments on government otherwise than through ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... of elegance quite upset Caleb, and he began to think that if Clorinda was black, and couldn't write her name, she really was a wonderful woman. Clo was so softened by his applause that they got on very harmoniously, and the invitations were written out in Clorinda's peculiar phraseology and in Caleb's largest ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... "I would like that; but I feel within my soul that I would like better than all the world my husband. Mio caro sposo!" she said, as if it were impossible to give in any other language the infinite tenderness, the loving elegance with which the Italian tongue and accent clothe those delightful words. Besides, Italian was Juana's ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... and Albert were elected after his death and from his descendants." This last of the Romans was that famous Frederick II., who died in 1250, and of whom Dante said in his Treatise on the Language of the People: "The illustrious heroes, Frederick Caesar and his son Manfredi, followed after elegance and scorned what was mean; so that all the best compositions of the time came out of their Court. Thus, because their royal throne was in Sicily, all the poems of our predecessors in the Vulgar Tongue were called Sicilian." Rudolf I. of Hapsburg, founder of the Imperial House of Austria, was ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... minds to first-love's memory pledged The second Cupid's born full-fledged. I saw, and trembled for the day When you should see her beauty, gay And pure as apple-blooms, that show Outside a blush and inside snow, Her high and touching elegance Of order'd life as free as chance. Ah, haste from her bewitching side, No friend for you, far less a bride! But, warning from a hope so wild, I wrong you. Yet this know, my Child: He that but once too nearly hears The music of forefended spheres, Is thenceforth lonely, and for all His days like ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... occupies the centre, supported by four pillars. The extraordinary beauty of the inlaying of shells, mother-of-pearl, crystal, and precious stones of every color, the splendor of the gilding, and the elegance of the costly kinkob curtains with which it is hung, combine to render this one of the most striking and beautiful objects to be seen on the Meinam. The barge is usually manned by one hundred and fifty men, their paddles ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... is twenty kopeks (about ten cents), the value of the stamp. But hotel and lodging-house keepers never set it down in one's bill at less than double that amount. It often rises to four or five times the legal charge, according to the elegance of the rooms which one occupies, and also according to the daring of the landlord. In one house in Moscow, they even tried to make us pay again on leaving. We refused, and as we already had possession ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... military evolutions were over, a loud shout announced that the competitors were about to step forth for the shooting of the popinjay— the figure of a bird suspended to a pole. When a slender young man, dressed with great simplicity, yet with an air of elegance, his dark-green cloak thrown back over his shoulder, approached the station with his fusee in his hand, there was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... almost midsummer when he passed over it. He arrived at Rich Bar the latter part of June, and found the revivifying effect of its bracing atmosphere far surpassing his most sanguine hopes. He soon built himself an office, which was a perfect marvel to the miners, from its superior elegance. It is the only one on the Bar, and I intend to visit it in a day or two, when I will give you a description of its architectural splendors. It will perhaps enlighten you as to one peculiarity of a newly discovered mining ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... charming in the world: she dresses to perfection! In her presence one never thinks of anything but the wonderful combination of colors, and the graceful flowing of drapery, that have produced certain artistic effects in her outward adorning. She is style, fashion, elegance, taste personified; consequently she is very charming as an exhibition of the newest and most captivating costumes,—as an inventor and leader of modes that become the rage when they ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... "But a regular Paradise Lost for elegance of scenery and be-yooty of geography. Ye're wakened every morning by the sweet singin' of red birds with seven purple tails, and the sighin' of breezes in the posies and roses. And the inhabitants never work, for they can reach out and pick steamer baskets of the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... and did our woodwork ourselves. Jack painted the floor a soft gray that would blend with anything, and after it was dry we laid on it one of our chief treasures. It was a grass rug, in two shades of green, with a stenciled border and a general air of elegance that almost overpowered us. It was large enough almost to cover the floor, and we stenciled green borders on our curtains and drapery in ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... scrupulously neat. His grandson, who was the only one allowed in his dormitory at all hours, found him early in the morning in his blue coat with high, pointed collar and a black stock folded around his neck, ornamented with an enormous pearl. He maintained this correct old-time elegance until overtaken by illness. Whenever sickness compelled him to keep his bed he would give orders to his servant not to admit ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Street stands, nevertheless, an oasis in the midst of a desert, a pretty and commodious little theatre, called the Olympic. The entertainments here provided have earned, for brilliance and elegance, so well-deserved a repute, that the Olympic Theatre has become one of the most favorite resorts of the British aristocracy. The Brahminical classes appear oblivious of the yellow streak of caste, when they come hither. On four or five nights in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... with him for several days for I recall being hypnotized into ordering a twenty-dollar tailor-made suit from a South Clark street merchant—you know the kind. It was a "Prince Albert Soot"—my first made-to-order outfit, but the extravagance seemed justified in face of the known elegance of man's apparel ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... was ushered into the artist's abode. Once within, I hardly dared to speak, lest what I saw might vanish away, as with the wave of a fairy's wand. Was I not a moment before down in that dusty, squalid street, and here I am now in a beautiful room whose appointments are all of quiet elegance—costly but in exquisite taste, and where absolute peace and quiet reign. The wide windows open upon a lovely green garden, which adds the final touch of restful repose to ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... satisfying. There was a certain grim power beneath the Greys' mahogany and velvets that thrilled while it appalled. Precisely that side of the thing appealed to her brother. He would have seen little or nothing in the plain elegance yonder, while here he saw a Japanese vase that cost no cent less than a thousand dollars. He meant to be able to duplicate it some day. He knew that Grey was poor and less knowing than he ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... it had undoubtedly been written with great labour; and who is willing to think that he has been labouring in vain? He had infused into it much knowledge and much thought; had often polished it to elegance, often dignified it with splendour, and sometimes heightened it to sublimity: he perceived in it many excellencies, and did not discover that it wanted that without which all others are of small avail, the power of engaging attention ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... exclaimed a young man in an under tone, to a friend, who stood near Henry Clarence, as Melvina swept into the room dressed in a style of elegance and effect that attracted ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... creeping in a manner not to be imagined, and far less explained, toward the lithesome, wholesome curving underneath her mantle-fold, and out of sight and harm, as I thought; not being her front waist. However, I was dashed with that, and pretended not to mean it; only to pluck some lady-fern, whose elegance did me ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... on the back of his head; his shirt bosom was sadly crumpled; above the knees, to a casual glance, he presented the appearance of a man carefully attired in evening dress; below, his legs were sodden and muddied, his shoes of patent-leather, twin wrecks. Alas for jauntiness and elegance, alack ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance |
