"Fastidious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... faults; your eyes are blear: You eye your neighbour's; straightway you see clear, Like hawk or basilisk: your neighbours pry Into your frailties with as keen an eye. A man is passionate, perhaps misplaced In social circles of fastidious taste; His ill-trimmed beard, his dress of uncouth style, His shoes ill-fitting, may provoke a smile: But he's the soul of virtue; but he's kind; But that coarse body hides a mighty mind. Now, having scanned his breast, inspect your own, And see if there no failings ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... man in this work. It was solely the desire to have his mass of evidence sufficiently complete, solely Darwin's great characteristic of never publishing till he had carefully weighed all aspects of his subject for years, solely, in short, his most fastidious scientific conscience that restrained him from challenging the world in 1859 with a book in which the theory of the descent of man was fully set forth. Three years, frequently interrupted by ill-health, were needed for the actual writing of the book ("Life and Letters", Vol. I. page 94.): ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... earnest to impress your own honest conviction upon others, and no matter what your delivery, tho your gestures shock every rule in Quintilian, you will command the ear and influence the debates of the most accomplished, the most fastidious, and, take it altogether, the noblest assembly ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... well to guard against, or, if they are formed, to relinquish. A man who may be called at a moment's warning into the fragrant boudoir of suffering loveliness should not unsweeten its atmosphere with reminiscences of extinguished meerschaums. He should remember that the sick are sensitive and fastidious, that they love the sweet odors and the pure tints of flowers, and if his presence is not like the breath of the rose, if his hands are not like the leaf of the lily, his visit may be unwelcome, and if he looks behind him ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... be relieved. Women played a small, almost comic, and not very exalted part in his life. He looked upon them compassionately as very imperfect, morbid creatures. In his love-affairs he had not been specially fastidious. His mother had been a downtrodden little woman, who had never understood him; his sister full of provincial pettiness. So he had no very high opinion of the sex. Incidentally he considered horses also as particularly stupid animals, and was capable of flying into a temper when a horse-lover tried ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... rather lengthy novel. Why is it that a reader, who, although he has crossed the ocean many times, has never cared to enter the engine-room of a liner, is yet willing enough to meet on intimate terms Mr. Kipling's engineer, Mac Andrew? And why is it that ladies who, in actual society, are fastidious of their acquaintanceship, should yet associate throughout a novel with the Sapho of Daudet? What is the reason why these fictitious characters should seem, for nearly every reader, more worth while than the very same sort of ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... who was a rather good-looking chap and fastidious to a degree, did not possess the strength to keep his heart anywhere near the customary level. It went hurtling to his very boots. He shook hands with the blushing young woman and then involuntarily shrank toward the cocktails, disregarding ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... consisted of robbiboo, a compound of flour, pemmican, and water, boiled to the consistency of very thick soup. Though not a species of food that would satisfy the fastidious taste of an epicure, robbiboo is, nevertheless, very wholesome, exceedingly nutritious, and withal palatable. Pemmican, its principal component, is made of buffalo flesh, which fully equals (some think greatly excels) beef. The recipe for making it is as follows:-First, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... uncontrollable desire to wipe off the apologetic smile with a well directed blow. Mr. Denman's parting advice was in his mind and he was devoting all his powers to the business of adjusting himself to his present environment. But to his fastidious nature the experiences of the morning made it somewhat doubtful if he should be able to carry out the policy of adjustment to the extreme of schooling himself to bear with equal mind the daily contact with the dirt and disorder which ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... Royal Academy, has nobly vindicated Hogarth as an artist and a man, in words that all who heard will long remember. "Hogarth," he said, "it is true, is often gross; but it must be remembered that he painted in a less fastidious age than ours, and that his great object was to expose vice. Debauchery is always made by him detestable, never attractive." Charles Lamb, one of the best of his commentators, who has viewed his labors in a kindred spirit, speaking of one of his most elaborate and varied works, the "Election ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the vale of years and long past the first glamour of her enthusiasm for the Kingdom. It had been her mischance to occupy previously in the community-house that apartment which the good man saw to be most suitable for his young and somewhat fastidious bride. Not without makeshifts, indeed, many of which partook of this infelicity, was the celestial order of marriage to be obeyed and the world brought back to its primitive purity ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... have been the last man in the world to object to horrible stories, having himself written some of the most horrible that exist in the world. The author of the Madman's Manuscript, of the disease of Monk and the death of Krook, cannot be considered fastidious in the matter of revolting realism or of revolting mysticism. If artistic horror is to be kept from the young, it is at least as necessary to keep little boys from reading Pickwick or Bleak ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... curious cutlery and jewels, who does not paint his face with red ochre, and who sometimes takes a sidelong glance at his affairs, and there is no reason why you should not think of such a one as an Indian king. India is not very fastidious; so long as the Government is satisfied, the people of India do not much care what the Rajas are like. A peasant proprietor said to Mr. Caird and me the other day, "We are poor cultivators; we cannot afford to keep Rajas. The Rajas are for ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... precocious intelligence, and a personal charm which might have made him a universal favorite. Yet he does not seem to have been generally popular at this period of his life. He was wilful, impetuous, sometimes supercilious, always fastidious. He would study as he liked, and not by rule. His school and college mates believed in his great possibilities through all his forming period, but it may be doubted if those who counted most confidently on his future could have supposed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... too wrinkled and flabby when the first bloom is over. The absurdity of this suggestion raises a smile, and a query as to the experience which its author must have had. For any person who has lived in Japan must have seen individuals of both sexes, whom the most fastidious painter or sculptor would rejoice to ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... stood dazed. The world seemed upside down. Could that rough-bearded man in shabby clothes be handsome, fastidious Uncle Carey? Ah! there was the dear loving voice, there were the dear loving eyes. She threw her arms around her uncle and he pressed her close while she kissed him again ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... later, when, in the absence of the new inmate, Georgiana went into his room to put it in order for the day, she found it impossible not to note the character of his belongings. They were few and simple enough, but in every detail they betrayed a fastidious taste. And among the articles in ebony and leather which lay upon the linen cover of the old bureau stood one which held her fascinated attention. It was a framed photograph of a young and very lovely woman in evening dress, and the face which ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... his self-esteem; and I took especial care, therefore, not to betray, by the slightest hint, my opinion that a good many near his person seemed to think him and his artificial queue somewhat in the way. The courtiers of Leaphigh, in particular, who are an exceedingly exclusive and fastidious corps, appeared to regard the privileges of the judge with an evil eye; and one or two of them actually held their noses as he flourished his brush a little too near their sacred faces, as if they found its odor out of fashion. While making these silent observations, a page cried ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... idea of his living contour, is by .. going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... tympanum,—"Be careful of Time,"—"Time is money,"—"Make much of Time"! Certainly, I do not know what he has done to merit consideration so tender. The best that can be said of old Edax Rerum is that he has an unfailing appetite, and is not very fastidious about his provender,—and that, if he does take heavy toll of the wheat, he also rids the world of no small amount of chaff. But 'tis such a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... might tumble, helter-skelter, from their topmost perch into the very lowest depth, if there be one lower than another, of the orchestra; and thereby sustain such a compound fracture, attended by loss of substance, as should put it out of their power, for that night at least, to torture our fastidious ears. Being of a melancholy temperament, we are unfortunately, at times, subject to most ludicrous fancies; and as these ungainly instruments loom on our disgusted eye, we cannot, for the life of us, help ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... not say, to a person of Hiram's keen and appreciative sense, the picture before him was most attractive. How perfect was every point in it! What minute and fastidious attention had been devoted to every article of dress! How every article had been specially designed to set off and adorn! The hat, how charming; the hair, how exquisitely coiffed; the shawl, how magnificent; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Quadriburgium, and Castra Herculis, or Heraclea, no longer subsist; but there is room to believe, that on the ground of Quadriburgium the Dutch have constructed the fort of Schenk, a name so offensive to the fastidious delicacy of Boileau. See D'Anville, Notice de l'Ancienne Gaule, p. 183. Boileau, Epitre iv. and the notes. Note: Tricesimae, Kellen, Mannert, quoted by Wagner. Heraclea, Erkeleus in the district of Juliers. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... that Maori women were free, as a rule, to marry the husbands of their choice. As Tregear's own remarks indicate, the advances were either of an improper character, or the girl had made sure beforehand that there was no impediment in the way of her proposal. The Maori proverb that as the fastidious Kahawai fish selects the hook which pleases it best, so a woman chooses a man out of many (on the strength of which alone Westermarck, 217, claims liberty of choice for Maori women) must also refer to such liaisons before ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... prevailed in the camp, and all went on well and heartily; so that they felt disposed to regard wagon-travelling—in the words of a writer of great experience—as a prolonged system of picnicking, excellent for the health, and agreeable to those who are not over-fastidious about trifles, and who delight in being in the open air. At other times, especially when passing through unhealthy regions, some of their number were brought very low by severe illness, and others—even ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... creature, almost wizened, with bright eyes and a short moustache; unostentatiously dressed; fastidious, reserved, genteel, precise in manner, and living a retired life in a two-roomed cottage somewhere ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... conveniences. The eagerness with which they dressed Fanny, the care with which they adjusted the frontlet, and tucked in the ringlets, and placed the coif on her head, and pulled it down to exactly the right becoming sit, was exceedingly amusing. No coquette dressing for Almack's could have shown more fastidious nicety, or expressed more joy and delight at the toilette's triumphant success. They exclaimed in German, and lifted up hands and eyes in admiration of Fanny's beautiful appearance in nun's attire. The universal language of action and the no less universal language of flattery ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... class of persons not remarkable for cleanliness, either of garment or of skin; but the poor fellow meant well, and as I had really some occasion for his services, and his appearance was respectable, I thought it no time to be fastidious, and could not help laughing at the ridiculous figure ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... "mountain dew," with bread and cheese accompaniments. And the completeness of their trust in the efficacy of such supports was too often evidenced by the condition of the watchers toward the dawn of the morning. And, indeed, if the spirits were not too fastidious, and if they had so desired, they could have easily flown away, not only with the "waked," but with ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... character but of an aristocratic and moneyed family. The better man finds himself barred from resuming his old name. How, coming into the other man's possessions, he wins the respect of all men, and the love of a fastidious, delicately nurtured girl, is the thread upon which the story hangs. It is one of the best novels of the West that has appeared ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... man who finds not the heavens bluer and the waves more musical in maturity than in childhood. Time is a severe alembic of youthful joys, no doubt; we exhaust book after book and leave Shakespeare unopened; we grow fastidious in men and women; all the rhetoric, all the logic, we fancy we have heard before; we have seen the pictures, we have listened to the symphonies: but what has been done by all the art and literature of the world towards describing one summer day? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... claim his right of entry here. And Robert Stethem, too, his brother, Of village denizens another; John Miller too, of leather fame, Who from the County Wexford came, And first made here such boots and shoes As fashion could not now refuse In this fastidious age to take And wear them for their matchless make. And how have I not had before James Anderson, a man of yore, Who pitched his tent in days gone by 'Mong Bytown's ancient company, An honest hearted jovial Scot As e'er in exile cast his lot 'Mongst those who pioneered the track Down which my ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... had grown mighty fastidious in these particulars since she had been mistress of Hurst Court; "this dirty table would spoil the ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... with an attractive ritualistic curate; but my confirmation made no impression on me, and I think I had no moral feelings that I could distinguish. I had no inherent hatred of wrong, or love for right; but I was fastidious, and that kept me from being riotous, and undemonstrative, which made ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the author whom he loves and the public who are certainly indifferent and frequently averse. Many articles had been written on this notable man. One after another had leaned, in my eyes, either to praise or blame unduly. In the last case, they helped to blindfold our fastidious public to an inspiring writer; in the other, by an excess of unadulterated praise, they moved the more candid to revolt. I was here on the horns of a dilemma; and between these horns I squeezed myself, with perhaps some loss to the substance of the paper. Seeing so much in Whitman ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... creative "artists" in music, painting, and the other arts. We seemingly limit the creative functions to productions that may be hung on gallery walls, or played in concert halls, or otherwise displayed where idle and fastidious people gather to admire each other's culture. But if a man wants a field for vital creative work, let him come where he is dealing with higher laws than those of sound, or line, or colour; let him come where he may deal with the laws of ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... showed it to Mr Powell the other day he exclaimed: "Wonderful! One would think this the portrait of Captain Anthony himself if..." I wanted to know what that if was. But Powell could not say. There was something—a difference. No doubt there was—in fineness perhaps. The father, fastidious, cerebral, morbidly shrinking from all contacts, could only sing in harmonious numbers of what the son felt with a dumb ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... anticipation of such an odd viand for supper, drew jokes from several of the party. To the trappers such a dish was nothing new, although they were the only persons of the party who had partaken of it. But there was not one fastidious palate present, and when the "wolf-mutton" was broiled, each cleaned his joint or his rib with as much gout as if he had been picking the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... of Young People's Books to suit the tastes of the most fastidious. The publishers consider themselves fortunate in being able to offer such a marvelous line of choice subjects, made up into attractive presentation volumes. Large type, fine heavy paper, numerous pictures in black, inserted with six lithographic reproductions in ten colors by eminent ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... man of about Festing's age. He had a high color and an easy smile, but he had, so to speak, degenerated since he came to Canada. Festing remembered his keenness and careless good-humor when he began to farm, but disappointment had blunted the first, though his carelessness remained. He had been fastidious, but one now got a hint of a coarse streak and there was something about his face that indicated dissipation. Yet Festing admitted that ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... life, and minister and people abode in communion, with little change but that of age. In seeking a field, the youth just launched into his profession 'candidated' among vacant churches, and was heard with solemn attention by the selectmen and bench of deacons. Notes were taken by the more fastidious for subsequent criticism, and the matter was discussed with all the importance of a national treaty. When the call had been accepted, the stipend was generally fixed at one hundred pounds, and a rude parsonage opened its doors of welcome. ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... nothing to offend the most fastidious taste in her speech, appearance, or manners. She was convent-bred, accomplished, refined, gentle, worthless and wicked. The good Sisters of the Society of the Broken Heart had polished the exterior of the Eurasian orphan ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... less confident in the future could they have overheard a conversation being carried on in a room of the Timmons House. It was Miss La Rue's apartments, possessing two windows, but furnished in a style so primitive as to cause that fastidious young lady to burst into laughter when she first entered and gazed about. Both her companions followed her, laden with luggage, and Beaton, sensing instantly what had thus affected her humour, dropped his bag on ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... morning of the 9th the tailors whom Murat had asked for arrived. He ordered a great many clothes, taking the trouble to explain all the details suggested by his fastidious taste. He was thus employed when General Nunziante came in. He listened sadly to the king's commands. He had just received telegraphic despatches ordering him to try the King of Naples by court-martial ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... father, Arnold Lenorme, descended from an old Norman family, had given him the Christian name of Raoul, which, although outlandish, tolerably fitted the surname, notwithstanding the contiguous l's, objectionable to the fastidious ear of their owner. The earlier and more important part of his education, the beginnings, namely, of everything he afterwards further followed, his mother herself gave him, partly because she was both poor and ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... plan, I accepted the offer, and a sailor, carrying my trunk, accompanied me to the dwelling of the honest captain. My trunk had to be placed under the bed which filled up the room. I was amused at this, for I was not in a position to be over-fastidious, and, after partaking of some dinner at the inn, I went about the town. Chiozza is a peninsula, a sea-port belonging to Venice, with a population of ten thousand inhabitants, seamen, fishermen, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... shelter for the night. This was a "jumping-off" place, said the agent, with barracks and shanties for a construction-gang; there were saloons, and what was called a hotel, but it wouldn't do for a lady. I pleaded that I was not fastidious—being anxious to nullify the effect which the name van Tuiver had produced. But the agent would have it that the place was unfit for even a Western farmer's wife; and as I was not anxious to take the chance of being blown overboard in the darkness, ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... looked at her in amazement. "That cow-puncher? Larry Knight? I should say not. Lord! but wouldn't fastidious, cultured and correct old Larry feel complimented to know that you found anything in a common cow-puncher to remind ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... might envy for their shapely delicacy and dainty size, cased in the neatest kid and prunella. His hair is negligent in the elegantest grace of the perruquier's art, his dress fashioned to the very line of fastidious elegance and simplicity, yet a simplicity his Creole taste makes unique and attractive. He has the true French persiflage, founded on happy content, not the blank indifference of the Englishman's disregard. It becomes graceful self-forgetfulness, and yet his vanity is French and victorious. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... the winter Rains failed almost entirely, and Ikki, the Porcupine, meeting Mowgli in a bamboo-thicket, told him that the wild yams were drying up. Now everybody knows that Ikki is ridiculously fastidious in his choice of food, and will eat nothing but the very best and ripest. So Mowgli laughed and said, "What is that ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... native of Holland, is a great favourite with fowl-keepers, especially those who have on eye to profit rather than to amusement. Those varieties known as the "silver spangled" and the "gold spangled" are handsome enough to please the most fastidious; but the common black breed, with the bushy crown of white feathers, is but a plain bird. The chief value of the common Poland lies in the great number of eggs they produce; indeed, in many parts, they are as well known as ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... little apartment, wherein the steward was wont to unpack the barrels and cases containing the cabin stores; the work being thus done in such complete seclusion that it could not possibly prove a source of annoyance to any one, however fastidious. This arrangement also enabled the steward to enter the lazarette at his own sweet will and without any one being the wiser—which constituted my sole ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... like a pleased child, and I should be fastidious indeed if I did not admit that to-night ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... our purpose. A jack and an oar were necessary to complete the arrangement, and before the sun had set our professor of wood-craft had both in readiness. From a young yellow birch an oar took shape with marvelous rapidity,—trimmed and smoothed with a neatness almost fastidious,—no makeshift, but an instrument fitted for the delicate work ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... scene the ermine was cleaning her nest; and you know how fastidious she is supposed to be as to personal spotlessness. The ermine in question did not belie her reputation, as you would have seen by a glance at the three or four rooms which made up what she ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... and the phrases bite like vitriol. Moreover he employs an idiom that is (I conjecture) a direct transcription from native speech, which adds enormously to the effect. Understand me, not for worlds would I commend these volumes haphazard to the fastidious; I only say they are clever, arresting and violently individual. Also that, if you have not so far met the work of Mr. EVANS, here is your opportunity, in a volume that shows it at its best, or worst. Half-an-hour's reading will give you an excellent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... Doyle is a man of 36, with cold grey eyes, strained nose, fine fastidious lips, critical brown, clever head, rather refined and goodlooking on the whole, but with a suggestion of thinskinedness and dissatisfaction that contrasts strongly ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... exploits remote; how could they possibly be favorites of worldly Fame—that common crier, whose existence is only known by the assemblage of multitudes; that pander of wealth and greatness, so eager to haunt the palaces of fortune, and so fastidious to the houseless dignity of virtue; that parasite of pride, ever scornful to meekness, and ever obsequious to insolent power; that heedless trumpeter, whose ears are deaf to modest merit, and whose eyes are blind to ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... to eat everything that is wholesome, and not be permitted to become finical or fastidious in its appetite. It ought not, however, to be forced to eat any particular article for which it is found that there is an invincible dislike. Variety of diet is good for a child, after the ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... rapid succession Thackeray wrote Pendennis, Henry Esmond, The Newcomes, The Virginians, Lovel the Widower and The Adventures of Philip. All these are masterpieces of wit, satire and humor, cast in a perfect style that never offends the most fastidious taste, yet they are neglected to-day mainly because they do ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... Egypt. "The yearly shoots of the papyrus are also gathered. After pulling them up in the marshes, the points are cut off and rejected, the part remaining being about a cubit in length. It is eaten as a delicacy and is sold in the markets, but those who are fastidious partake of it only after baking." Twenty different kinds of grain and fruits, prepared by crushing between two stones, are kneaded and baked to furnish cakes or bread; these are often mentioned in the texts as cakes of nabeca, date cakes, and cakes of figs. Lily loaves, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Wing. Midnight was given royal quarters in the old log-stable, which had been re-covered and almost rebuilt for his especial delectation, the great square stall, with its bed of dry oak leaves, in which he stood knee-deep, being sufficient to satisfy even Miss Mollie's fastidious demands for the comfort of her petted steed After a time Eliab Hill, to whose suggestion the whole plan was due, became also ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... of Oxford readers. It sold for the high price of half-a-crown a copy; and, what is hardly credible, the gownsmen received it as a genuine production. "It was indeed a kind of fashion to be seen reading it in public, as a mark of nice discernment, of a delicate and fastidious taste in poetry, and the best criterion of a choice spirit." Such was the genesis of "Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson", edited by John Fitz Victor. The name of the supposititious nephew reminds ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... be taken with the beauty of daffodils, this was a delicate secret which those winds would confide only to one so sympathetic as Shakespeare. This is poetic imagination, the intellect sent on far errands by a sensibility which is at once generous and bold, and fastidious through the promptings and the exactions of ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... You know, I guess I'm fastidious, but I can't bear to use a plate for more than three meals without passing a wet rag over it. That's the worst of having refined ideas, they make life so complex. However, I mustn't complain. There's a monastic simplicity about this joint that endears it to me. And ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... indeed have corrected her English grammar, and her French pronunciation; but I was not at this time so fastidious; as to accuse her of any mistake in judgment, in the opinion she gave ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... copy of Bowles's, "to the green hamlet in the peaceful plain." Your ears are not so very fastidious—many people would not like words so prosaic and familiar in a sonnet as Islington and Hertfordshire. The next was written within a day or two of the last, on revisiting a spot where the scene was laid of my 1st sonnet that "mock'd my step ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... water in a mighty river. Like Lyly, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, Spenser felt the new delight in the pictorial and musical qualities of words, and invented new melodies and word pictures. He aimed rather at finish, exactness, and fastidious neatness than at ease, freedom, and irregularity; and if his versification has any fault, it is that of monotony. The atmosphere is always perfectly adapted ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... times, to which they are summoned by trumpets, the pilgrims race on to the poop: for they cannot all find seats, and those that come late have to sit among the crew. Noblemen, who have their own servants, are too fastidious to mingle with the crowd; and pay extra to the cooks,—poor, sweating fellows, toiling crossly in a tiny galley—for food which their servants bring to them on the main-deck, or even below. After the pilgrims, the captain and his council dine in state off silver dishes; and the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... M'Kree's house was very short after all, though Katherine was thankful indeed for the cup of tea awaiting her there, and much too grateful for the kindness to be fastidious about its overdrawn condition. As a matter of fact, the tea had been gently on the boil for more than two hours, but this was a minor detail in the comfort of people who had an outdoor life and worked hard ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... has been hungrily watched through the slow, tedious process of ripening finally falls rosy and mellow into eagerly uplifted fingers, and breaks in a shower of bitter dust on the sharpened and fastidious palate, it rarely happens that the half-famished dupe relishes the taste; and Salome rose, feeling ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... 7. Show a fastidious woman at a dress goods counter, and the tired, but courteous clerk. Do not caricature, but try to give an air of reality ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... most dainty and fastidious kind may be used by a lady with propriety and elegance, but only when she is writing to her friends and equals. Business letters or letters to her tradespeople should be written on plain paper, and enclosed either in an adhesive envelope, ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... close with him; and thus, instead of paying sixteen dollars a month to a thorough-going tar, who would consume all his rations, buy up my young blade of Bury, at the rate of half a dollar a week; with the cheering prospect, that by the end of the voyage, his fastidious palate would be the means of leaving a. handsome balance of salt beef and pork in ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... result about. We acted merely as persons of common sense will always act in similar situations. We turned the landlady's ill-humour or stiffness into a joke, spoke bad German, mixed it with French and English, and won her heart by showing that we were neither sensitive nor fastidious. And the landlady's heart being fairly won, all the rest was easy. The husband, as in duty bound, fell into his wife's views, and the servants took their cue from their superiors. In Hayde, however, though ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... summer garden rested a weight of peace. It was a night to the very mind of the fastidious, twilight-loving bat, flitting about, coming and going, like a thought we can not help. Most of Walter's thoughts came and went thus. He had not yet learned to think; he was hardly more than a medium in which thought came and went. Yet when a thought seemed ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... above ought to pay the rent and leave a fair profit to the feeder. There is no doubt that in the north, and especially in Aberdeenshire, there is a rage for fine cattle; and on my part it has almost amounted to a "craze." I would have been a richer man to-day if I had not been so fastidious in my selections; but I cannot endure to look at, and never will tolerate, a bad beast on my land. The gentlemen I buy from know my weakness, and they say, if they are anxious to sell, We must let M'Combie have a "pull." Many are the lots of beasts I have ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... is effeminate and petulant from a sense of weakness, as his friendship was tender from a sense of gratitude. I do not like, for instance, his character of Chartres, or his characters of women. His delicacy often borders upon sickliness; his fastidiousness makes others fastidious. But his compliments are divine; they are equal in value to a house or an estate. Take the following. In addressing Lord Mansfield, he speaks of the grave as ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... his handsome head low before her, and left the room less like an exile than a conqueror, buoyed by an abiding fatalism, a fond faith in that magnetic influence and fascination he had hitherto successfully exerted over all, whom his wayward, fickle, fastidious fancy had chosen ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... wholesome as the morning itself; and although her costume was somewhat shrunken, and showed here and there patches of whitish discolouration from its long immersion in the sea, she still presented a picture of grace calculated to charm the most fastidious eye. ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... cut; to all of which the bereaved child—a silent undemonstrative mourner—was supremely indifferent. Her mother noted it with surprise, for Evelyn was a child of decided opinions and wont to be fastidious ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... squinting at the lining. "Most deplorable that we have both slippers; one would have been a clew, and we could have spent the rest of our lives measuring footprints. Very nice slippers, though; fastidious young person, I'll wager. The monogram on these trinkets is of no assistance—it might be R. G. T., or T. G. R., or G. R. T. Monograms are a nuisance, a ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... he'd be awfully fastidious, but our talk had made me feel how much his nerves were exposed. I was unsatisfied—I kept hold of his hand. "I won't make use of the expression then," I said, "in the article in which I shall eventually announce my discovery, though I dare say I shall have hard work to do without ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... in the house or city that receives the messengers carry two principles of wide application. First, they demand clear disinterestedness and superiority to vulgar appetites. Christ's servants are not to be fastidious as to their board and lodging. They are not to make demands for more refined diet than their hosts are accustomed to have, and they are not to shift their quarters, though it were from a hovel to a palace. The suspicion that a Christian worker is fond of good ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... animals that have the strongest and healthiest stomachs eat and digest serpents and scorpions, and some even feed on stones and shells, which they convert into nourishment by the strength and heat of their stomachs, while fastidious people out of health almost vomit if offered bread and wine, so foolish people spoil even their friendships, while the wise know how to turn to account ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... answer ready. The oddest idea had come into her mind: Supposing Michael were to fall in love with Mrs. Blake? He was a great admirer of beauty, though he was a little fastidious on the subject, and certainly, with the exception of Geraldine, Audrey thought she had ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... but two objections apply to the second. To my ear, (perhaps too fastidious) 'inly,' and 'inmost,' are too closely allied for the same stanza; but the first line presents a more serious objection, in containing a transition verb, (or rather a participle, with the same government) without ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... your elements were blended Naught I knew; but wild surmise Hinted horrors that offended Squeamish and fastidious eyes. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... hers for having spoken frankly to Father Robertson. Cynthia was certainly tired of Dion Leith. Was she about to sacrifice him as she had sacrificed others? Lady Ingleton dreaded the future. For during the interview at the Adelphi Hotel she had realized Rosamund's innate and fastidious purity. To forgive even one infidelity would be a tremendous moral triumph in such a woman as Rosamund. But if Cynthia Clarke threw Dion Leith away, and he fell into promiscuous degradation, then surely Rosamund's nature would rise up ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the epithet she had used of herself. You never knew what crazy thing she might do. There was daintiness but no order in her life; the only law she knew was given to her by a fastidious taste. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... become embarrassing, if not critical. At a late hour of a summer night, she was to follow Mrs. Gage on the same subject, and before a fastidious audience, almost surfeited during three days with public addresses in several different conventions, and many of whom desired to contrast her expected effort with the splendid platform eloquence of Henry J. Raymond, Wm. H. Burleigh, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... being exceedingly exaggerated. In the first place, the great majority are in the position of the ugly woman described by Ovid, "Casta quam nemo rogavit." As for the pretty ones, they are, like all Spanish women, very fastidious in choosing their lovers. Their fancy must be taken, and their favour must be earned. Mr. Borrow quotes, in proof of their virtue, one trait which does honour to his own, and especially to his simplicity: he ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... to its holder entrance to the first floor front room parlor where hung two fine paintings, the special treasures of the fastidious owner, and if he could not play chess upon the handsome mosaic chess-table he could at least enjoy its artistic beauty. The dining-room contained a set of solid antique-patterned tables to which Mr. Daniel was wont to refer ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... the matter with you, Scott," she said. "You were always such a fastidious boy—even dandified. Doesn't anybody ever cut your hair? Doesn't somebody ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... generations of astronomers provided with splendid instruments. We want accurate drawings of Saturn under every conceivable aspect in which it may be presented. We want incessantly repeated measurements, of the most fastidious accuracy. These measures are to tell us the sizes and the shapes of the rings; they are to measure with fidelity the position of the dark lines and the boundaries of the rings. These measures are to be protracted for generations and for centuries; then and then only can terrestrial ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... song. It depends upon the audience whether they will actually drive those poor merry creatures from the stage, or sit at a play as gloomy as at the tabernacle. It is not easy to recover an art when once lost; and it will be a just punishment, that when, by our being too fastidious, we have banished humor from the stage, we should ourselves be deprived of the art ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... out and failed, and those now before the public, there is still a wide field of research before this question is satisfactorily solved, so that no cause whatever shall remain of complaint on the part of the most fastidious. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... which Betsey had picked up here and there—was ready, Asaph walked into the front yard of his sister's house attired in a complete suit of new clothes, thick and substantial in texture, pepper-and-salt in color, and as long in the legs and arms as the most fastidious could desire. He had on a new shirt and a clean collar, with a handsome black silk cravat tied in a great bow; and a new felt hat was on his head. On his left arm he carried an overcoat, carefully folded, with the lining outside, and in his right ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... a trifle fastidious, haven't I?" he murmured, and unconsciously he mimicked Hogarty's measured accents. "But I hardly believe that any sensitive scruples of mine would annoy me much in this matter. I don't know but what I'd just as soon squash ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... have known it in the other without that metamorphosis of the flesh which spares it, according to Monsieur Plato, a man of some authority, but who, not being a Christian, was wrong. But, there! these preparatory digressions are the idle digressions and fastidious commentaries which certain unbelievers compel a man to wind about a tale, swaddling clothes about an infant when it should run about stark naked. May the great devil give them a clyster with his red-hot three-pronged fork. I am going on with my story ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... her," responded Flower. The thought of any shelter or any food was grateful to the fastidious girl now. ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... our matter too precipitately. He arrive at a decision too precipitately! So they sent a committee of priests—always priests—into Lorraine to inquire into Joan's character and history—a matter which would consume several weeks, of course. You see how fastidious they were. It was as if people should come to put out the fire when a man's house was burning down, and they waited till they could send into another country to find out if he had always kept the Sabbath or not, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Road, at the back of another block of factories, and to reach its dilapidated entrance gates involved an adventurous march through a number of miniature shell craters. Night, however, was merciful in that it hid the desolation which is called Stivvins' from the fastidious eye of man. Mr. Sole, who was not aesthetic and by no means poetical, admitted that Stivvins' ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... excellence of their products. Large cities always afford a market for farm produce, and on this account exert a very beneficial influence on agriculture. The population of London is about two and a half millions, and they are possessed of so much wealth, and are so fastidious in their requirements, that almost every part of the world contributes to supply them with the necessaries or luxuries of life. The rapid growth of the cities of Michigan afford a home market for the fruits of the soil. A great ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... fastidious in dress, wearing soft shirts of white silk, fine duck trousers and scented silk handkerchiefs, which he carried in his left hand with the meerschaum-bowl. The Carreras perfume, mingled with fresh tobacco, was never burdensome, and unlike any other. The silk ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... well of this kind costs about one hundred rupees. The kutcha-wells, which are lined with nothing, or with thick ropes of twigs and straw, cost only from five to ten rupees. The people tell me that oppression and poverty have made them less fastidious than they were formerly; that formerly it was considered disgraceful to plough with buffaloes, or to use them in carts, but they are now in common use for both purposes; that vast numbers of the ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... distinguished one, and the French cooks of Napoleon's household had displayed all their culinary skill to satisfy the palate of even the most fastidious epicures. Napoleon, as usual, gave his guests but little time to revel in the delicacies prepared for them. Scarcely half an hour had elapsed since the commencement of the dinner, when he rose, and thereby gave the signal that the ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... always have been hurried in her manner, and her energy must have shown itself in inquisitiveness and oddness even in her youth. But I don't pretend to account for things: I only narrate them. And the fact was this:—that the elegant, fastidious countess was attracted to the country girl, who on her part almost worshipped my lady. My lady's notice of their daughter made her parents think, I suppose, that there was no match that she might not command; she, the heiress of eight thousand a-year, and ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... little behind her. He seemed depressed, but the expression in his pale blue eyes when they first rested upon her made her thoroughly realise one thing—that it was one of her conquering nights. His eyes travelled quickly from her face to her throat, to her gown. She wore no jewels. Sir Donald had a fastidious taste in beauty—the taste that instinctively rejects excess of any kind. Her appeal to it had never been so great as to-night. She knew it, and felt that she had never found Sir Donald so ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... talents, soon produced a rich harvest of the most excellent fruits. He became a very useful general actor, played any thing and every thing the managers thought it their interest to appoint him to, whether tragedy, comedy, opera, or farce; and too confident in his own powers to be captious or fastidious, he never reneged an inferior part, when it was the managers' interest he should play it, even when, by the laws of the theatre, he was entitled to the first. Mr. Whitlock told this writer that H. did with good will more work than any two performers they had. "I have known him," ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... a gesture of disgust, when he found that they were "nasty little insects." For Elsley held fully the poet's right to believe that all things are not very good; none, indeed, save such as suited his eclectic and fastidious taste; and to hold (on high aesthetic grounds, of course) toads and spiders in as much abhorrence as does any boarding-school girl. However, finding some rock ledges which formed a natural ladder, down he scrambled, gingerly enough, for he was neither ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... shuffling about upon an uncarpeted floor; where the flies were superabundant, and the tables and dishes covered over with a strange, voluminous integument of coarse blue gauze; and where several little boys and girls, who had risen late, were seated in fastidious solitude at the morning repast. These young persons had not the morning paper before them, but they were engaged in languid perusal of the bill ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... Exit all these are not to be allowed to do it at the price of abandoning common humanity; you have no right to make your nest in the boughs of knowledge, and let all the rest of the world go as it will. You have no right to make your home among those who are polished and exquisite and fastidious in their tastes, whose garments are beauty, whose house is a temple of art, and all whose associations are of like kind, and neglect common humanity. You have no right to shut yourself up in a limited company of those who are like you in these directions, and let all the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... as he expressed it, was very far from suspecting the gravity of his condition. Not until the third day, when, upon waking in the morning, he saw a slender thread of blood that had flowed from his mouth over his beard and reddened his pillow, did that refined dandy shudder, that fastidious creature who held in horror all forms of human misery, especially disease, and who saw it creeping upon him stealthily with its defilement, its weaknesses and with the self-abandonment which is the first concession to death. Monpavon, entering the room in ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... excess of freedom, and run about so violently that they frighten the passengers from the road. At length the termination of all this infinite licentiousness is, that the minds of the citizens become so fastidious and effeminate, that when they observe even the slightest exertion of authority they grow angry and seditious, and thus the laws begin to be neglected, so that the people are absolutely ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... fastidious: "a finely chosen epithet, expressing at once curious and squeamish" (Hurd). It is used by Comus in contempt: comp. ii. Henry IV. iv. 1, "Hence, therefore, thou nice crutch"; and see the index to the Globe Shakespeare. the Indian steep. In his Elegia Tertia Milton ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... the frozen mountains changed into volcanoes, when cascades now filled with blood fell into the valleys, and avalanches of human beings rolled down the deepest precipices. Death reaped such a harvest there where human life had never been before, that the vultures, becoming fastidious through the abundance, picked out only the eyes of the corpses to carry to their young—at least so says the tradition of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... stood before the door of our boarding-house so long, never had it stopped so often, as since the revelation which had come from the Registry of Deeds. Mrs. Midas Goldenrod was not a bad woman, but she loved and hated in too exclusive and fastidious a way to allow us to consider her as representing the highest ideal of womanhood. She hated narrow ill-ventilated courts, where there was nothing to see if one looked out of the window but old men in dressing-gowns and old women in caps; she hated little dark rooms with air-tight ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... very gay life, as the saying is, for the last fifteen years; such a gay one, that he had lost all capacity of enjoyment by this time, and only possessed inclinations without powers of gratifying them. He had grown to be exquisitely curious and fastidious about meat and drink, for instance, and all that he wanted was an appetite. He carried about with him a French cook, who could not make him eat; a doctor, who could not make him well; a mistress, of whom he was heartily sick after ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... history must double your value for Messrs. Jones Musgrave, Jacobs, Ebden, Theobald, and Whewell. "Cling to those who cling to you!" said the immortal Johnson to your mother, when she uttered something that seemed fastidious relative to a person whose partiality she did ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... that my sister did during the time she lived in Aldershot. Both she and Major Ewing took great interest in the amateur concerts and private musical performances that took place in the camp, and the V.C. in "The Story of a Short Life," with a fine tenor voice, and a "fastidious choice in the words of the songs he sang," is a shadow of these past days. The want that many composers felt of good words for setting to music, led Julie to try to write some, and eventually, in 1874, a book of "Songs for Music, by Four Friends,"[26] was published; the contents were written ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... South Wales. The newspaper accounts are most conflicting. One writer asserts that any man with honesty and determination can make his living at any time; another speaks of the numbers of skilled artisans who cannot get employment. But if some of these latter have the fastidious tastes above mentioned, it will be seen that the destitution is to a certain extent artificial. But reasoning on these subjects speedily merges in the ocean of Free Trade v. Protection, upon which I will not further touch. Sydney is the oldest ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... travelled as far as the distant little Cathedral-town embowered among towering pines and elm trees, where the Cardinal had his abiding seat of duty;—and he had been anxious to meet the man who in these days of fastidious feeding and luxurious living, had managed to gain such a holy reputation as to be almost canonized in some folks' estimation before he was dead. Hearing that Bonpre intended to stay a couple of nights in Rouen, he cordially invited him to spend that time at his house,—but ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... a bank which was canopied by ferns. While the boy was arranging their meal, Verkimier drew a heavy hunting-knife from his belt and, applying it with an unusually strong hand to the Durian, laid it open. Nigel did not at all relish the smell, but he was not fastidious or apt to be prejudiced. He tasted—and, like Mr Wallace, "became a confirmed ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the end came to pass. Both were men of means, with little inclination and no necessity for professional life. My friendship and their mutual animosity were the two things that linked them in any way together. While they were very often at my place, they made it a fastidious point to avoid each other on such visits, though it was inevitable, under the circumstances, that they should come ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... that this Irish girl was not annoyed by the kinks in John's hair. Nor was she overly fastidious about the small percentage of colored blood visible in John's complexion. It was, however, a strange occurrence and very hard to understand. Not a stone was left unturned until John was safely on the Underground Rail Road. Doubtless ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... a plain piece of bread and butter just as much as cake. But all the same it would have been better, and she would have preferred it, had he shown himself more dainty with regard to his food—as well as to other things. She took great trouble to make him more fastidious. ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... the apartment, for he held that a man's room is generally an indication of his disposition, and assuredly there was a great deal of character in his own, with the scrupulous neatness and fastidious taste of its arrangements. Here, he thought, he could not fail to see traces of his cousin's habits, but he was obliged to confess to himself that there was very little to guide him. The furniture was strictly as its former occupant had left it, only rather the worse for wear, and ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... speaks of it with so much interest. I really believe aunt Wilson is right in not suffering Emily to read such things." And Jane, who had often devoured the treacherous lines with ardor, shrank with fastidious delicacy from the indulgence of a perverted taste, when it became exposed, coupled with the vulgarity of ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... gratifying upper coat of brown. A small dish of cucumbers—thin, iced cucumbers, with a French dressing—accompanied the hash; and with these he was offered hot rolls so small and delicate and crisp that, after cautiously sampling the butter with what seemed a fastidious palate, the guest took to eating rolls as if he had seldom found ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... words, render most impressive and sublime, what more elaborate description could only have made confused and unsatisfactory. Nothing can be more admirable than this brief and indistinct report of the perspective glass, it cannot offend the most fastidious taste, yet leaves scope for the exercise of the most ardent and aspiring imagination-(Bernard Barton). [234] Such mountains round about this house do stand. As one from thence may see the Holy Land.—(Bunyan's House of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "Here you see me at my old Eton habits; but instead of the green fields for a couch, I have here the shores of the Mediterranean. It is very grand, and very romantic. I only wish I had some of the excellent brown bread and butter we used to get at Spiers's: but I was never very fastidious in my diet." Then he continued, in a wild and eccentric manner: "Gronow, do you remember the beautiful Martha, the Hebe of Spiers's? She was the loveliest girl I ever saw, and I ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... tediousness. He did not aim to teach ethics or political economy directly, although he did not disguise his opinions. His chief end was to please and instruct at the same time, stimulating the mind through the imagination rather than the reason; so healthful that fastidious parents made an exception of his novels among all others that had ever been written, and encouraged the young to read them. Sir Walter Scott took off the ban which religious ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... the five storys of the house and, after Dutreuil had opened the door, entered a tiny set of chambers consisting of a sitting-room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, all arranged with fastidious neatness. It was easy to see that every chair in the sitting-room occupied a definite place. The pipes had a rack to themselves; so had the matches. Three walking-sticks, arranged according to their length, hung from ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... a temptation to haste and carelessness. This is one reason why many fastidious magazine writers always do the first draft of an article in longhand and turn to the typewriter only when they are ready to set down the final version. Temperament and habit should decide the matter. Nearly any one can learn to compose newspaper "copy" ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... will miss the ferry," Barbara interposed. "See, here it is, mademoiselle," and her companion reluctantly turned from the pursuit of the stranger to go on board, clasping her hat in triumph. Barbara thought, as she followed her, that if the fastidious rescuer had but seen her joy in her recovered treasure, he would have felt rewarded for his exertions in saving ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... smaller than the chamber assigned him, and he does not object to having half a dozen room mates. The bed is a wretched cot, but it is better than a bunk or a hammock, and Jack is not so used to cleanliness as to make him very fastidious. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... arrested his attention; it was so small, so delicately clear. Thresk's experience had made him quick to notice details and slow to infer from them. Yet this handwriting set him wondering. It might have been the work of some fastidious woman or of some leisured scholar; so much pride of penmanship was there. It certainly agreed with no picture of Stephen Ballantyne which his imagination ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... contemptuously aside in the Edinburgh Review. The Quarterly was brutal in its attacks upon timid transatlantic books. William Godwin reproached American ignorance, and proceeded to locate Philadelphia upon the Chesapeake Bay. No wonder that the Port Folio exclaimed in 1810, "The fastidious arrogance with which the reviewers and magazine makers of Great Britain treat the genius and intellect of this country is equalled by nothing but their profound ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... was particularly fortunate or others are particularly fastidious. The guide who showed me the Sepulchre was not particularly noisy or profane or palpably mercenary; he was rather more than less sympathetic than the same sort of man who might have shown me Westminster Abbey or Stratford-on-Avon. He was a small, ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... another branch of the subject. "He had observed," he said, "the careless methods of preparing the ginseng in New France, and predicted a speedy end of the traffic, unless it were prepared to suit the fancy of the fastidious Chinese." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... admirable and very spirited pictures of Campagna life and incidents, a very striking portrait of Beefsteak. He was sitting in a straw-bottomed chair, as we have so often seen him in the Lepre, calm, dignified in his deportment, and somewhat obese. The full brain, the narrow, fastidious nose, the sagacious eye, were so perfectly given, that I seemed to feel the actual presence of my old friend. So admirable a portrait of so distinguished a person should not be lost to the world. It should be engraved, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the hangings. Above the day bed there is a portrait of a lady, hung by wires covered with shirred blue ribbons, and this blue is again used in an old porcelain lamp jar on the bedside table. The whole room might have been inspired by the lady of the portrait, so essentially is it the room of a fastidious woman. ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... with you, Cara. His manner is not so showy, nor his attentions to the many little forms and observances of social life, so prompt as to please the fastidious in these matters. These defects, however, are not defects of character, but of education. He has not mingled enough in society to ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... couches, wide as beds, covered with gray cloth, invite the sportsmen to rest. Large dressing-rooms, fitted up with hot and cold water, invite them to refresh themselves with a bath. Everything has been done to suit the most fastidious ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... indulgent, and would remark of his own accord, that a new servant could not be expected to know all his peculiar ways and humors. In one respect, indeed, this man adapted himself to Kant's scholarlike taste, in a way which Lampe was incapable of doing. Kant was somewhat fastidious in matters of pronunciation; and this man had a great facility in catching the true sound of Latin words, the titles of books, and the names or designations of Kant's friends: not one of which accomplishments could Lampe, the most insufferable of blockheads, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... not over fastidious, monseigneur; but before the post can be bought, it must be offered ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... irritation of the scalp, particularly at the back of the head, lice or "nits" should be sought for. Sometimes it is more easy to find them on a fine-tooth comb passed through the hair. Lice are very common in dirty households, and are occasionally seen on the most fastidious persons, who accidentally acquire them in public ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... an expert needlewoman, and, like her sister, augmented their income by the labor of her hands. Her contributions to the pot were, indeed, much larger than Rose's. The clients she served were chiefly women of fastidious taste in these matters who lived in surrounding cities. Her exhibitions of cross-stitching, hemstitching, and drawn-work were so admirable as to establish a broad field for her enterprises. Her designs were her own, and she served ladies who liked novel and exclusive patterns. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... when all is said and done, a very dreadful thing for a healthy man to be without food for a few days, nor is it such a hardship as the fastidious might fancy to snatch one's nightly rest on the benches of the Embankment. I passed four nights there, chivied with the rest of the abject crowd by the ubiquitous policeman with his eternal "Wake up, move on there!" and for four days I was entirely without food. I can quite honestly say ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray |
