"Erectness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not merely as man, but as John; I blush and ache till John is something pronounced and maintained against the mob of centuries, till men must feel his singularity and solidity, as the ocean is displaced and readjusted by every drop of rain. More or less, I must at least purely avail. Erectness is delivery to the private law, and something in each remains erect, and lifts him above the brute and the crowd. He is, and feels himself to be: he will advance and give ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... since, in her description of this interview, she told me that she received from him an impression as though he stretched forth his hand and touched her. She said, as well, that the erectness of his body and the fulness of his chest gave him the air of a conqueror who was invincible, while the pallor of his face and the glitter of his eye set him still further apart from ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... and began quickly to ascend the hill. Her figure had the erectness common to those accustomed to carry burdens on their heads, and also a grace and freedom of movement which impressed John with vague astonishment. As she turned upon the summit to point out the place of meeting, her face sparkling ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... followed. Charlotte had said nothing in reply; her brow was dark as with a fixed expression, and her high elegance, her handsome head and long, straight neck testified, through the dusk, to their inveterate completeness and noble erectness. It was as if what she had come out to do had already begun, and when, as a consequence, Maggie had said helplessly, "Don't you want something? won't you have my shawl?" everything might have crumbled away in the comparative poverty of the tribute. Mrs. Verver's rejection of it had the brevity ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... said Mr. Laudersdale, with sudden erectness. "No,—I have but one hope. It has seemed to me barely possible that your uncle may have communicated to you events of his early life,—that you may have heard, that there may have been papers telling of the real fate of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... a man in the prime of life, possibly forty-five. He was fully six feet in height, noticeably erect, with an erectness that gave something of the martial to his carriage, spare but muscular, shoulders high and square set, and above them a face deeply pock-marked, the features large but regular, the forehead broad and bulging rather prominently above the eyes. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... snapped sharply shut on its spring, Mr. I.W. Goldstone emerging. There was a great rotundity to his silhouette, the generous outward curve to his waist-line giving to his figure a swayback erectness, the legs receding rather short and thin ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... to a more rigid erectness. "Go back an' tell them boys thet I needs 'em," he ordered. "Tell 'em ef they don't stand by me now, I'm ruint. I'll send Bud away ef thet's all thet's ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... reply. But her husband did not fail to observe that she lost, almost instantly, that rigid erectness with which she had been sitting, nor that the motion of her needle had ceased. "My shirts are better made, and whiter than those of any other man in our shop," said Lee, encouraged ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... Linden said, with a momentary erectness of position. But he said no more; turning off then towards Faith with her oysters. And the gentle respect and quick attention with which she was served, Faith might feel, and take note of—yet not guess that its peculiar tone ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... purpose: since where was the use of looking at thy lovely body to find what is only to be found in thy soul, to which thy body owes the essence of even its own intoxication? For thy soul peeps out, from behind it, in the poise of thy head, and the straight erectness of its carriage, and the aroma of the royalty of sex that oozes, as it were, from its every gesture, mixed, in some unintelligible way, with a soft grace that seems to be all its own. But the spell thou ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... up a position at the side of the desk, where he could see every fleeting emotion that might cross the faces of all the others in the room. His form stiffened to military erectness, his face took on the purposeful aspect of a man about to carry to fruition plans which he had long nourished in secret. And as the others gazed on him, the conviction forced itself on them that here was a man who would pursue whatever ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... was eaten, and the dishes washed with an alacrity in agreeable contrast to the dilatory methods of the morning. Then the party divided, Claire and Priscilla going off in the direction of the woods—Priscilla walking with more than her usual erectness—while the others took the route to the pastures where the raspberries grew, Peggy having ascertained their exact location in her talk with Joe ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... and has been a mountain trapper between 40 and 50 years. He lived among the Crow Indians, where he married his wife, between thirty and forty years. He is about six feet in height, raw-boned and spare in flesh, but muscular, and, notwithstanding his old age, walks with all the erectness and elasticity of youth. His dress was of tanned buckskin, and from its appearance one would suppose its antiquity to be nearly equal to the age of its wearer. It had probably never been off his body since he first put it on. "I am," said he, "an old man—eighty-three ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... and that proud day for Clump, the keenness with which he had felt our rudeness, and the excitement of recital were, all together, too much for our good old castellan. The erectness of his figure gave way as he concluded, the enthusiasm in his features faded into dejection, and, as he turned from the table to leave the room, I saw a big drop, that had trickled down his wrinkled face, ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... the summer, as the other is the winter one. The day being very fine, and not too warm, I enjoyed myself much. I passed many fields in which the country people were making hay: they seemed very merry. The fellow who loaded the cart had a cocked hat, and by his erectness I should have thought to have been a soldier, but that every one who passed me had nearly the same air, and the same hat. Some of the hay-makers called to me, but in such barbarous patois, that I could make nothing of them. One company of them, saluting ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... had been contributed to it in some way by loosening the thumb-screws, they were next all set down as tightly as possible, to see if this tendency to erectness would be lost. Then, to the astonishment of every one in the court, and of several hundred people who were by this time watching from the interior windows, this infernal machine, without any explosion, burning of gases, or any apparent force acting upon it, slowly rose from the ground, ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... he labored forward, bent into a hoop, must have suggested the idea which was accepted as fact until I pulled myself together at the next halt and heard the mechanical and unimaginative half of me repeat 'Four thousand, seven hundred, and twenty-one.' The man raised himself into erectness with a groan, and a crippled greengrocer whom I had known in my youth, to me the basic type of hunchback—became an ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... a stiff erectness that drew Lawton back in his saddle, "no man shall ever dare to lay hands on bed of mine; it's ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the daisy under his feet, or plucked a branch of white-thorn from the spray: but in describing it, his mind seems imbued with the majesty and solemnity of the objects around him—the tall rock lifts its head in the erectness of his spirit; the cataract roars in the sound of his verse; and in its dim and mysterious meaning, the mists seem to gather in the hollows of Helvellyn, and the forked Skiddaw hovers in the distance. There ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin |
