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Leonine   Listen
adjective
Leonine  adj.  Pertaining to, or characteristic of, the lion; as, a leonine look; leonine rapacity.
Leonine verse, a kind of verse, in which the end of the line rhymes with the middle; so named from Leo, or Leoninus, a Benedictine and canon of Paris in the twelfth century, who wrote largely in this measure, though he was not the inventor. The following line is an example: "Gloria factorum temere conceditur horum."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Leonine" Quotes from Famous Books



... those were a leonine magnanimity of courage, a vulpine subtlety of cunning, or a pavonine strut of vanity. The spirit, freed from its fallen cell, "Fills with fresh energy another form, And towers an elephant, or glides a worm, Swims as an eagle in the eye of noon, Or ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... turned to his car, jumped into the driver's seat, and advanced the spark. The purr of the motor deepened to a leonine growl. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... foolish drab creature with the leonine mane, instead of going about the grazing or hunting he was made for, was prowling round the horses again. The Eldest Mare was all for silent contempt. "I suppose he wants to learn something from us," she said, and "Let him." The next day he was at ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... door—too gently, for he received no answer. With hasty yet hesitating imprudence, he opened the door and peeped in. Thomas was upon his knees by the fire-side, with his plaid over his head. Startled by the weaver's entrance, he raised his head, and his rugged leonine face, red with wrath, glared out of the thicket of his plaid upon the intruder. He did not rise, for that would have been a task requiring time and caution. But he cried aloud in a hoarse voice, with his two hands leaning on the chair, like the paws ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... belied the banter of his words. They shone as the eyes of a fighter meeting odds. There was something leonine about him at the moment, something of the primitive animal roused from its lair ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... deep drop, and descended the cliff so as to get a view of the ancient chateau that faces the setting sun. Beyond the loch was a muddy field, then rows on rows of ugly advertisements, then lines of 'smoky dwarf houses,' and, above these, clear against a sky of March was the leonine profile of Arthur's Seat. Steam rose and trailed from the shrieking southward trains between the loch and the mountain, old and new were oddly met, for the chateau was the home of an ancient race, the Logans of Restalrig, ancestors of that ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang

... dimly perceive that something stupendous had happened. She wondered why Pete saw fit to remonstrate with the woman, pleading for forgiveness with his eyes. She thought she noted an air of submission about her leonine Pete. ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane

... Saint-Gelais, seeing that all were well pleased, "I had never heard a better Pantagruelian prognostication. Much do we owe to him who made these leonine verses in the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... ranks of the defenders became thinner. Prominent everywhere in this hand to hand struggle were the heroic forms of the twelve Templars, in white mantle with blood-red cross. At last, at a breach which had been defended with leonine courage, one of the noble twelve sank beneath his shattered shield, and closed his eyes in death. A second shared his fate, then a third. The others, bleeding from many wounds and aided by the sorely diminished remnant of their retainers, redoubled their brave ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... Mr. Bright. The effect was always the same, and always electrical. "Palmerston!" he would cry. "The man who involved us in the crime of the Crimean War!" And then he would break off with an angry toss of his leonine head; but the accents of immeasurable scorn filled the hiatus in ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... the forest's rim, To spirit on his troops emerging thence, And prop the lone division Thomiere, For whose recall his voice has rung in vain. Wellington mounts and seeks out Pakenham, Who pushes to the arena from the right, And, spurting to the left of Marmont's line, Shakes Thomiere with lunges leonine. ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... We are, for instance, acquainted with a certain species of animals having a mane, and so on, which is the exclusive primary object of the idea and word 'lion,' and we are likewise acquainted with persons possessing in an eminent degree certain leonine qualities, such as fierceness, courage, &c.; here, a well settled difference of objects existing, the idea and the name 'lion' are applied to those persons in a derived or figurative sense. In those cases, however, where the difference of the objects is not ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... [Enter HERR PAPPELMEISTER, a burly German figure with a leonine head, spectacles, and a mane of white hair—a figure that makes his employer look even coarser. He carries an umbrella, which he never lets go. He is at first grave and silent, which makes any burst of emotion the more striking. He ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... place, I saw General Thomas standing upon the brow of Snodgrass Hill, or Horseshoe Ridge, field glass in hand, intently watching the movements of the troops. I distinctly remember his full-bearded, leonine face, and little did we know that the fate of the Cumberland Army, or possibly of the Nation, rested upon that single man that terrible Sunday afternoon. What a mighty responsibility! But there he stood, a tower of strength, the Rock ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... the seeing to be purblindness, and the oracles to be gibberish. A more miserable exposure could not easily be cited; the most indignant American might afford to pity the Times, when, after four years of leonine roarings and lashings of tail, its roar sank into a whine, and its tail was clapped between its legs. The supremacy of the Times had already been sapped by the abolition of the British paper-duty, and the consequent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... much." We rather encouraged this amusing voracity, analogous to that of monkeys, and Enjolras grew to a size and weight very uncommon among domestic cats. Then I bethought myself of having him shaved in the style of poodles, in order to bring out completely his leonine appearance. He retained his mane and a long tuft of hair at the end of the tail, and I would not swear that his thighs were not adorned with mutton-chop whiskers like those Munito used to wear. Thus trimmed, he resembled, I must confess, a ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier

... all, discreet. Use your wit but never display it for the amusement of others; for be sure that if your brilliancy annoys an inferior man, he will retire from the field and say of you in a tone of contempt, "He is very amusing." Let your superiority be leonine. Moreover, do not be always seeking to please others. I advise a certain coldness in your relations with men, which may even amount to indifference; this will not anger others, for all persons esteem those who slight them; and it will win you the ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... winning friends on all sides by his frank sincerity and ready smile; or, perfect contrast, the blackbearded Bratiano of Rumania, claiming the enforcement of the secret treaty that was to double the area of his state. Later, Paderewski came from Warsaw, his art sacrificed on the altar of patriotism, leonine in appearance, but surprisingly ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... attitude when at work which recalls the swordsman. With an enormous palette in one hand and a brush in the other, he has a way of planting himself in front of his sitter that is amusingly suggestive of a duel. His lithe body sways to and fro, his fine leonine face quivers with the intense study of his model; then with a sudden spring forward, a few rapid touches are dashed on the canvas (like home strokes in the enemy’s weakest spot) with a precision of hand acquired only by long ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... and he meant you should. When he spoke, nobody required an ear-trumpet; the deaf never lost a syllable of his manly utterances. Procter and he were in the same Commission, and were on excellent terms, the younger officer always regarding the elder with a kind of leonine deference. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... all," said the Actor, as he put out his arm with that splendid gesture that we have known and admired for years, at the same time throwing back his leonine head so that his leonine hair fell back from his leonine forehead. "Not at all. I do better in both of them. My genius demands both tragedy and ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... Simon's appearance. He was far above the stature of ordinary men, and of immense strength; and there was, nevertheless, an ease and lightness in his carriage which showed that he was no less active than strong. His face was leonine in expression. His long hair fell back from his forehead, his eyebrows were heavy, his eyes were gray and clear; with a fierce and savage expression when his brows met in a frown, and his lips were firmly set; but at other times frank, open, and straightforward in their look. The mouth ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty

... with leonine courage, and I set to work again in earnest, so that in 1833 the work was ready for publication. On thinking it over now, it strikes me that I was guilty of great impertinence in thus bringing out and publishing with undaunted assurance my little novel ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... shape of a small pamphlet, as two octavo volumes {358} would be too much for most persons. This was sound advice; but it is not the first, second, or third time that it has proved very unpalatable. I received the following answer, to which I take the liberty of prefixing a bit of leonine wisdom: ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... Collected Works among 'Juvenilia', with title altered to 'Leonine Elegiacs'. The only alterations made in the text were "wood-dove" for "turtle," and the substitution of "or" for "and" in the last line ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... of the Brigadier-General in Chaotong, the entrance is guarded by the customary stone images of mythical shape and grotesque features. They are believed to represent lions, but their faces are not leonine—they are a reproduction, exaggerated, of the characteristic features of the bulldog of Western China. The images are of undoubted value to the city. One is male and the other female. On the sixteenth day of the first month they ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... who strive to approach the Judge. A seraphim holds the closed book of life, upon which these words are carved: 'Hic signatur liber vitae.' On various parts of the portal are numerous inscriptions, some of which, like the following, are in leonine verses: ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... legitimate pontiff Alexander V., recently elected by the Council of Pisa. The troops of Lewis of Anjou, the rival of Ladislas in the kingdom of Naples, had in the mean time entered that portion of Rome which went by the name of the Leonine City, and gained possession of the Vatican and the castle of St. Angelo. Several skirmishes took place between the forces of the usurper and the troops of the Pope and of Lewis of Anjou. Lorenzo Ponziano, who from his birth and his talents was the most ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... At this moment a leonine head, supported on a lumbering and ill-balanced body, was thrust in between them. It was Excalibur, taking sanctuary with the Church from ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay

... of course, also a deliberate piece of mesmeric bluff, the reason for which was not made clear till one noticed, what the ratel probably could not, that the great leonine tusks, the terrible fangs, were yellow and worn, as were the rest of the teeth. This was an old lion, a king on a throne already tottering, a ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... has its terror, for at Huntington, Indiana, three truthful damsels of the town saw its waters churned by a tail that splashed from side to side, while far ahead was the prow of the animal—a leonine skull, with whiskers, and as large as the head of a boy of a dozen years. As if realizing what kind of a report was going to be made about him, the monster was overcome with bashfulness at the sight of the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... generation—those gallant oldsters who were born and bred, and meant to die, in Lichfield,—Patricia did not lack for admirers. Tom May was one of them, of course; rarely a pretty face escaped the tribute of at least one proposal from Tom May. Then there was Roderick Taunton, he with the leonine mane, who spared her none of his forensic eloquence, but found Patricia less tractable than the most stubborn of juries. Bluff Walter Thurman, too, who was said to know more of Dickens, whist and criminal ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... when the car drove in. His heavy black body with its tan belly and legs was completely relaxed, and he was panting slightly. His head, which he held up as with an effort, was massive, leonine, rugged, with chops and dewlaps that hung loosely down, giving the impression of a detached and judicial attitude toward life. His expression was grave, thoughtful, melancholy, as if his ancestors, pondering through the centuries on the frailty of humanity as they saw it, had ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... One leonine voice roared distinctly, high above the noise. It was a sound familiar to all the creoles,—that bellowing shout of Gaspard Roussillon's. He was roaming around the stockade, having been turned back by the guard when he tried to pass ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... out on the veranda, had not heard his remark, but she had seen a leonine sort of private bearing an old man on his back and had guessed that he had remained behind to save a life when every man in uniform had been engaged in ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... sort of a man he was, then," commented Delaven, looking more closely at the strong, fine pictured face, and the bushy, leonine shock of tawny hair and the eyes that smiled down with a twinkle of humor in their blue depths. There was a slight likeness to Matthew Loring in the heavy brows and square chin, but the smile of the father was genial—that of the ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... as lissome merry minxes, Or impenetrable Sphinxes— Leonine, aloof, impassive, topaz-eyed— Leave our staid professor chilly, For he clearly thinks it silly To regard them from the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various

... movements now began to be marked by the assurance which comes from experience, and in them could be detected the germ of the future leader. His person strengthened, and his bearing grew majestically leonine. "What a fine leader he will make one of these days!" said old Taras. "He will make a splendid leader, far surpassing even ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... inclined to be satirical, too, in a careless fashion, and knew quite a number of literary people, and said a great many sharp things about them, as if he was used to them, and stood in no awe whatever of them and their leonine greatness. But he did not talk to her, though he looked at her now and then; and whenever he looked at her, his glance was a half-admiring one, even while it was evident that he was not thinking much about her. ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett

... her yarns at the leonine head of her husband, bent above "The History of European Morals," opened her mouth as though to speak; thought better of it, apparently. Twice she looked up like this, her air showing that she was not quite confident ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... from the one to the other, from the thin, vulpine face to the thin, leonine one. The pity Mr. Tyler felt for the old man's visible weakness showed on his face as ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough

... accurately and with a good deal of humour. Sketches of G.K.'s personal appearance abound, and if occasionally they contradict one another in detail they yet contrive to convey a vivid and fairly truthful impression of the "leonine" head, the bulky form, the gestures and mannerisms. That a man of letters and lecturer should choose to wear proudly not one of these titles but that of journalist, was pleasing and flattering to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... muffled figures holding two camels, which were lying down. Upon one there was a sort of palanquin, in which Mrs. Armine took her seat, with a Bedouin sitting in front. A stick was plied. The beast protested, filling the hollow of the night with a complaint that at last became almost leonine; then suddenly rose up, was silent, and started off at a ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... lips, too, are singularly pensive in their mode of falling down at the sides, although there is no want of richness and vigor in their central fullness of curve. The upper lip, from the nose downward, is separated by a very deep line, which gives a sort of leonine firmness of expression to all the lower part of the face. The cheeks are square and strong, in texture like pieces of marble, with the cheek-bones very broad and prominent. The eyes themselves are light in color, and have a strange dreamy heaviness, that conveys any idea ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... old Frenchman with white hair and the mustaches of a Viking, displaying a leonine countenance out of which gazed a pair of eyes that seemed to have been made tragical by some profound chagrin. In his youth, a student in Paris, he had written some scores of songs, half a dozen sonatas, and a symphony. These efforts, though technically ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... was no myth. A fortnight later the leonine letter-box was actually placed in position at Button's, and, after doing service there for some years, was used by Dr. Hill when editing the Inspector. It was sold in 1804, the notice of the sale in the Annual Register stating that "The admirable gilt lion's head letter-box, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... lines to those who read their mystic import aright. Virgo is the reaction of the leonine force, and is, consequently, a ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... an ordeal than I had expected; he had a strong, massively-cut, leonine face, free and abundant white hair, streaked with dark grey, but there was a kind light in his eyes as I looked up at them, and the firm mouth could smile, I found, ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... forbidding, his head inclined in deep thought, as if bent under the weight of tremendous responsibilities. A noted specialist in pulmonary troubles, Dr. Wilston Everett was well past middle age, and his tall, erect figure, massive frame and fine, leonine head, crowned by a mass of stubborn, iron-gray hair, made him a conspicuous figure everywhere. His expression, stern in repose, was that of a profound student; it was a face where lofty thoughts, humane feeling and every other noble attribute had ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... soldier, hero, patriot, prisoner! See Garibaldi: despising the restraints of law; careless of the simplest conventionalities that go to make up an honest gentleman; doing both right and wrong—like a lion; everything in him leonine. All this was in Ristofalo's reach. It was all beyond Richling's. Which was best, the capability or the incapability? It was a question he would have liked to ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... the chest and abdomen it resembled an eczema, on the shoulders there were brown, pinkish-red areas. On the scalp the hair was scanty, the eye-brows denuded, and the eyelashes absent. The forehead was leonine in aspect. From between the various nodosities a continual discharge exuded, the nodosities being markedly irregular over the limbs. The backs of the hands, the dorsums of the feet, the wrists and ankles, had closely approximating growths upon them, while under the thick ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... human, even through its horrid mask of mud and half-dried bloody gouts, but the expression was brutish and savagely fierce; the white teeth were visible between the parted lips, in a malignant grin; the tangled hair and beard were mixed in leonine confusion, and there were scars disfiguring the brow. Round the creature's waist was a ring of iron, to which was attached a heavy but broken chain—the chain I had heard clanking. With a second glance I noted ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... can easily throw over his shoulder. But the gun, the gun! Almira can not abide him with a gun in his hand, but he can not leave it here, for it might easily be stolen by some one. What to do? The idea struck Timar to give it into Almira's charge, who then, in her leonine jaws, carried the weapon proudly before him as a poodle bears its master's cane. Narcissa sat on his shoulder and purred in his ear. Michael allowed Almira to go on before ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... Those of the cathedral at Lucca, of S. Michele Maggiore at Pavia, of S. Savino at Piacenza, of S. Maria in Trastevere at Rome (destroyed in the restoration of 1867), are of a later date. The image of Theseus is accompanied by a legend in the "leonine" rhythm:— ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... to act. So after the words quoted above, the Philosopher concludes, that in things composed of matter and form "there is no other cause but that which moves from potentiality to act; while whatsoever things have no matter are simply beings at once." [*The Leonine edition has, "simpliciter sunt quod vere entia aliquid." The Parma edition of St. Thomas's Commentary on Aristotle has, "statim per se unum quiddam est . . . ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... saw the cruel act, lost all control of himself, uttered one of his leonine roars, sprang into the middle of the road, and seized the reins of the Mahdi's horse. The startled animal reared and attempted to swerve. Molloy assisted the swerve by a violent side-pull at the reins. At the same time he caught one of the upraised forelegs, and, with an almost superhuman ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... Plato the leonine, waved his plumy tail responsively and gently rubbed his great head against her arm. Resting one hand lightly on his neck, she moved towards the house and slowly ascended the graduating slopes of the grass terrace. Here she was suddenly met ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... here, and never have got together to try battle at all. But Rothenburg had no orders; nay, had orders Not to get into fighting;—nor had Friedrich himself, in this his first Battle, learned that feline or leonine promptitude of spring which he subsequently manifested. Far from it! Indeed this punctilious deliberation, and slow exactitude as on the review-ground, is wonderful and noteworthy at the first start ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... With a leonine roar and a succeeding clatter of empty cylinders, an immense racing-car stopped at the gate below. The powerful headlight shot a widening pathway through the night. Voices came indistinctly from ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... are compared with the contemporary Leonine verses in praise of Henry V., preserved in MS. Cott. Cleop. B. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various

... Thereafter he lived precariously, but on the whole sumptuously, upon carcasses of one kind and another. He participated in "strike" suits against big corporations—he would set on a pack of coyotes to dog the lions and to raise discordant howls that inopportunely centered public attention upon leonine, lawless doings; the lions would pay him well to call off the pack. He assisted sometimes wolves and sometimes coyotes in flotations of worthless, or almost worthless, stocks and bonds from gold and mahogany offices and upon a sea of glittering prospectuses. ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... not wrong in his praise of Heppner. Outside his own quarters Heppner was a blameless non-commissioned officer; one who knew his duties as well as any, and was strictly obedient to rules and regulations. He handled the men smartly, his brutal, leonine voice being audible all over the parade-ground; yet he never permitted himself any undue ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... grand in a judge's wig; a man whose eyes and eyebrows, lowered upon some trembling delinquent, might have been almost as awful as Lord Thurlow's. Even his own light-brown hair, faintly streaked with grey, which he wore rather long, had something of a leonine air. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... meanwhile the man with the leonine head had closed the door on the little party. He came forward eagerly, and raising himself on the tips of his toes, he put his hands on Antinor's shoulder, and with gentle pressure forced him to stoop. Then he kissed ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... Byzantine Liturgy of the ninth century in the second prayer of the faithful; in that of St. Chrysostom immediately before the lections in the Mass of the Catechumens; and v. 19 in the Ἐπίκλησις in that of the Coptic Jacobites (Brightman's Liturgies, I. Oxf. 1896). In the Leonine Sacramentary, in a Preface, Mense Junio, IIII. 1. 13, ad Fontem, the last words of the Song appear to be cited "plena sunt omnia saccula misericordia tua" (Dr. Feltoe's ed., Camb. 1896, p. 31). The verse ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney

... to this apologist of the faith you despised! Voltaire's face is wreathed with ineffable irony, Diderot contemplates the speaker as a new species for a psychological monograph, Mirabeau flings back his leonine head with a swirl of the black mane and a glare of the great eyes, and Danton roars a titanic laugh that shakes the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... of dispute; but how high a degree of antiquity is to be assigned it, there is more ground for inquiry than determination. How early Latin rhymes made their appearance in the world, is yet undecided by the criticks. Verses of this kind were called leonine; but whence they derived that appellation, the learned Camden [18] confesses himself ignorant; so that the style carries no certain marks of its age. I shall only observe farther, on this head, that the characters are nearly of the same form ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... you, is not for any vegetable fashion at all. It is because these two lovely flowers are in England the two most perfect models of design, the most naturally adapted for decorative art—the gaudy leonine beauty of the one and the precious loveliness of the other giving to the artist the most entire and perfect joy. And so with you: let there be no flower in your meadows that does not wreathe its tendrils around your pillows, no little leaf ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... 'veteran', and 'oppidan' are Latin. Words with a long i, if they came early through France, shorten the vowel, as 'doctrine', 'discipline', 'medicine', and 'masculine', while 'genuine', though a later word, followed them, but 'anserine' and 'leonine' did not. Disyllables seem to prefer the stress on the ultima, as 'divine', 'supine', but even these are not consistent. Some ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt

... the Lions' Den" will occur to many on reading how HENRY IRVING ventured into and actually dined as the distinguished guest of a society styling itself "The Playgoers' Club." But after all, whether these were real leonine cubs, or only "lions stuffed with straw," the Real Lion of the evening was the Daniel come to Judgment, HENRY IRVING, who, having partaken of the "chicken and champagne," and acknowledged the goodness thereof, gave them the less smooth side of his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various

... portly manager repeated attentively. "I don't know the show—perhaps in some combination now." For if he had ever heard of that signal leonine incident recorded in Scripture he had forgotten it. "Yes, yes," as Valeria eagerly appealed to him in behalf of Brent, "we must try to give Hubby some little stunt to do in the performance—but you are ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... of the flood, and a ferry crosses to the opposite bank: looking over at the trees and fields, it is like the open country, yet beyond are St. Peter's and the Vatican, and the whole of what is known as the Leonine City. But one cannot follow the Tiber through the streets of Rome as one may the Seine in Paris: in the thickly-built quarters the houses back upon the stream and its yellow waves wash their foundations, working wrath and woe from time ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... holes for barricade beams, and hooks for chains. The bridge of St. Angelo was covered with the shops of armourers, as the old bridge of more peaceful Florence with those of silversmiths. Walls and towers encircled the Leonine City where the Pope sat unquietly in the big battlemented donjon by the Sixtine Chapel; and in its midst was still old St. Peter's, half Lombard, half Byzantine. In Rome there was no industry, no order, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... something almost tragic in these sighs and pantings and pleasure-throes, these incomplete fruitions of souls pent within their frames of flesh. We seem to see a race of men and women such as never lived, except perhaps in Rome or in the thought of Michelangelo, meeting in leonine embracements that yield pain, whereof the climax is, at best, relief from rage and respite for a moment from consuming fire. There is a life elemental rather than human in those mighty limbs; and the passion that twists them on the marriage-bed has in it the stress of storms, the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... of chaffing an author Johnson has hardly an equal. De Quincey too often overdoes it. Macaulay seldom fails to excite sympathy with his victim. In playfulness Mr. Arnold perhaps surpasses the Doctor, but then the latter's playfulness is always leonine, whilst Mr. Arnold's is surely, sometimes, just a trifle kittenish. An example, no doubt a very good one, of Johnson's humour must be allowed me. Soame Jenyns, in his book on the Origin of Evil, had imagined that, as we have not only animals for food, but choose some for our ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... majesty and sweetness, which we know not only by the accounts of eyewitnesses, but by the numerous imitations and copies in marble which have come down to us. One cannot fail to see, even in these copies, a wonderful expression of power, wisdom, and goodness. The head, with leonine locks of hair and thickly rolling beard, expresses power, the broad brow and fixed gaze of the eyes, wisdom; while the sweet smile of the lips indicates goodness. The throne was of cedar, ornamented with gold, ivory, ebony, and precious stones. The sceptre was composed of every ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... which Tennyson himself was to fulfil; and Oriana is a revival of romance, and of the ballad, not limited to the ballad form as in its prototype, Helen of Kirkconnell. Curious and exquisite experiment in metre is indicated in the Leonine Elegiacs, in Claribel, and several other poems. Qualities which were not for long to find public expression, speculative powers brooding, in various moods, on ultimate and insoluble questions, were attested by The Mystic, and Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... stood it alone; while it had never occurred to him to think so, he had been facing life pretty much alone for a decade. It would have eased his surcharged spirit could he have shed a few manly tears, if his wife had taken his leonine old head on her shoulder and lavished upon him the caresses his hungry heart yearned for. Unfortunately, she was that type of wife whose first and only thought is for her children. She was aware only that he was in a softened mood, so ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... might be described as leonine. It was a massive head, covered with a tremendous mane of brown hair. This was never worn long, but it was so thick and of such fine texture that it constituted a real beauty. He had no conceit of it, being ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... rare comfort to this yearning, foolish woman to know that she was so near. But at this moment Carry was sitting on the edge of her bed, half undressed, pouting her pretty lips, and twisting her long, leonine locks between her fingers, as Miss Kate Van Corlear—dramatically wrapped in a long white counterpane, her black eyes sparkling, and her thorough-bred nose thrown high in air,—stood over her like a wrathful and indignant ghost; ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... sproporzionata' of Vasari is not, then, merely the wasting away of former leonine strength into thin rigidities of death? There is another change going on at the same time,—body ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... growl of a very leonine nature, and his eyes were flashing, but they softened into a smile as they encountered those ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... his chronic resolution not to go home till morning had a touch of the hideous clarity of insomnia. He was a tall, fine animal, elderly, but with hair still startlingly yellow. He would have looked merely blonde and leonine, but his blue eyes were sunk so deep in his face that they looked black. They were a little too close together. He had very long yellow moustaches; on each side of them a fold or furrow from nostril to jaw, so that a sneer seemed cut into his ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... explosive man, this "Captain Whirlwind," as I used to call him! Great sensibility lay in him, too; a real sympathy, and affectionate pity and softness, which he had an over-tendency to express even by tears,—a singular sight in so leonine a man. Enemies called them maudlin and hypocritical, these tears; but that was nowise the complete account of them. On the whole, there did conspicuously lie a dash of ostentation, a self-consciousness apt to become loud and braggart, over all he said ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... side he raised the great leonine head. The man was alive, and he shouted to the men at the bunkhouse for aid. But even as ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... please: mamma, calls it auburn, or golden, and so do all her friends. But even with my 'long red hair'" (and he waved his mane with a sort of triumph—tawny he himself well knew that it was, and he was proud of the leonine hue), "I cannot possibly be queerer than is ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... Unlike a menagerie lion. Leonine verses are those in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end, as in this famous passage from Bella ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... edge of instant death; but during his later years his health had improved, though he had always to "walk softly," like one whose next step might be into eternity. This bodily sense of peril gave to his noble and leonine face a look of suffering and of seriousness, and of what, in his case, we may truly call godly fear, which all must remember. He used to say he carried his grave beside him. He came in to my father's funeral, and took part in the services. He was much affected, and we fear ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... The gaudy leonine sunflower Hangs black and barren on its stalk, And down the windy garden walk The dead leaves ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... was blowing toward him, and standing partially behind a huge oak he watched them. They were the finest and largest inhabitants of his wilderness, splendid creatures, with their leonine manes and huge shoulders, beasts of which any monarch might be proud. He could easily bring down any one of them that he wanted with his rifle, but they were safe from all ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... energy of a man who is reckless of fate he seized his goblet, poured into it at least a shilling's worth of "creaming foam," drained it to the dregs and, shaking back his matted hair with a leonine movement ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... banners, and tossed the white veils of the maidens about like wreaths of drifting snow. Two men standing on the Cathedral hill, watched the procession gradually ascending—one tall and heavily-built, with a dark leonine head made more massive-looking by its profusion of thick and unmanageable hair— the other lean and narrow-shouldered, with a peaked reddish-auburn beard, which he continually pulled and twitched at nervously ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... prison window in the twilight, this solitary burial on the shore, in the sand, moved Murat more deeply than his own fate. Great tears filled his eyes and fell silently down the leonine face. At that moment General Nunziante came in and surprised him with outstretched arms and face bathed with tears. Murat heard him enter and turned round, and seeing the old ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... for a moment, showing his "kingly throat," till suddenly in the sunset splendour the boat veers weather-ward and goes off, as with a bound, "into the rose and golden half of the sky." And what animal-painter has given more of the leonine wrath in mane and tail and fixed wide eyes than Browning has conveyed into his lion of King Francis with three strokes of the brush? Or it is only a bee upon a sunflower on which the gazer's eye is fixed, and we get ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... Robert Guiscard (Hofmann calls him Wiscardus), in 1004; Frederic Barbarossa, in 1167; the Connetable de Bourbon, in 1527, may be instanced. "Time and War" speak for themselves. For "Flood," vide supra. As for "Fire," during the years 1082-84 the Emperor Henry IV. burnt "a great part of the Leonine city;" and Guiscard "burnt the town from the Flaminian gate to the Antonine column, and laid waste the Esquiline to the Lateran; thence he set fire to the region from that church to the Coliseum and the Capitol." Of earthquakes Byron says nothing; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... Turkey had no power left to wound or to help. But at the same time they refused to make any concessions either to Servia, to Greece, or to Roumania, all of whom were determined to have a share of the plunder which Bulgaria had assigned for herself. "A leonine partnership" as the lawyers call it, that is to say, a partnership in which one party takes the lion's share of the spoil, is a very satisfactory arrangement for the lion. But one wants to be sure before attempting to enforce leonine arrangements that one ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox

... father with his leonine head and huge eyebrows impressed one by his earnestness and perspicacity, somewhat shut off from the world as he was by hereditary deafness. The dignified mistress of the house likewise belonged to a family ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... what depths of leonine lust and crime A cruel man may go, Scattering fear, ruin, woe, ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... about 3.40 P.M., a hansom drew up at the corner of Albany Grove. The fare alighted, and sauntered past Mr. Fulton's house. Rangoon, the Siamese puss, was sitting in a scornful and leonine attitude, in a tree of the garden above the railings, outside the open kitchen windows, whence came penetrating and hospitable smells of good fare. The stranger passed, and as he returned, dropped something ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... fifty-fifth year this French soldier of fortune had finally reached the climax of his career. Having fought in the Seven Years' War, in Portugal and in Corsica, the Revolution gave him his opening. He assisted Scherer in the capture of the Maritime Alps, and fought with leonine power at Mondovi and these succeeding movements. While his fortunes were linked with Bonaparte's they mounted higher and higher. As governor of Venice he was so upright and incorruptible as to win the sobriquet "Virgin of Italy." The discouragement of defeat under Moreau ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... leonine man; he rose now to his full height, as a cat rises. But the drama drew his gaze in spite of himself; he could not keep his eyes from his wife's face. Leontine plucked at his sleeve and ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... temporary disturbance or opposition), later to be dispelled by the strong beams of the sun (representing either progress generally or prime-ministerial genius or pure Coalitionism). Other local features I felt, however, I might find rhetorically useful, such as THORWALDSEN'S Lion, so noble, so—so leonine, but doomed ever to adhere to the rock, how symbolic of a strong idealist unable to translate his ameliorative plans into action! The old bridge too, uniting the two sides of the city, as one can attempt to link Radicalism and Coalitionism—how long could it endure? And so on. One's brain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various

... partially detached by the ulcerative and other degenerations. This stage of this type of the disease may extend through ten or more years. After it has fully developed the dejected countenance of the leper, with his leonine expression and general ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... place of their fugitive and warring dreams we have, definitely, Lavalle's Law of the Cyclone which he surprised in darkness and cold at the foot of the overarching throne of the Aurora Borealis. It is there that I, intent on my own investigations, have passed and re-passed a hundred times the worn leonine face, white as the snow beneath him, furrowed with wrinkles like the seams and gashes upon the North Cape; the nervous hand, integrally a part of the mechanism of his flighter; and above all, the wonderful lambent ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... opera; posy, anthology; disjecta membra poetae song[Lat], ballad, lay; love song, drinking song, war song, sea song; lullaby; music &c. 415; nursery rhymes. [Bad poetry] doggerel, Hudibrastic verse[obs3], prose run mad; macaronics[obs3]; macaronic verse[obs3], leonine verse; runes. canto, stanza, distich, verse, line, couplet, triplet, quatrain; strophe, antistrophe[obs3]. verse, rhyme, assonance, crambo[obs3], meter, measure, foot, numbers, strain, rhythm; accentuation &c. (voice) 580; dactyl, spondee, trochee, anapest &c.; hexameter, pentameter; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... add one thing more. There is in the hotel a boy in whom I take the deepest interest. I cannot tell you his age, but the very first time I saw him (when I was at dinner yesterday) I was very much struck with his appearance. There is something very leonine in his face, with a dash of the negro especially, if I remember aright, in the mouth. He has a great quantity of dark hair, curling in great rolls, not in little corkscrews, and a pair of large, dark, and very steady, bold, bright eyes. His manners are those of a prince. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... she tried to pick herself up, the smooth purring of the motor became a leonine roar while she was still on her knees, gears clashed, and the car leaped with a jerk that drove her headlong against the cushions of the seat. Then the dome light was switched on, and she saw Victor with ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... them, for the greater glory of London society and his native country generally. Under ordinary circumstances such an existence was bearable and at times delightful, but just now he wanted to roar in the wilderness and assert his leonine right of roaming in desolate places not less than two geographical ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... Longfellow are likenesses more or less bad and good, for there was something as simple in the physiognomy as in the nature of the man. His head, after he allowed his beard to grow and wore his hair long in the manner of elderly men, was leonine, but mildly leonine, as the old painters conceived the lion of St. Mark. Once Sophocles, the ex- monk of Mount Athos, so long a Greek professor at Harvard, came in for supper, after the reading was over, and he was leonine too, but of a fierceness that contrasted finely with Longfellow's mildness. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... legs which look like pillars, and the back is far too broad. But Donatello is saved by his tact; he was ostensibly making the portrait of a lion; though he gives none of its features, he gives us all the chief leonine characteristics. He excelled in imaginary animals, like the Chinese artists who make ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... Black Donald stood with his leonine head turned and looking back over his stalwart shoulders, as if in expectation of pursuit, and then, with a loud laugh, turned to his ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... to his stature; it was a head to be seen above the level of a crowd, on some judicial bench or political platform, or even on a bronze medal. His forehead was high and broad, and his thick black hair, perfectly straight and glossy, and without any division, rolled back from it in a leonine manner. These things, the eyes especially, with their smouldering fire, might have indicated that he was to be a great American statesman; or, on the other hand, they might simply have proved that he came from Carolina or Alabama. He came, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... timed her wicked design, when Lychorida, the faithful nurse, had just died. Dionysia was discoursing with the man she had commanded to commit this murder, when the young Marina was weeping over the dead Lychorida. Leonine, the man she employed to do this bad deed, though he was a very wicked man, could hardly be persuaded to undertake it, so had Marina won all hearts to love her. He said, "She is a goodly creature!" "The ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... answer, but he put a hand on each knee, and glared with pursed lips and a leonine bristle of the beard at his youthful critic for some moments, after which he returned to his Globe with a ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... too overwhelming for him to notice the challenge and apprehension in the Doge's glance. The Doge saw the glow of a thousand happy, eager thoughts in Jack's face. He hesitated again on the brink of speech, before, with a toss of his leonine head as if he were veritably leaving fate's affairs to fate, he turned to go; and Jack mechanically touched P.D.'s rein, while he gazed toward the pass. P.D. had not gone many steps when Jack heard the same sonorous call that had greeted him that first night when he stopped ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... the robber, the incident is purely bestial, an exhibition of sheer brute fury, and as such repulsive and most unpoetical. But let her, instantly drawing her fiery eye from the robber, stop, and for the infuriated roar utter a growl of leonine tenderness over her recovered cub, and our sympathy leaps towards her. Through the red glare of rage there shines suddenly a stream of white light, gushing from one of the purest fountains: wrathful fury is suddenly subdued by love. A moment before she ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... cuirasses. The Germans invented a name for their enemies on this occasion which means "men of iron."[*] Montcornet has the outer man of a hero of antiquity. His arms are stout and vigorous, his chest deep and broad; his head has a leonine aspect, his voice is of those that can order a charge in the thick of battle; but he has nothing more than the courage of a daring man; he lacks mind and breadth of view. Like other generals to whom military common-sense, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... the singers, and indicated also in the plan by an open line a b c d. The bas-reliefs on this low screen are groups of peacocks and lions, two face to face on each panel, rich and fantastic beyond description, though not expressive of very accurate knowledge either of leonine or pavonine forms. And it is not until we pass to the back of the stair of the pulpit, which is connected with the northern extremity of this screen, that we find evidence of the haste with ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... resolved to be about the recovery of his voice, his fear lest "1000 out of the 2000 won't hear" was very near realisation. The Sheldonian Theatre was thronged before he appeared on the platform, a striking presence in his D.C.L. robes, and looking very leonine with his silvery gray hair sweeping back in one long wave from his forehead, and the rugged squareness of his features tempered by the benignity of an old age which has seen much and overcome much. He read the lecture from a printed ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... Sir Isaac. You would not have known the dog again; he was dazzling. Not Ulysses, rejuvenated by Pallas Athene, could have been more changed for the better. His flanks revealed a skin most daintily mottled; his tail became leonine, with an imperial tuft; his mane fell in long curls like the beard of a Ninevite king; his boots were those of a courtier in the reign of Charles II.; his eyes looked forth in dark splendour from locks white as the driven snow. This feat performed, Waife ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... were at home; and the old man met them at the front door, glowering at them angrily from out his old leonine eyes, because the roast beef was already roasted. He had his great uncouth silver watch in his hand, which was always a quarter of an hour too fast, and he pointed at it fiercely, showing them the minute hand at ten ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... gaunt and square both of figure and of face. He wore his clothes and his hair untidily. He was iron grey and a grim mouth was ill concealed by the wiry moustache. The most notable features of a striking face were the tawny leonine eyes, which could be fierce, which could be pensive and which ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... march must be over their graves: They feel it—they know it,—yet steadier each Close phalanx moves into the desperate breach: Their step does not falter—their faith does not yield,— For yonder, supreme o'er the fiercely-fought field, Erect in his leonine grandeur, they see The proud and magnificent ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston

... patient assiduity, strenuous efforts being made to keep alive an art which was no longer rightly understood. Rhyme invaded the hexameter, and the best verses of the medieval period in that measure were leonine. ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... strength and a leonine courage, Antar soon passed from the duties of a keeper of camels to those of a first-class fighting man. By these virtues, so highly prized by the warlike Arabs, he ingratiated himself both with his father and his tribe. Much of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... slightly grated. The sight of girls, however, handling the double bass, and blowing into the bassoon, did not much please me; and the deep-toned voice of her who sung the part of Saul, seemed an odd unnatural thing enough. What I found most curious and pretty, was to hear Latin verses, of the old Leonine race broken into eight and six, and sung in rhyme by these women, as if they were airs of Metastasio; all in their dulcified pronunciation too, for the patois runs equally through every language when ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... Oecolampadius' "Commentarius" on the Prophet Ezekiel, 1534, and is an evident pun on the printer's surname. Several of the dozen Marks used by Craft Mller, or Crato Mylius, 1536-62, are exceedingly bold and picturesque, although, with the exception of the Ceres, they are all variants of the leonine type: the Ceres was apparently used only in his first book, "Auslegung oder Postilla ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts

... softened by his illness. In health he looked authoritative, leonine, very sure of himself, piercingly observant, sometimes melancholy, but not anxious. His manner, never blustering or offensive, was usually dominating, the manner of one who had the right to rule in the things of the intellect. Now he seemed much gentler, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... a better billet"—and the leonine voice deepened to hoarseness. "Restin' in the shadder of a lonely rock, as the Bible says. I buried him by my own self, way out back, eight or ten months ago. Many's the time I wish I was with him, for I'm dog-tired of everything goin'. Best-hearted feller ever broke bread, Bat was; an' the prittiest ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... The Leonine quarter, which embraced the Vatican Hill, with the oldest St. Peter's Church and a papal palace, was connected with the town by the Pons Aelius or Bridge of Hadrian. At the head of the bridge, on the right side, was the sepulchre of Hadrian, a tower-shaped building in which the Emperors ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... themselves that you haven't a chance to talk about yourself—which is really the completest definition of a bore, isn't it? I'd much rather know them through their books than through those awful Sunday evening soirees where poor old leonine M—— used to perspire reading those Socialist poems of his to the adoring ladies, and Sanguinary John used to wear the same flannel shirt that shielded him from the Polar blasts up in Alaska—open at the throat, and all that sort of thing, just like a movie-actor cowboy, ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... was the blaze of memory—he seemed veritably to be standing on another bridge (over the north branch of the Drainage Canal, of all places) with the last, leonine blizzard of a March, which had been treacherously lamblike before, swirling drunkenly about. He had been tramping for hours over the clay-rutted roads with a girl he had known a fortnight and had asked, the day before, to marry him. They had been discussing this ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... favourite virtues; and how can a man's candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind—impetuous, warm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian. It was not possible for Arthur Donnithorne to do anything mean, dastardly, or cruel. "No! I'm a devil of a fellow for getting myself into a hobble, but I always take care the load shall fall on my own shoulders." ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... enemy. This letter Spalatin was to lose with well-planned carelessness so that it should come into the hands of the enemy. But in this kind of diplomacy he was certainly not logical, for as soon as his leonine nature was aroused by some piece of news, he would determine impulsively to start for Erfurt or Wittenberg. It was hard for him to bear the inactivity of his life. He was treated with the greatest attention by the governor of the castle, and this attention expressed ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... imperfection of organs, but from nervous excitability. We had also a lieutenant from far down East, red-haired, sanguine of complexion, bony of structure, who had a gesture of tossing his hair and head back, and looking tremendously leonine and master of the situation—monarch of all he surveyed. The two were naturally antagonistic, as was amusingly shown more than once; but on this occasion the midshipman was at the "lee wheel," not himself steering, but helping the steersman in the manual labor. To him the lieutenant, pausing ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... eighteen years of age was proceeding slowly down the pavement. He was stockily built, and had an unusually massive head and great broad shoulders. He was a boy who would be remarked about almost anywhere. His hair was long, and this gave him a somewhat leonine aspect. ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... of cheerfulness while they waited in the court for Chad; he had sat smoking cigarettes to keep himself quiet while, caged and leonine, his fellow traveller paced and turned before him. Chad Newsome was doubtless to be struck, when he arrived, with the sharpness of their opposition at this particular hour; he was to remember, as a part of it, how Waymarsh came with him and with Strether ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... smile. He was not, in fact, a man who was prone to gentle expressions, but having been framed by nature for a strong dominance over all around him, his habitual expression was a proud self-containment. It would have been insolence in another man; in Lord Nick it was rather leonine. ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... His loved syringa whitening by the door, And knew the catbird's welcome; in his walks Smiled on his tawny kinsmen of the elms Stealing his nuts; and in the ruined year Sat at his widowed hearthside with bent brows Leonine, frosty with the breath of time, And listened to the crooning of the wind In the wide Elmwood chimneys, as ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... she was mistaken, because there was not the smallest awkwardness nor lack of self-possession about it. The contrast between the young girl and Paul Griggs was so striking as to be almost violent. He was cold and funereal in his leonine strength, and his face was more like a mask than ever as he bowed and sat down in silence. When he did not remind her of a gladiator, he made her think of a black lion with a strange, human face, and eyes that were not exactly human, though they did not remind her of any animal's ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... Emperor together were invincible. Then the Roman Senate and people sent out ambassadors, who spoke hugely boasting words to the red-haired soldier, and would have set conditions on his crowning, so that he laughed aloud at them; and he and Adrian went into the Leonine city, but not into Rome itself, and the Englishman crowned the German. Yet the Romans would fight, and in the heat of the summer noon they crossed the bridge and killed such straggling guards as they could find; then the Germans ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... encumbering the Communion Office with an alternate. Should this suggestion find acceptance, the two Collects in the present Office of BEATITUDES, which are far too good to be lost, one of them being the modified form of a Leonine original, and the other one of the very best of Canon Bright's own compositions, might be transferred to a place among the ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... clasped at the neck with a large gold-and-precious-stone buckle of the same mysterious form as the hieroglyphic crest at the head of the Programs, he wore a wonderful burnouse of white and gold fleece, the gold predominating over the white, and flashing fiercely, gorgeously in the sun. His leonine head was surmounted with a dazzling covering that was neither a crown, a mitre, nor a turban, but partook of the nature of all three. It was profusely bedecked with the most costly of precious stones. The largest diamond ever seen, shaped as ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... hat; he was wrapped in a yet more old-fashioned cloak, black and ragged; and the combination gave him the look of the early villains in Dickens and Bulwer Lytton. Also his yellow beard and hair were more unkempt and leonine than when they appeared long afterwards, cut and pointed, on the lawns of Saffron Park. A long, lean, black cigar, bought in Soho for twopence, stood out from between his tightened teeth, and altogether he looked a very satisfactory specimen of the anarchists upon whom he had vowed a holy ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... (X—XVII);[591] He upon whom the mind rests during Yoga-abstraction, the Guide or leader of all persons conversant with Yoga, the Lord of both Pradhana (or Prakriti) and Purusha. He that assumed a human form with a leonine head, He of handsome features and equipments, He of beautiful hair, the foremost of Purushas (XVIII—XXIV);[592] the embodiment of all things, the Destroyer of all things, He that transcends the three attributes ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... now convinced that her father was not pleased. "I have not noticed anything especially leonine about Mr. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... and stood staring blankly at the man who followed Joey into the dining-room, the man who had struck the never- to-be-forgotten blow. Could this gray, lean, shuffling creature be the leonine, despotic Tom Braddock ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... the one strong supporter of Anacletus, was engaged in a struggle with his nobles and could give no help. But Lothair desired to avoid bloodshed if possible. He made no attempt, therefore, to get possession of St. Peter's and the Leonine city, which were in the hands of Anacletus and his followers, but contented himself with the peaceful occupation of the rest of Rome. He and his wife were crowned in the church of St. John Lateran by Innocent (June, 1133). Lothair seems again to have used his opportunity ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... I said, is part of a letter writ by Pomponius Alerius, an Italian martyr, who, when he wrote it, was in prison, in, as he calls it, his delectable orchard, the prison of Leonine, 12 calend. August, anno 1555. As is to be seen in the second volume of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... regal about the man Emily Drainger should choose. You agree with me, I suspect, that she is—or was—leonine, terrific. Perhaps she was deceived by his face. Perhaps, after the manner of lovers, she found splendid lights and vistas in the Charlie Brede the rest of us considered rather ordinary. Or perhaps, since she had lived her solitary life so long, pestered and haunted by ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Mrs. Porcher, neat, pensive, and sentimental, could be trusted to play the part of attentive listener; but the great Eliza, as he knew by experience, was liable to develop dangerous energy, to get a little above herself, shake her leonine mane of upstanding sandy hair, and become altogether too talkative, not to say loud, for such distinguished company. Personally he had a soft spot in his heart for Eliza. But, if she put herself forward, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... father! The world wanders into many strange by-paths of affection. The love of a mother for her children is dominant, leonine, selfish, and unselfish. It is concentric. The love of a husband for his wife, or of a lover for his sweetheart, is a sweet bond of agreement and exchange trade in a lovely contest. The love of a father for his son ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... a cat!" murmured the puzzled Alsatian, and fell to salvaging such bulbs as weren't utterly ruined. We were all busy at this, when a head again appeared over the hedge—a big, leonine head with a tossing mane and a tameless beard. An enormous pair of shoulders followed, a tree-trunk of a leg was swung over, and Doctor Richard Geddes dropped into our garden like a great cat. He strolled over, hands ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... Jenne, the dull rumble of thunder answered him. He glanced in that direction. A flash of lightning rent the clouds and disappeared above the blackness of Monte Preclaro. Benedetto tried again to free his feet from the serpents, and again the leonine voice of the ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... worn during the months of grief and suffering through which he had lately passed; his eyes, youthful still, had recovered their brightness, his features their smiling grace; while his white hair and beard grew thicker, in a leonine abundance which lent him a youthful air. He had kept himself, in his solitary life as a passionate worker, so free from vice and dissipation that he found now within him a reserve of life and vigor eager to expend itself ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... poor little fellow, stretching out his wasted hands to Moufflou, who submitted his leonine crest to the caress. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... monarch was of four kinds (foot-soldiers, car-warriors, cavalry, and elephants)—heroes armed with swords and darts and bearing in their hands maces and stout clubs. And surrounded by hundreds of warriors with lances and spears in their hands, the monarch set out on his journey. And with the leonine roars of the warriors and the notes of conchs and sound of drums, with the rattle of the car-wheels and shrieks of huge elephants, all mingling with the neighing of horses and the clash of weapons of the variously armed attendants in diverse ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... possibly still later. Although only a copy, the Otricoli Zeus is the finest representation we have of the father of gods and men. The predominant expression is one of gentleness and benevolence, but the lofty brow, transversely furrowed, tells of thought and will, and the leonine hair of strength. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... light, with tawny or fulvous tinges in various degree,— positive or stained blondes, dipped in yellow sunbeams, and as unlike in their mode of being to the others as an orange is unlike a snowball. The albino-style carries with it a wide pupil and a sensitive retina. The other, or the leonine blonde, has an opaline fire in her clear eye, which the brunette can hardly match with her quick, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... of the head, and the general arrangement and colour of the tawny hair (at that time but slightly grizzled) justified the epithet "leonine" so often applied to him. His beard and moustache were of the same hue, and his skin was probably fair by nature, but it had been tanned by wind and weather. The clear blue eyes were surrounded by a network of fine lines. This had no trace or suggestion of cunning, as is often the case ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope



Words linked to "Leonine" :   lion



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