"Flawless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who sat with him was fair, and to Lydia's artistic eye, singularly lovely. Her hair was a mop of fine gold. The colour was natural, Lydia was too sophisticated to make any mistake about that. Her features were regular and flawless. The young artist thought she had never seen so perfect a "cupid" mouth in her life. There was something so freshly, fragrantly innocent about the girl that Lydia's heart went out to her, and she could hardly keep her eyes on the stage. The unknown seemed ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... consume more time, then at University Place was seized with a panic, and hurried rapidly to his destination. The door was answered by the same man who had opened the night before, but now, in some indefinable way, his calm, while flawless externally, seemed to have lifted to a mere surface, as though he might hastily have assumed his coat. To Orde's inquiry he stated with great brevity that Miss Bishop was not yet visible, and prepared to close ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... reference has already been made. She was about twenty-four, dark, and very beautiful, with masses of black hair crowning a well-set head, finely-cut features, and a figure which, even as she sat on the low window-seat, showed tall and willowy. Her beauty would have been flawless but for one defect—her chin was a shade too prominent, giving her face an expression of determination, which, while destroying its symmetry, told of a strong will, and a firmness amounting almost ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... is a fair model. There are a few bars of introduction—the porch, as Niecks would call it—a principal subject, a trio, a short working-out section, a skilful return to the opening theme, and an elaborate coda. This edifice, not architecturally flawless, is better adapted to the florid beauties of Byzantine treatment than to the severe Hellenic line. Yet Chopin gave it dignity, largeness and a classic massiveness. The interior is romantic, is modern, personal, but the facade shows ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... as if a mere brush had smoothed it, and with a final survey, to assure himself that he had forgotten none of those niceties of the toilet that Winona would insist upon, he took his new straw hat and went again to the Penniman house. For the moment he was in flawless order, as neat, as compactly and accurately accoutred as the Merle twin, to whom this effect came without effort. But it would be so only for a few fleeting moments. He mournfully knew this, and so did Winona. Within five blocks from ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... that sent a thousand sparks before my eyes. But then slowly the whole structure began to unfold. Each step of evidence we had picked up since the memorable night but twenty-four hours ago, now took its place as the panorama—not flawless, but with inviting possibilities,—and ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... a fallen glove, drawing it mechanically over her left hand, while her eyes wandered in search of its fellow. The glance was instantly checked, however, for she stretched out a thin, white, all-but-transparent right hand, with flawless ovals of rose-colored nail at the tips of the slender, ringless fingers, and pointed to a chair as if to bid Gaston be seated. He sat down, and she turned her face questioningly towards him. Words cannot describe the ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... woman. The popular criticism of the mere musical expert that he has no soul, is profound and true. It is soul we want; for the piano, the organ, the violin, the orchestra, are only instruments for the transmission of soul. This is also the reason why the most flawless conductor is not always the best. He must have a soul capable of reading the soul of the composer; and the orchestra must receive the life of the composer as that is interpreted to them through the life of the conductor, or the performance will be a ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... vision broke up in this humorous manner. And, after all, it is less surprising that the Scorpion, finding such matter in a new little book by a new young man, was more sensitive to the absurdity than to the romance. But no lover of poetry should have been blind to the almost flawless excellence of Mariana in the South, inspired by the landscape of the Provencal tour with Arthur Hallam. In consequence of Lockhart's censures, or in deference to the maturer taste of the poet, The Miller's Daughter was greatly ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... the back room was in its usual flawless order and the two sisters had seated themselves near the lamp. Ann Eliza had taken up her sewing, and Evelina was preparing to make artificial flowers. The sisters usually relegated this more delicate business to the long leisure of the ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... Excellency to purchase them." She replied: "The merchant offers them for six thousand crowns; and were it not for some of those trifling defects you speak of, the rope would be worth over twelve thousand." To this I replied, that "even were the necklace of quite flawless quality, I could not advise any one to bid up to five thousand crowns for it; for pearls are not gems; pearls are but fishes' bones, which in the course of time must lose their freshness. Diamonds, rubies, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... let you ask no pardon of me. I said I'd let myself find no flaw in you. But how does that embarrass my present argument? Flawless perfection would be a mighty difficult thing to live with, day in and day out. Living with a woman who never made a mistake could have no appeal for me. She'd always be emphasizing my own shortcomings. You become consistent and you'll catch me yawning some day; grow logical ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... general line of the wall in most imposing grandeur, a type of permanence. It is 3300 feet high, a plain, severely simple, glacier-sculptured face of granite, the end of one of the most compact and enduring of the mountain ridges, unrivaled in height and breadth and flawless strength. ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... You slept as sweetly as a child, And when you woke you recked not of your shame, But babbled greetings, stretched yourself and smiled From that eviscerated sofa's frame, Which, flawless erst, was now one mighty flaw Through the addition of yourself ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... portrayed by ancient writers has had by far too much sway. The prevailing type which permeates all literature is that of inferiority and subjection. In early times Oriental poets often likened woman to some clear, flawless jewel, and made them serve simply as ornaments, while, on the other hand, they were made subordinate by the legislation of barbarous minds; and men, because of their selfish passion, have inflicted woe after woe upon them. Ancient literature is wholly against the equality of ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... She was as little, flawless and gleaming as her house. More than half her good looks were due to the immaculate care which she bestowed on her body—the whiteness of her teeth, the fineness of her well-kept hands, the brilliant clearness of her complexion, the wavy smoothness of her abundant flaxen hair which ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... these winds that lift my hair and come heavy with odors,—these do not fit with me, I burlesque the fair face of creation. O invisible airs, that softly sport round the castle-towers, why do you not woo my soul forth and bear it and lose it in the flawless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... of the play is flawless, of diaphanous simplicity, the dialog is pure and brief, the characters are delicately outlined in a few sure touches. "A mournful, somber triptych," says Luis Brun of its three acts, "the central panel of which is lit by a ray of light." An atmosphere of ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... we had a most tranquil season during three months. The bill was prodigious, of course, and I had said I would not pay it until the new machinery had proved itself to be flawless. The time stipulated was three months. So I paid the bill, and the very next day the alarm went to buzzing like ten thousand bee swarms at ten o'clock in the morning. I turned the hands around twelve hours, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The joyous elation of the first night in camp! Is there anything like it? With days and days ahead, and not even one counted off the shining number! All the good things of childhood and maturity seem pressed into one mood of flawless, abounding happiness. ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... Hardie; "but her revelations interest us, for they prove that Miss Fountain had a beginning. Now we had thought she rose from the foam like Venus, or sprung from Jove's brow like Minerva, or descended from some ancient pedestal, flawless ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... since the Revolution of 1688, should manifest a great personal interest and industry in affairs of state, endeared him to many who already respected his irreproachable private morality and admired his flawless and unfailing courtesy. Under the inspiration of Lord Bute, [Footnote: The earl of Bute (1713-1792) became prime minister in 1762, after the resignations of Pitt, who had been the real head of the cabinet, and the duke of Newcastle, who had been the nominal premier. Bute ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... point still in reference to this first view of the text. Our Lord not only declares that He is the reality of which the earthly shepherd is the shadow, and that He as such is the flawless, perfect One, but that He alone is the reality. 'I am the Good Shepherd; in Me and in Me alone is that which men need.' And that leads me to another point which must just be mentioned, that we shall not reach the full meaning ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... said the old aristocrat, thoughtfully sipping champagne out of an enormous goblet which he carried in his hand. "It makes me dream of that East which it has never been my fortune, alas, to behold. What a flawless group! There is something archaic, Oriental, in their attitudes; they seem to be fraught with all the mystery, the sadness, of life that is past—of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... "Flawless and of the first water!" exclaimed he, after a tense pause. "The setting hasn't been touched, so there is practically no ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... he agreed. with a momentary return to his former manner. "There was one mistake. I made it, by escaping. Otherwise the plan was flawless. Luckily. a key had been left on the floor. And luckily. I got hold of it. Luckily, too, I had a match with me. And. if there are sharks as near land as this, luckily you happened to meet me as I was swimming for shore. As to ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... hand against his face and laughed; And thus our conference closed. And then we strolled For half the day through stately theatres Benched crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard The grave Professor. On the lecture slate The circle rounded under female hands With flawless demonstration: followed then A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thunderous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long That on the stretched forefinger of all ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... leaning back against the dark green upholstery and showing her flawless teeth; her long, narrow eyes with their seductive gleam flashed into his. A lighter ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... existence, breathed a little, and was gone. Here for once was an orchestra which could literally be overheard. The overture to the "Meistersinger" followed, and here, for the first time, I got, quite flawless and uncontradictory, the two impressions which that piece presents to one simultaneously. I heard the unimpeded march forward, and I distinguished at the same time every delicate impediment thronging the way. Some renderings give you a sense of solidity and straightforward ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... the detested enemy. As they drew near, the Terror's face recovered its flawless serenity; ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... of the sanctuary are Luini's priceless frescos of the "Marriage of the Virgin" and the "Dispute with the Doctors."[G] Their execution is flawless, and they are perfectly preserved. If criticism before such admirable examples of so excellent a master be permissible, it may be questioned whether the figures are not too crowded, whether the groups are sufficiently varied and connected by rhythmic lines. Yet the concords ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Finn sat, alternately licking the one deep wound the old wolf had scored in his chest, and looking out dismally across the Tinnaburra. Warrigal sat down on her haunches about two yards from Finn, and, having pointed her muzzle at the moon, where it sailed serenely above them in a flawless dark blue sky, she began to pour out upon the night the sound of the long, hoarse dingo howl of mourning. Finn listened for some minutes without moving. By that time the melancholy of it all had entered ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... war is so big a thing, as wars go, that an engagement of this size is likely to be forgotten in a day or a week. Yet, I warrant you, the people of La Buissiere will not forget it. Nor shall we forget it who came that way in the early afternoon of a flawless summer day. Let me try to recreate La Buissiere for you, reader. Here the Sambre, a small, orderly stream, no larger or broader or wider than a good-sized creek would be in America, flows for a mile or two almost due east and weSt. The northern bank is almost flat, with low ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... outran My halting footsteps seek and find— The flawless symmetry of man, The poise of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "flat," as the small mirror is called, had the further effect of excluding from the great mirror a certain proportion of light. But the reflector had the advantage, on the other hand, of costing less to make than the refractor, as it was not necessary to procure flawless glass for the purpose. A disc of a certain metallic composition, an alloy of copper and tin, known in consequence as speculum metal, had merely to be cast; and this had to be ground and polished upon one side only, whereas a lens has to be thus treated upon both its sides. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... character, and yet doubtless [93] connected with physical conditions. Long ago De Quincey noted it as a strongly determinant fact in Wordsworth's literary career, pointing, at the same time, to his remarkable good luck also, on the material side of life. The poet's own flawless temperament, his fine mountain atmosphere of mind (so to express it), had no doubt a good deal to do with that. What a store of good fortune, what a goodly contribution to happiness, in the very best sense ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... and burning if need be, they are grand indeed—for they are in their noble place, and rejoicing in their fate. But this man was miserable, because, the possessor of a priceless jewel, he had found it was not such as would pass for flawless in the judgment of men—judges themselves unjust, whose very hearts were full of bribes. He sat there an injured husband, a wronged, woman-cheated, mocked man—he in whose eyes even a smutch on her face would have lowered a woman—who would not have listened to an angel ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... Leonards's yard at the west end and his at the east of the double set in which they lived. Leonard's yard was criss-crossed, cut up in every direction by tracks of sled-runners and sturdy little rubber boots. His own lay like a flawless sheet without even a kitten's footprint to mar its virgin surface. Now as he strode rapidly westward again and came in front of the Leonard playground, he noted once more the traces that spoke so eloquently of happy, healthy childhood, of rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes and ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... was drawn aside and a young and slender woman entered. Her gown was black, unrelieved by any color, save the girdle of gold; her face was almost flawless in its symmetry; her complexion was of a wondrous whiteness; and her eyes, of the deepest blue, soft and melting, and shaded by lashes long and heavy, were of the sort that bespeak the utmost confidence and know no guile. She hesitated as she saw De Lacy and was about to withdraw ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... beautifully played, coming from behind the closed door. We peered through the keyhole, and there he sat on his bed stringing his scale tones like pearls. He was a little chap and had the tiniest hands I have ever seen. Was this a drawback? If so, no one could tell from his playing; he had a flawless technic, and a really pearly quality of tone. He was very jolly and amiable, and he and Leonard were great friends, each always going to hear the other whenever he played in concert. My four years in Paris were in the ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... time to be lost now; the ground was freezing under a veering and bitter wind out of the west. Mr. Lyken's talented assistants had some difficulty in shaping the mound which snow began to make into a white and flawless monument. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... now doth don Martin close The spears. They broke the lances so furious were the blows. Martin Antolinez on sword his hand he laid. The whole field shone, so brilliant and flawless was the blade. He smote a buffet. Sidewise it caught him fair and right. Aside the upper helmet the glancing stroke did smite. It clove the helmet laces. Through the mail-hood did it fall, Unto the coif, hard ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... anon. [Stands over body of GAOLER.] Our present business Is general woe. No nobler corse hath ever Impress'd the ground. O let the trumpets speak it! [Flourish of trumpets.] This was the noblest of the Florentines. His character was flawless, and the world Held not his parallel. O bear him hence With all such honours as our State can offer. He shall interred be with noise of cannon, As doth befit so militant a nature. Prepare these obsequies. [Papal officers ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... resplendencies of the flaming corrollae against the gold background. Then, he grew hungry—a thing that rarely if ever happened to him—and dipped his toast, spread with a special butter, in a cup of tea, a flawless blend of Siafayoune, Moyoutann and Khansky—yellow teas which had come from China to Russia ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... not for me, sirs, coldly to beg of you, in no respect to violate your solemn undertakings. I go further; I beg you, to crown your list of exploits by one final display of virtue. Show the world that you can be faithful to your oaths, and flawless in your conduct." By these and other kindred arguments he impressed upon them that there was no need for anarchy or disorder, seeing that there were the ancient laws ready for use. And so he broke up ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... been free, and now the walls of love and trust which Nathan Hornby had builded about their home for nearly twenty years were to be a flawless rampart behind which he could take refuge from foes without and receive help from within. At Nathan's request his wife came day after day and listened to the discussions toward the end of the session. Nathan sat before her dumb, but she was the anchor to his drifting soul ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... young men in England who are seeking along with me to continue and to perfect the English Renaissance—jeunes guerriers du drapeau romantique, as Gautier would have called us—there is none whose love of art is more flawless and fervent, whose artistic sense of beauty is more subtle and more delicate—none, indeed, who is dearer to myself—than the young poet whose verses I have brought with me to America; verses full of sweet ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... The Cloister and the Hearth, Adam Bede and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. There is little relief of humor in Esmond, but the story has a strong appeal to any sympathetic reader, and it is the one supreme achievement in all fiction in which the hero tells his own story. Thackeray's art is flawless in this tale, and it sometimes rises to great heights, as in the scenes following the death of Lord Castlewood, the exposure of the Prince's perfidy, the selfishness of Beatrice and the ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... programme on the great day was a marvel of organisation. The jobs fitted into one another, and into the general tactical scheme of the advance, as exactly as the parts of a flawless motor. At no time could enemy craft steal toward the lines to spy out the land. Every sector was covered by defensive patrols which travelled northward and southward, southward and northward, eager to pounce ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... great nature's own providing, as was the mighty temple housing it,—a clear pool in the creek, with the green-walled aisles in the June forest leading down to it, and the blue arch of the flawless June sky for ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... as rain and wind and sun could wreck the garments he wore, it had been done. In his person the ravages of drink were as plainly visible. And yet, upon his high-bridged, rubicund nose was jauntily perched a pair of shining and flawless gold-rimmed glasses. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... lower the ideal, to abate one jot of its severity, to compromise, on the score of human weakness, though it were but in a single particular, the flawless perfection of its standard, were to prove false to all that is highest within us, and traitor to the cause ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... Rhetoric saying, "Ossian's poetry, more perhaps than that of any other writer, deserves to be styled the poetry of the heart"?) And here was the record of a nature-people whose conduct stood revealed as flawless. "Fingal," Macpherson himself accommodatingly pointed out, "exercised every manly virtue in Caledonia while Heliogabalus disgraced human nature in Rome." More than fifty years afterwards Byron compared Homer's Hector, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... were closed. Her complexion, pale though she was, seemed more the creamy pallor of some southern race than the whiteness of ill-health. The bodice of her dress was open a few inches at the neck, showing the faint white smoothness of her flawless skin. Not even her shabby shoes could conceal the perfect shape of her feet and ankles. Once more he remembered his first simile, his first thought of her. She seemed, indeed, like some dainty statuette, ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Bayard of the Revolution," fresh from the colleges and courts of Europe, a man so handsome that, we are told, people experienced a certain shock when he entered the room, courtly, accomplished to the highest degree, of flawless character, with a mind as noble and elevated as it was intellectual, and burning with the most elevated patriotism,—he took Hamilton by storm, capturing judgement as well as heart, and loving ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... soon as she had reason to think that somewhere was impending something of great import, to choose an historian. On him, straightway, Zeus would confer invisibility, inevitability, and psychic penetration, with a flawless ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... generation writing in English is his superior. We cannot resist the pleasure of quoting here from his "Innisfree", which won the praise of Robert Louis Stevenson, and which, if not the high mark of Yeats's achievement, is still a flawless thing in ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... day reflected upward from the white gate-post, irradiated her face, and touched with gold the delicate brown hair, the nosrtils, lips, chin, and the lilac of her throat. Her features were clear-cut, flawless; the expression exquisitely grave and pure; the large grey eyes had that steady glow which shows a firm and undisturbed will. In some undefinable way he found himself thinking of the vague objects of his dreams, delicate and subtle things, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... night! Hide from my eyes the sight Of the body I stare and see Shattered so hideously. I can't believe that it's mine. My body was white and sweet, Flawless and fair and fine, Shapely from head to feet; Oh no, I can never be The thing of horror I see Under the rifle fire, Trussed on the wire . . . ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... match it, and she tried on each, to the surprise of her maid, who usually found her easy to please. She finally decided upon a small toque which was made to set well back from her face into the heavy waves of her hair. She was too wise to wear a veil, for her complexion was flawless, her forehead low and full, and her hair arranged loosely about it; she wore ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... full of women whose lives are flawless; hence it had not been difficult for Lorelei to build up a reputation that insured respect, although her connection with a Bergman show made the task more difficult than it would otherwise have been. During the two years of her stage experience no scandal had attached ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... single Homer is ever more forcibly demanded. If we descend backwards from this zenith, step by step, we find a guide to the understanding of the Homeric problem in the person of Aristotle. Homer was for him the flawless and untiring artist who knew his end and the means to attain it; but there is still a trace of infantile criticism to be found in Aristotle—i.e., in the naive concession he made to the public opinion that considered Homer as the author of the original of all comic epics, the ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... say it had been cast in some dull blue metal. The glaucous wonder stands by itself, a prodigy of good style, more pleasing to the eye than all that painfully generated tropicality of Mr. Hanbury's Mortola paradise. It is flawless. Vainly have I teased my fancy, endeavouring to discover the slightest defect in shape or hue. Firm-seated on the turf, in exultant pose, with a pallid virginal bloom upon those mighty writhing leaves, this plant has drawn me like a magnet, day after day, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... and even the fields won from it, were an alien unfriendly world, upon which they looked wonderingly through the little square windows. And sometimes this world was strangely beautiful in its frozen immobility, with a sky of flawless blue and a brilliant sun that sparkled on the snow; but the immaculateness of the blue and the white alike was pitiless and gave hint of ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... describes Helen, as she is led with the captive women of Ilios, to the ships of the Achaeans:—"Now Helen lamented not, but shame dwelt in her dark eyes, and reddened her lovely cheeks, . . . while around her the people marvelled as they beheld the flawless grace and winsome beauty of the woman, and none dared upbraid her with secret taunt or open rebuke. Nay, as she had been a Goddess they beheld her gladly, for dear and desired was she in their sight. ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... be," was Mr. Marwood's grave reply. "Each of these details is an important factor in the making of high grade porcelain, and should any of them be omitted we should get no flawless ware. It was this infinite care in preparing clay that gave to China, Japan, France, and Germany their perfect results in porcelain-making. If we would equal what has been done in the past we must be just as painstaking, and ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... from this turbulent career, for which surely she was not inextricably destined, and let her be the bright but flawless ornament of a happy home and a choice circle—if not the lady of fashion, in case the student realized one of his fantastic dreams of aimless ambition. The quiet learner felt an immense flame usurp the place of his blood; he seemed gifted with the powers of the athletic Duke of Munich, Christopher ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... by much the same frame of life as Eunice Goodward—the Lovely Lady. The long unused phrase had risen unconsciously to his lips on the day that he had brought Eunice her ring. He had spent a whole week in the city choosing it; three little flawless, oblong emeralds set with diamonds, almost encircling her finger with the mystic number seven. He had discovered on the day that she had accepted him, that it had to be emeralds to match the green lights that her eyes took on in the glen from the deep fern, the mossy ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... lustre of this is the true "adamantine," or diamond, brilliancy, and the other and impure divisions of this particular lustre are: splendent, when objects are reflected perfectly, but of a lower scale of perfection than the true "adamantine" standard, which is absolutely flawless. When still lower, and the reflection, though maybe fairly good, is somewhat "fuzzy," or is confused or out of focus, it is then merely shining; when still less distinct, and no trace of actual reflection ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... a gorgeous restaurant in a great hotel. Tony reveled in the splendor and richness of the setting, delighted in the flawless service, the perfection of the strange and delectable viands which Alan ordered for their consumption. Particularly she delighted in Alan himself and the way he fitted into the richness and luxury. It was his rightful setting. She could not imagine him in any of the shabby restaurants ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... marriages are common (unhappy ones are still news), the only ideal, flawless marriages I ever heard of were those of the Brownings and the Hawthornes; in both instances the husbands were men of genius and the wives ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... gossamer scarf of cloud hanging among the mosses of the trees. The peak came out opal fire above belts of clouds. The sage-green moss spanning the spruces turned to a jewel-dropped thing in a sun-bathed rain-washed world of flawless clouds and jubilant waters. He drew a deep breath. The air was tonic of imprisoned sunlight and resinous healing. Was each day's birth the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... desire! For never man that heard the world's wind rave To you was truer in trust of heart and lyre: Nor Greece nor England on a brow more brave Beheld your flame against the wind burn higher: Nor all the gusts that blanch life's worldly wave With surf and surge could quench its flawless fire: No blast of all that blow Might bid the torch burn low That lightens on us yet as o'er his pyre, Indomitable of storm, That now no flaws deform Nor thwart winds baffle ere it all aspire, One light of godlike breath and flame, To write on heaven with man's most glorious ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... with the Lulab, which is used at the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, and must be flawless. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... figure, to pictorial definition. Architecture, again, though it has its own laws—laws esoteric enough, as the true architect knows only too well—yet sometimes aims at fulfilling the conditions of a picture, as in the Arena chapel; or of sculpture, as in the flawless unity of Giotto's tower at Florence; and often finds a true poetry, as in those strangely twisted staircases of the chateaux of the country of the Loire, as if it were intended that among their odd turnings the actors in a wild ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... born in the far-off province of Suchuan, was considered a rustic by the distinguished elegance of the Palace and, therefore, had never spoken unless decorum required. Still, even her detractors were compelled to admit the charms that had gained her her name. Her face had the flawless outline of the pearl, and like the blossom of the plum was the purity of her complexion, upon which the darkness of her eyebrows resembled two silk-moths alighted to flutter above the brilliance of her eyes—eyes which even the August Aunt ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... him but from the continuity of early mental habit? He might renew the over-grown tonsure, and wait, devoutly, rapturously, in this goodly sanctuary of earth and sky about him, for the manifestation, at the moment of his own worthiness, of flawless humanity, in some undreamed-of depth and perfection of ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... returned almost immediately. He led Mademoiselle into a room like a sort of study or apartment given up to business matters. Mademoiselle Valle had never seen Lord Coombe's ceremonial evening effect more flawless. Tall, thin and finely straight, he waited in the centre of the room. He was evidently on the point of going out, and the light-textured satin-lined overcoat he had already thrown on revealed, through a suggestion ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... threatening cloud-wall crumbled, faded, and abruptly dropped away to reveal the sun advancing in all that brazen effrontery which it assumes in those lawless latitudes along the Line. Now the sky was become a huge inverted bowl of flawless azure porcelain, the surface of the Sulu Sea sparkled as though strewn with a million diamonds, and, not a league off our bows, rose the jungle-clothed shores ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... gold-vested; after these That priest who bare the Blessed Sacrament, And acolytes behind him, lifting lights. Then from his pallet Ceadmon slowly rose And worshipped Christ, his God, and reaching forth His right hand, cradled in his left, behold! Therein was laid God's Mystery. He spake: 'Stand ye in flawless charity of God T'ward me, my sons; or lives there in your hearts Memory the least of wrong?' The monks replied: 'Father, within us lives nor wrong, nor wrath, But love, and love alone.' And he: 'Not less Am I in charity with you, my sons, And all my sins of pride, and ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... democracy had startled Americans out of their attitude of self-complacent belief in it, and converted them first into thoroughgoing critics, and then into determined reformers of the system that they once thought flawless. The legislation of the session of 1849-50 has still measures of value. Canada for the first time assumed full control of her own postal system. The principle of separate schools for Roman Catholics was confirmed, a measure which reveals Canada in sharp contrast to the {139} United ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... the secret of removing flaws from diamonds. The King showed him a stone valued at 6,000 francs—without a flaw it would have been worth 10,000. Saint-Germain said that he could remove the flaw in a month, and in a month he brought back the diamond—flawless. The King sent it, without any comment, to his jeweler, who gave 9,600 francs for the stone, but the King returned the money, and kept the gem as a curiosity. Probably it was not the original stone, but another cut in the same fashion, Saint- Germain sacrificing 3,000 or 4,000 francs ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... parlor a girl sat at the cracked marble centre-table weeping comfortably and eating gum-drops. She was a flawless beauty. Crying had only made her brilliant eyes brighter. When she crunched a gum-drop you thought only of the poetry of motion and envied the senseless confection. Eve at the age of five minutes must have been a ringer for Miss Ada Lowery at nineteen or twenty. I was introduced, and a gum-drop ...
— Options • O. Henry
... from it. But the smallest stones at the back, where the clasp came, were as large as my little finger nail, and the largest were almost the size of a filbert. All were of perfect colour and fire, extraordinarily deep and faultlessly shaped, as well as flawless. Besides, the necklace had a history which would have made it interesting even if it hadn't been intrinsically of half ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... will of God, are once opened to spiritual things, then God, in all the perfections of His divine character, is seen both in the Bible, the written Word, and in Christ, the living Word, and this two-fold revelation of Him is seen to be as perfect and flawless as the God who is thus revealed. Those who think they see imperfections either in the Bible or in Christ are spiritually blind. For when one thinks he sees flaws where there are only infinite perfections, he advertises to all ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... giant glass sphere, polished and flawless. Inside it could be made out various objects—a circular bench arrangement on a wooden flooring, batteries that filled the cup between the floor and the bottom arc of the sphere, tall metal cylinders, a small searchlight ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... unaccustomed to the wide survey Of various Nature's compensating sway, Untaught to separate the wheat and chaff, To praise the one and at the other laugh, Yearn all in vain and impotently seek Some flawless hero upon whom to wreak The sycophantic worship of the weak. Not so the wise, from superstition free, Who find small pleasure in the bended knee; Quick to discriminate 'twixt good and bad, And willing in the king to find the cad— ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... act the part and feel the part, earrings and gum help, but if there is one thing you are more conscious of than all else, it is such proper English as you possess—which compared to Boston is not much, but compared to Lena and Ida and Mary and Louise and Susie and Annie is painfully flawless. Chew hard as ever you can, if you tell Fannie, "There aren't any more plantations," it echoes and re-echoes and shrieks at you from the four sides of Christendom. But holler, "Fannie, there ain't ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... waxed the fame and the power of the ape-man in the mysterious haunts of the savage jungle where he ranged, mightiest of beasts because of the man-mind which directed his giant muscles and his flawless courage. ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... one of the questions about which Lady Ashbridge had her convictions. She had a mild but unalterable opinion that when anybody died, all that they had previously done became absolutely flawless and laudable. ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... in Government indenture, at a thousand credits a year—chopping up rocks in the Antarctica Penitentiary. The system's flawless. It has to be. With Earth as overpopulated as it is, you need some system of tracking down people—otherwise crime would be ten times as prevalent as it ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... say, for certain," he said, "how much they are worth until they are cut, for there may be flaws in them that cannot be detected. Now, if I were to buy them like this, I could not give more than a hundred rupees each. If they are all flawless, they would be worth much more; but it would be a pure speculation, and I will not go beyond ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... let it go for five hundred. She opened her bag slowly, in spite of the terrified and ever-louder protestations of the doctor, and took from it a slender gold necklace set simply with seven pearls in front; but the pearls were of wonderful brilliancy—flawless, and perfect in shape. The ornament was simple, chaste, and of exquisite delicacy. And instantly he saw in fancy the necklace on Clotilde's beautiful neck, as its natural adornment. Any other jewel would have been a useless ornament, these pearls would be the fitting symbol of her youth. And he took ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... in a grip of admiration by the telling effect of this scene. No other actress could have played it as Miss Tempest did. Her every meaning leaped over the footlights. Not a word, or the inflection of a word, escaped attention. It was an absolutely flawless piece of comedy. The artistic comedy of Rejane lacked the richness and unction of Miss Tempest's methods. Those who failed to see "The Freedom of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... my objection to the logic of science. The arguments proceed from premises to conclusions, and end with the assumption "it therefore follows." But I say that, however carefully the argument be built up, even though apparently flawless, there is no such thing at present as "it must follow." Human ideas at present naturally form a plan, and a balanced design; they might be indicated by a geometrical figure, an upright straight line in the centre, and branching from ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... carriage and was soon informed of the accident, and its probable cause. She was a tall, elegantly-formed woman, of perhaps forty-three years, with large, dark brown eyes and rich brown hair. Her skin was fair and flawless, as that of a girl of twenty, with a delicate flush upon her cheeks, and Edith thought her face the most beautiful she ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Clara Durrant. A flawless mind; a candid nature; a virgin chained to a rock (somewhere off Lowndes Square) eternally pouring out tea for old men in white waistcoats, blue-eyed, looking you straight in the face, playing Bach. Of all women, Jacob honoured her most. But to sit at a table with bread ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... in every detail, and it is with real delight I announce that she has won not only the usual smaller prize of twenty-five dollars, but the premium always offered at the same time, but never before won by any pupil of this school, of one hundred dollars, for a flawless examination. I would, therefore, ask Miss Anne Pierson to come to the platform, that I may have the honor of delivering ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... the plug out of the bottom to let it drain. There was no sound, even of the dogs, as they flung their spoil ashore. It was the very instant of moon-rise. At first a copper rim was answered by the faintest line in the water. Then the full reddish disk stood upon a strong copper pillar, smooth and flawless in a rippleless lake, and that became denuded of its capital as the ball rose over it into ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... these, he had eagerly inquired if it might not be the will of the Lord that they should go no farther into the wilderness, but stand their ground and give battle to the Gentiles forthwith. He made the proposal as one who had a flawless faith that the God of Battles would be with them, and he appeared to believe that something might be done that very day to force the matter to an issue. When he had made his proposal, he waited in a modest attitude to hear their views ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... the countenances of the spell-bound students, many of whom had never before heard Constance sing. Then her gaze centered upon Mignon. Anger, surprise and chagrin swept the elfish face of the French girl. She read vocalization more flawless than her own, as well as greater sweetness and an intense sympathy, which she lacked, in the full, sweet, rounded tones that issued from her rival's lips. This was the voice of ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... hysterically, and been quieted by the ship's surgeon, was Lady Harwood. By the wreck these two had lost much of value in clothing, jewelry and money; but their greatest loss was that of a necklace of twelve flawless diamonds and fourteen rubies. Sir Arthur offered a reward of five hundred pounds for the recovery of this necklace. In this reward ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. {30} —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! Draw close: that conflagration of my church —What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye find. . . Ah God, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... welfare. In return her existence was recognized; hardly more than that, for the great man did not trouble himself with a personal answer. His reply was given vicariously, through one P. T. Mallencroft, his secretary, on flawless paper, three sentences in bold clear type and a Spencerian signature closing it. It was a bloodless thing. It spoke the commands of omnipotence as though carved on ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... A flawless cup: how delicate and fine The flowing curve of every jewelled line! Look, turn it up or down, 'tis perfect still,— But holds no ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... started to shoot uptown, turning a corner into another deserted boulevard. As it skirted the great Park, he pointed at Central Tower. There seemed to be a slight crack in the smooth surface half way up but, as a moment's mist engulfed the tower, it looked flawless again. Then all the mist was gone and the crack was back, a ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... enthusiasm, and her great physical beauty, to a beauty lover, made every visit from her an epoch. I have never seen the face of an adult woman who has had the experience of wifehood and motherhood which retained so perfectly the flawless beauty of childhood. I have often gazed at the angelic face of some child, and wondered why each year of life should wipe out some exquisite line of drawing, or absorb the entrancing shadows which rest upon the face of childhood. It was a great satisfaction to personally assist in the furnishing ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... the past twelvemonth of jubilee and gratulation; and what the mantle of flattery is for the sunlight of truth in the nation it is in the individual. In politics, at any rate, the centennial year is closing with some reproof of our all-summer conceit. Our frame of government is not so flawless as we fancied; the pharisaic contrast we drew between our politics and those of other nations is no longer ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the squire, as was also remembered later, was almost the last to enter the door; and before he did enter he halted and searched the flawless sky as though for signs of rain. Then he hurried on after the others, who clumped single file along a narrow little hall, the bare, uncarpeted floor creaking loudly under their heavy farm shoes, and entered a ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Mrs. Vance's manner had rather stiffened under the gaze of handsome men and elegantly dressed ladies, whose glances were not modified by any rules of propriety. To stare seemed the proper and natural thing. Carrie found herself stared at and ogled. Men in flawless top-coats, high hats, and silver-headed walking sticks elbowed near and looked too often into conscious eyes. Ladies rustled by in dresses of stiff cloth, shedding affected smiles and perfume. Carrie noticed among them the sprinkling ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Can but borrow From seen pleasures a new sorrow. But what a fairy court is this In which beauty has its home! 240 The palace of Troy was not your peer Nor rival in magnificence, I see a greater Priam here Cesar of sovran excellence, A Hecuba of nobler mien, 245 A flawless queen In power humanely gentle: hence Apollo's and Diana's reign Heaven confirmeth in the twain. And you, Prince most excellent, 250 Give me liberal reward: From your promise is none debarred, It fills all men with content, And the planets of Heaven's abode Had word of God 255 That ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... be superficial in his walls. The builder in the chalk valleys of France and England may be blameless in kneading his clumsy pier out of broken flint and calcined lime; but the Venetian, who has access to the riches of Asia and the quarries of Egypt, must frame at least his shafts out of flawless stone. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... swinging on at the obvious pace with which this writing swings, of course has no chance to make as flawless a picture as the great man of leisure; but the pictorial quality of each is precisely the same. Both understood ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... was awakened to sporadic laughter at the dinner-table, where they sat by preconcerted arrangement without the formality of evening-dress, and fared admirably from the hors d'oeuvres to the coffee—a flawless meal. And dinner being over, they drove away under a noble moon to the railway-station, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... laws, a supreme authority and subordinate authorities down to the latest babe. And as he who is loudest in demanding liberty for himself is sternest in denying it to others, you may confidently go to the Maison Vaillant, or the Mosthaus, for a flawless example of the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... sharply outlined crests of remote mountain range, in lifeless desolation the landscape lay outspread to the view. Southward, streaked with white fringe of alkali, the flat monotone of sand and ashes blended with the flatter, flawless surface of a wide-spreading, ash-colored inland lake, its shores dotted at intervals with the bleaching bones of cattle and ridged with ancient wagon-tracks unwashed by not so much as a single drop from the cloudless heavens since their ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... her, and she had stood up to it. She, with her passion for animals; she, with her tender, tender heart! Larry, who believed himself to be profoundly introspective, did not know that it was his own flawless physical courage, finding and recognising its fellow in Christian, that had first lit the flame. He thought it was her face, with its delicate charm, its faint, elusive loveliness, that had felled him, laid him low, devastated him. He pleased himself in reiterating his overthrow, in ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... With its bright, golden glory, let me seek A crown that well befits it for my quest. Fair waist that curves beneath the heart I love, I shall engirdle you with priceless gems Won by my prowess for your perfect grace. O wondrous neck! great lustrous, flawless pearls, That shall be royal in their worth, to match The white enchantment of your beauty fair, Shall ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... last at Marienbad he had met and spoken with Prince Mirko and his wife Princess Natalie. Nor was it surprising, for the Princess was rarely beautiful, her figure as perfect as her face; and her lovely head was poised upon a flawless neck and shoulders. She would have shone in any court in Europe, and it was a hard fate which gave her to the second son of Montenegro. She, poor young thing, was one of the pawns in the game which the Petrovitch dynasty was playing for Great Serbia, ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... stern canons she is a perfect woman. Her beauty is that of flawless health and a hitherto ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... who could at least have made herself intelligible to his servants in their own language, instead of this one who created endless confusion by non-comprehension. But no! he had been unable to stand the allurements of her person. The rounded outlines of her slender form and the bloom on her flawless cheek had enslaved him, depriving him of the power to resist. Truly she was good to look upon, as every masculine eye betrayed by its ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... hands low and twisted at the stem. This took him under water, but he came up smiling triumph, threw his prize into the meadow, and paddled round the group on an outlook for the finest blooms. One in the very middle of the floating bed was fresh and flawless, and he swam for it. A number of cold weedy things were round his legs at once, and before he knew it he was thickly meshed. The slimy touch sent an unpleasant thrill through him, but he had no sense of fear as yet He wrenched off the bloom he had aimed for, and again he went under water. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... ascent to the "bench," or plateau above the wooded point on which were grouped the glistening white buildings of the pretty summer resort, and, having reached the crest, turned silently to gaze at the beauty of the scene,—at the broad, flawless bosom of a summer lake all sheen and silver from the unclouded moon. Far to the southeast it wound among the bold and rock-ribbed bluffs rising from the forest growth at their base to shorn and rounded ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... the pawpaw, the dog-wood, the red-bud, the spice-wood, the sweet-strife, the angelica. On the west the velvet turf began to unroll gently downward toward the river. The quiet stream ran with molten silver on that flawless October day, and deep shadows of royal purple hung curtains of wondrous beauty above the water. Back under the trees the shadows were darkly blue, bluer even than the cloudless sky arching so high ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... I said. Then, with colorless ceremony, I made them known to one another, and with greater ceremony they exchanged salutes and compliments—a pair matched in flawless breeding and the usages ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the spear. All these to battle fared with warrior-souled Penthesileia: even as when descends Dawn from Olympus' crest of adamant, Dawn, heart-exultant in her radiant steeds Amidst the bright-haired Hours; and o'er them all, How flawless-fair soever these may be, Her splendour of beauty glows pre-eminent; So peerless amid all the Amazons Unto Troy-town Penthesileia came. To right, to left, from all sides hurrying thronged The Trojans, greatly marvelling, when they saw ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... a pace. "You ugly, clumsy clown. You ape!" Tears began to spoil the flawless mask of her face. Blinded with anger, he grabbed roughly for her arm, but she broke away and dashed ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg
... has been mainly oral (though also partly ceremonial), the business of the disciple being to commit to memory the creed or catechism which has been placed in his hands, and recite it, formula by formula, with flawless accuracy. But the difference between the two schools is wholly superficial, being, in fact, analogous to that between the conventional teaching of Drawing, in which the pupil finds salvation in doing what he is told to do, line by line, and stroke by stroke, and the conventional ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... soldiers stepped over this wallet, yet, if one of the infantrymen knew it was there, not one of them let any sign escape him. Discipline was absolutely perfect. These marching men of rifle and bayonet swept on, heads up, eyes straight forward, every file in flawless, absolute alignment. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... couple through the iron grating of his cell. He noted the tremor which passed down Beard's form and the furtive caress which he bestowed on the visitor's hand. At the same time the girl lifted her veil, disclosing a finely molded face of flawless features, with a skin of exquisite paleness, and flashing brown eyes shaded by long, dark lashes. As she stood with fingers encircling the bars that interposed between her and Beard, her beautiful face took on a purposeful aspect, as of one ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... lyric in two parts called Meeting at Night and Parting at Morning contains only sixteen lines and is a flawless masterpiece. Of the four dimensions of mathematics, one only has nothing to do with poetry. The length of a poem is of no importance in estimating its value. I do not fully understand what is meant by saying that a poem ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... make the Parish House her second home—for indeed my mother ever seemed to draw children to her, as by some delightful magic. Here, then, the child learned to sew and to embroider, to acquire beautiful housewifely accomplishments, and to speak French with flawless perfection; she reaped the benefit of my mother's girlhood spent in a convent in France; and Mrs. Eustis was far too shrewd not to appreciate the value of this. And so we ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... artist by the grace of God. He was indeed an exquisite artist, and if his place in Russian literature is not large, it seems permanent. He does not rank among the greatest. He lacks the tremendous force of Tolstoi, the flawless perfection of Turgenev, and the mighty world-embracing sympathy of Great-heart Dostoevski. But he is a faithful interpreter of Russian life, and although his art was objective, one cannot help feeling the essential ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... seems to have been selected to close this little opening sequence of poems on the poet, because that fragment of a larger projected work could find place here almost as if it were a poet's exercise in blank verse. Its smooth and spacious rhythm, flawless and serene as the distant Greek myth of the hero and the goddess it celebrates, is in striking contrast with the rougher, but brighter and more humanly colloquial blank verse of "Bishop Blougram's Apology," for example, or the stiff carefulness of the "Epistle" of Karshish. ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... flawless that Cal, involuntarily, glanced out of the port to confirm that they were ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... loose knot at the back of her head. As he reached her she smiled faintly and a little brown mole at the corner of her mouth played charmingly up and down. After the first minute, Gay found himself fascinated by this single imperfection in her otherwise flawless features. More than her beauty he felt that it stirred his blood and aroused in him the physical tenderness which he associated always with ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... sunset. In a word, Miss Hugonin was a very quaint and colourful and delectable figure as she came a little further into the room. Her eyes shone like blue stars, and her hair shone—there must be pounds of it, Billy thought—and her very shoulders, plump, flawless, ineffable, shone with the glow of an errant cloud-tatter that is just past the track of dawn, and is therefore neither pink nor white, but manages somehow to combine the best points ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... end in a pickle jar. He called it "Mice Will Play." He had kept it quiet and hidden away ever since he wrote it, waiting to find a partner who fitted his conception of "Helen Grimes." And here was "Helen" herself, with all the innocent abandon, the youth, the sprightliness, and the flawless stage art ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... cheeks. And all of this is pure joy. No hawk of dread and horror keeps swooping down and bearing off the little birds of happiness. No accusing conscience starts forth and beckons me away from pleasure. Everywhere is supreme and flawless beauty. Whether one looks at this tiny snail shell, marvellously chased and marked, a very elf's horn whose open mouth is coloured rose; or gazes down at the flat land between here and the sea, wandering under the smile of the afternoon sunlight, seeming almost to be alive, hedgeless, ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... emotions at white heat. The moment he finished she stood again, and this time, young and inexperienced though she was, with little education and less knowledge of the great world, she held her audience spellbound by the clear ideas which she poured out in almost flawless English, and by her air of conviction which carried belief in her arguments with it. She spoke clearly, steadily, as she summed up all the wrongs she had been obliged to suffer through a struggling girlhood, as well as all she had seen and read about and felt ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... old bronze, with certain metallic gleams in it—like time-veiled copper and brass. His flawless frame was covered with tight-banded muscle. There was no appearance of fat. His skin was smooth—without wrinkles. He was young; about forty years, or less. But there was the nick of a tusk-stroke in one ear; and a small red devil in ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... genius!' he cried in genuine astonishment. 'I might have written it myself, except that it is so unequal—a mixture of diamonds and paste, like all Hebrew literature.' He indicated with flawless taste the good lines, not knowing they were one and all unconscious reproductions from the English masterpieces Mieses had borrowed from the library in the Educational Alliance. The acolytes listened respectfully, and the beardless, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... pleasances, Hung moist with odors strange from scented trees. Sweet sounds o'erbrimmed the place; and rare perfumes, Faint as far sunshine, fell 'mong verdant glooms. In that fair land, all hues, all leafage green Wrapt flawless days in endless summer-sheen. Bright eyes, the violet waking, lifted up Where bent the lily her deep, fragrant cup; And folded buds, 'gainst many a leafy spray— The wild-woods' voiceless nuns—knelt down to pray. There roses, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... pleasant week in New York while he made his investigation and compromised the State's claim. The day before they returned home they visited Tiffany's. Mrs. Saylor's love and respect for her husband were in no sense lessened when he invested three thousand dollars in two rings, which, though they were flawless gems, could scarcely be said to adorn his wife's tapering ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... democracy cannot and will not combine sufficient opportunities for individual political distinction with an effective ultimate popular political responsibility. The manner in which the combination has been made hitherto is far from flawless, and the American democracy has much to learn before it reaches an organization adequate to its own proper purposes. It must learn, above all, that the state, and the individuals who are temporarily responsible for ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... door?" queried Bessie, with a smile, for it pleased her to hear that the jewel was not quite flawless. ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... friend, the Modern Gentleman, ARTHUR, the hero, his ideal Knight, Inspired his strains. From fount to flood they ran A flawless course of melody and light. A Christian chivalry shone in his song From Locksley Hall to shadowy Lyonnesse, Whence there stand forth two figures, stately, strong, Symbols of spirit's stress; The blameless King, saintship ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... lavender haze lay lightly along the horizon. Nearer inshore the blue of sea and sky was intense. A line of breakers raced shoreward, their white manes streaming back in the wind. Best of all, Leslie loved the flawless green of their curve at the instant before they crashed ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... We vain pursuit ever persistent make. Euclid from chaos order did evolve And on the scroll of Fame hath writ those laws Which Time, relentless, ne'er can thence efface. For Truth, immutable, is there entombed. But he, in flawless mental armor robed, Did crusade make where Science hath her home, And from her vaults where Truth was close entombed He raped their locks and brought the treasure forth. Long mankind groped in darkness, nor did dream That laws ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... said. "Binoculars, microscopes—it would take us a long time to learn how to make glass as clear and flawless as those crystals. But we have no way ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... had never been a real link between Beryl and her, and she knew it. But now she felt herself strangely alone in the midst of perhaps threatening dangers. If only Beryl would become frank, would speak out, would consult her, ask her advice! But the girl was enclosed in a reserve that was flawless. There was not a single breach in the wall. And the dark winter ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... him everything. If he is a man he will think, 'Only her purity has prompted her to tell me,' and he will love her more than ever. Some momentary spasm he may feel. Every man wishes to believe that the flower he plucks is flawless. But his higher nature will conquer his vanity and he will say, 'She loves me, I love her, she is innocent, and if any blow is to be struck at her ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... of the land, The irresponsive sounding of the sea, Speak both one message of one sense to me:— Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand Thou too aloof, bound with the flawless band Of inner solitude; we bind not thee; But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free? What heart shall touch thy heart? What hand thy hand? And I am sometimes proud and sometimes meek, And sometimes I remember days of old When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... pushed down over her eyes, had stood with him on the bridge of the D'Estang! She was all in white, slim, supple, without jewelry, save for a string of pearls about her neck. A light, filmy veil was thrown across her bare shoulders and the living curls and waves of her flawless coiffure gleamed as they caught the lights of the chandeliers. And yet—! The girlishness which Jack had found so attractive in her, was missing, and so was the characteristic animation of her features. Instead, her face was set in a formal, politely interested expression, which to Armitage ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... to Aeschylus; and get a wise and general view of your own. What I want you to see clearly is, the descent of the influx from plane to plane, as shown in these two tragedians. The aim of the first is to express a spiritual message, grand thought. That of the second is to produce a work of flawless beauty, without regard to its spiritual import. What was to Aeschylus a secondary object; the purely artistic—was to Sophocles the whole thing. Aeschylus was capable of wonderful psychological insight. Clytemnestra's ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... exaggerated muscle as an ultimate expression of vigour. Only the devotee of the obvious is satisfied with that sort of result; and our exhibitions reek with them. But there is no reason why the satin skin and smooth contour of a naked child shouldn't express virility and vigour—no reason why the flawless delicacy of Venus herself should not, if necessary, express violence unexaggerated and without either ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers |
