"Nudity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the joy they bring you, and which goes to your heart, know that the author having in an evil hour let his ideas, id est, his inheritance, go astray, and being unable to get them together again, found himself in a state of mental nudity. Then he cried like the woodcutter in the prologue of the book of his dear master Rabelais, in order to make himself heard by the gentleman on high, Lord Paramount of all things, and obtain from Him ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... of the farm were, the new manager found, three black fellows and two 'gins,'{*} all of whom were in a state of stark nudity; but they welcomed him with smiles and an overpowering smell of ants, the which latter is peculiar to the Australian nigger. One of the bucks, who when Denison entered was sleeping, with three exceedingly mangy dogs, in the ex-proprietor's bunk—a gorgeous affair made of a badly-smelling ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... any truth in this passage, nudity becomes a virtue; and no decent woman, for the future, can be ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... running about free and unshackled in her loose draperies, quite unabashed in her state of semi-nudity—gay, reckless, wooing pleasure on the wing, surely she might have posed as the embodied archetype of France itself. So has this pagan among modern nations borrowed something of the antique spirit of wantonness. Along with its theft of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... proper here to say a word in explanation of that frank and innocent nudity which is so characteristic a trait of the best Greek art. The Greek admiration for the masculine body and the willingness to display it were closely bound up with the extraordinary importance in Greece of gymnastic ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... peculiar mode of carrying children, when two or three years old. The child sits astride of the mother's left hip, clinging with hands and feet, and partially supported by her left arm. The little personage being in a state of total nudity, and of course very slippery, this is doubtless the most convenient method that ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... loss of the "Eagle" the boys resumed their old sport of swimming and gathering wood. About this time, owing no doubt to the complaints of the riverside inhabitants, the city authorities determined to stop all further rows and displays of nudity. The orders against naked bathing were strictly enforced by a constable named Sam Long. Before the boys got thoroughly acquainted with him, he often captured an offender's clothing, which he detained until the boy came ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... the figure was a study in satin nudity, whence, from a jeweled girdle, light draperies swept downward, covering the feet and swinging, a shimmering curve out into the foreground of the canvas, the curve being cut off in its ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... oyster-shells in the Gulf of Finland? Nothing remained save to dive down and seize a big rock, detach it from the bottom, and, holding it up before me, make a break for the pile of clothes; yet when I came to consider the preposterous spectacle that a middle-aged man would present in a state of nudity charging full tilt upon a party of ladies, with a big rock in his hands and a gleam of desperation in his eye, the idea seemed too monstrous to be entertained, and I was forced to give it up. The difficulty was becoming ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... East, nudity was, even in those days, held to be disgraceful, while the Greeks thought nothing so beautiful as the naked human body. The Hetaira Phryne was summoned before the judges for an offence against religion. Her defender, seeing that sentence was about ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... applied to gunpowder produce an effect more instantaneous than did these two words. Jeanne de Belfiel started up in all the beauty of twenty, which her awful nudity served to augment; she seemed a soul escaped from hell appearing to, her seducer. With her dark eyes she cast fierce glances upon the monks; Lactantius lowered his beneath that look. She took two steps toward him with her bare ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in hand, I see! Would I could live so well, Soul of me should never know When my coverings fell, Nor feel this nudity! ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... fire with the feet, that end which becomes theirs who throw phlegm and excreta and eject urine into water, even that miserable end shall be mine, if I do not slay Jayadratha! That end which is his who bathes (in water) in a state of nudity, or his who does not hospitably entertain a guest, that end which is theirs who receive bribes, speak falsehood, and deceive and cheat others, that end which is theirs who offend against their own souls, or who falsely utter praises (of others), or of those low ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... inherent absurdities that are second nature to us exhale for them the full flavour of their grotesqueness. The idea of an insignificant boy peer taking precedence of Mr. John Morley! The idea of having to appear before royalty in a state of partial nudity on a cold winter day! The necessity of backing out of the royal presence! The idea of a freeborn Briton having to get out of an engagement long previously formed on the score that "he has been commanded to dine with H.R.H." The horrible capillary plaster necessary before a man can serve decently ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... civilisation has made a mystery of marriage, which, veil by veil, it is the duty of the successful novelist to disclose. If I were a novelist I should seek my characters in the Divorce Court; if I were a painter I should study those superstitions which have grown up around human nudity so that the very word 'naked' has become invested with a covert significance and must very shortly be obsolete. I contemplate opening a new Pythagorean Institute for instruction of the artistic young. Above the portal ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... "You've seen the nudity of the stage, the poor, painted, tattered screen behind, and before that void the histrionic figure, doing everything it knows how, in complete possession. The personality isn't our English personality and it may not always carry us with it; ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... to be about eight feet wide, and twelve long. It had a fire in the centre; and no vent either for smoke or heat. The chiefs who were with us threw off their mats and lay down close together in a state of perfect nudity. I had not been many minutes in this oven, before I found the heat and smoke, above, below, and on every side, to be insufferable. Though the night was cold, Mr. Kendall and myself were compelled to quit our habitation. I crept out, and walked in the village, to see if I ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... conviction, that by looking without shame and accepting with love the flesh, I might raise it to as high a place within as divine a light as even the soul had been set in. The ages were as an aureole, and I stood as if enchanted before the noble nakedness of the elder gods: not the infamous nudity that sex has preserved in this modern world, but the clean pagan nude,—a love of life and beauty, the broad fair breast of a boy, the long flanks, the head thrown back; the bold fearless gaze of Venus is lovelier than the lowered glance of the Virgin, and I cried with my master that the blood that ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... modesty, if, indeed, a consciousness of their nakedness can be thus considered. When we desired to take a photograph of a group of young women, they were very coy at the proposal to remove their scanty garments, and retired behind a wall to do so; but once in a state of nudity they made no objection to exposure to the camera." (Report of the Horn Scientific Expedition, 1896, vol. iv, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the same open way that the business is carried on in Zanzibar slave-market. A man goes about calling out the price he wants for the slave, who walks behind him; if a woman, she is taken into a hut to be examined in a state of nudity. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... swans, occasionally as human beings. The souls of heroes were given to them for lovers and husbands. One of the most graceful of the early Indian myths is the story of the apsaras, Urva. Urva loved Puravaras and became his 'wife, on the condition that she was n-ever to behold him in a state of nudity. They remained together for years, till the heavenly companions of Urva determined to secure her return to them. They accordingly beguiled Puravaras into leaving his bed in the darkness of night, and then with a lightning flash they disclosed him, in his nudity, to his wife, who was thereupon ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... caused the Filipina women of the place to be stripped and compelled to march before him on the public plaza in a state of nudity. ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... crannies into the living-room occupied by us as sleeping quarters, generally at such awkward moments as when we were dressing or undressing. This was a matter of constant annoyance to Lyte, as the people persisted in announcing themselves with a "Bon jour, monsieur," no matter what state of nudity they had ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... white companion. It is so with the blanket, which is being shed for the coat; and, again, this is true with the moccasin, which is being replaced by the leathern shoe. The dress of the female has undergone the same alteration. From almost a state of nudity, they have been raised to a position from which they look upon silk and satin with a "connoisseur's eye." When New Mexico was part and parcel of the domain of Old Mexico, Taos was the seat of much smuggling from the United States, and many an apparent pack ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... almost something of the nudity of arm and leg he must have presented to eighteen's tender sensibilities in Mr. Latz's expression now as he sat well forward on the overstuffed chair, his overstuffed knees strained apart, his face nude of all ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... meant? And more than that," Elfrida went on rapidly—her phrases had the patness of formed conclusions—"what you said betrayed a totally different conception of art, as it expresses itself in the nudity of things, from the one I supposed you to hold. And, if you will pardon me for saying so, a much lower one. It seems to me that we cannot hold together there—that our aims and creeds are different, and that we have been comrades ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... look on her face. Her lovely eyes are fixed on the water. One arched and blue-veined foot is slightly raised as if the touch of the marble chilled her. Her limbs are in an easy attitude, and beautifully modelled. She is represented as a slight young girl, and the figure stands out in exquisite nudity from a background of Pompeian red, and the dark green of myrtles. With one hand she is holding aloft the masses of her rich brown hair—the attitude suggests the stretching of the muscles after repose; with the other"—but here his memory failed him. ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... whose sides was lined with mirrors that echoed each other all along the walls, reflecting, as far as the eye could reach, whole series of rose boudoirs, had been celebrated among the women who loved to immerse their nudity in this bath of warm carnation, made fragrant with the odor of mint emanating from the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... this thing would be sure to happen, by some abominable chance. Her movement as she rose was almost violent, she could not hold herself still, and her face was horribly wet with shameless, unconcealable tears. Shameless she felt them—indecent—a sort of nudity of the soul. If it had been a servant who had intruded, or if it had been Palliser it would have been intolerable enough. But it was T. Tembarom who confronted her with his common face, moved mysteriously by some feeling she resented ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... them in a state of almost complete nudity; but the complicated tattooing on their dark skins gave them the appearance of being more clothed than they really were. Their arms consisted chiefly of enormous clubs of hard wood, spears, and bows; and, in order to facilitate their escape should they chance to be grasped in a hand-to-hand conflict, ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... criminology, Mario Pagano, this admirable type of a scientist and patriot, who does not lock himself up in the quiet egoism of his study, but feels the ideal of his time stirring within him and gives up his life to it. He has written three lines of a simple nudity that reveals much, in which he says: "A man is responsible for the crimes which he commits; if, in committing a crime, his will is half free, he is responsible to the extent of one-half; if one-third, he is responsible ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... departing from the individual to the universal. The red-headed woman who used to dine at the Ratmort does not lie on a modern bed but on the couch of all time; and she raises herself from amongst her cushions, setting forth her somewhat meagre nudity as arrogantly and with the same calm certitude of her sovereignty as the eternal Venus for whose prey is the flesh of all men born. The introduction of a bouquet bound up in large white paper does not prejudice the symbolic intention, and ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... wear! Now, as this is a true ditty, I do not assert—this, you know, is between us That she's in a state of absolute nudity, Like Powers's Greek Slave or the Medici Venus; But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare, When at the same moment she had on a dress Which cost five hundred dollars, and not a cent less, And jewelry worth ten times more, I should guess, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... indeed, gaming is carried, too frequently, to the most deplorable excesses; and, in some cases, the most abandoned of the prisoners have actually staked the clothes which they wore, and when those were lost, stood amongst their companions in a state of nudity, thus reducing themselves to a level with the natives of the woods. The most severe measures were called for by this unprincipled practice, and the most gross part of the custom was done away; but it was impossible to put a total stop to the gratification of this gaming disposition, ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... out of bed—thrusting one arm into a brocade nightgown, deeply furred with sables, and one foot into a velvet slipper, while the other pressed in primitive nudity the rich carpet—his Grace, without thinking farther on the assembly without, began to pen a few lines of a satirical poem; then suddenly stopped—threw the pen into the chimney—exclaimed that the humour was past—and asked his ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... These patient animals, denuded of their loads and water, the latter having been corded in mats, became quiet only with sleep. Add to these scenes and uproar the deafening volubility of twenty Arabs and Nubians, each shouting within the true barbaric key, the seven-eighths nudity of the blacks, the elaborate and flashing wear of the upper servants, and the small asperities of this my menial world—all of these with a refreshing breeze, a clear atmosphere, the air laden with ozone and electric life, the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Santa, d'ogni grazia piena," but a Virgin, whose brick-dust coloured face, harsh unfeminine features, and muscular, masculine arms, give me the idea of a washerwoman, (con rispetto parlando!) an infant Saviour with the proportions of a giant: and what shall we say of the nudity of the figures in the back-ground; profaning the subject and shocking at once good taste and good sense? A little farther on, the eye rests on the divine Madre di Dio of Correggio: what beauty, what sweetness, what maternal love, and humble adoration are blended ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... that I should be next to feel the refreshing torrent. We let slip the garment of timorous covering very easily when nudity is commonplace. Vait-hua was to teach me to be modest without pother, to chat with those about me during my ablutions without concern for the false vanities of screens or even the shelter of rocks as in the river in Atuona. In such scenes one perceives that immodesty is ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... folly," he said, "that is to say, the art of being consciously foolish beautifully, has been practised to some extent in all ages, and among all peoples, from the pale, clear dawn of creation, when, as we are told, the man Adam, in glorious nudity, walked perfectly among the perfect glades of Eden, down to the golden noontide of this nineteenth century, in which we subtly live and subtly suffer. Always throughout the circling ages the soul of man has to ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... pious folk whose modesty is shocked by the nudity of Francis; but Italy is not Germany nor England, and the thirteenth century would have been astonished indeed at the prudery of the Bollandists. The incident is simply a new manifestation of Francis's character, with its ingenuousness, its exaggerations, its longing to establish a ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... three times as much as Felix any day,' said Wilmet, with a certain remembrance of the startling nudity of the bone of yesterday's leg of mutton. 'He is doing very well. You need not be afraid for him; but it seems to me that you should consider whether it can ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to Gallicano, and then by a short steep road to Castelnuovo di Garfagnana at the foot of the great pass. The mountains have clustered round you, bare and threatening, and though you be still in the woods it is their tragic nudity you see all day long, full of the disastrous gestures of death, that can never change or be modified or recalled. It is under these lonely and desolate peaks that the road winds ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... Bantu division of the negroes is represented chiefly in the south, the principal tribes being the Wakamba, Wakikuyu and Wanyika. By the north-east shores of Victoria Nyanza dwell the Kavirondo (q.v.), a race remarkable among the tribes of the protectorate for their nudity. Nilotic tribes, including the Nandi (q.v.), Lumbwa, Suk and Turkana, are found in the north-west. Of Hamitic strain are the Masai (q.v.), a race of cattle-rearers speaking a Nilotic language, who occupy part of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... by his braves, I cannot say. Soon after the departure of Mistawassis from the hut, a loud drumming outside was suddenly struck up, and going to the door I found the young men had assembled to dance the dance of welcome in my honour; they drummed and danced in different stages of semi-nudity for some time, and at the termination of the performance I gave an order for tobacco all round. When the dancing-party had departed, a very garrulous Indian presented himself, saying that he had been ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... dress, and assumed such an air of pomposity, that it was no wonder the uninitiated should have been deceived, and have taken him for a lion of the very first nobility; nor can we be surprised that a poor cur, almost in a state of nudity, should, in the most abject manner, supplicate a trifle from "His Lordship;" that an ignorant cat, in passing, should take off his cap and make a profound bow; or a kitten, just behind, cross its paws as though it stood in the presence ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... Mount Olympus, and here were the gods: the female ones in a state of divine semi-nudity, the male ones mostly clad in black coats with pleated shirt-fronts puffing out. Every time one of them moved up to the desk Peter would watch and wonder, was this Mr. Lackman? He might have been ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... The Post will render the words, 'The whole house was on fire.' Charles Emerson will translate the sentence 'The entire edifice was wrapped in flames.'" It was natural enough that a young admirer should prefer the Bernini drapery of Charles Emerson's version to the simple nudity of "the Post's" rendering. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... tempted to think that these men are well aware that the moral sense which sound philosophy and Christian faith have developed, is still strong in the minds and deeper conscience of the English-speaking races, and that were they to present materialism in all its loathsome nudity to the public gaze, they would be hissed off the stage. And so they dress it up in the clothes of the old religion just for the present, with many a quiet wink between themselves at the expense of the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... nineteenth century has sought to degrade Love; to define it as purely physical. The result has been a corresponding degradation of art, and even literature has lost much of its lofty idealism. Nudity has become a synonym of vulgarity; Love, of lust. "Evil be to him who evil thinks." True Love never seeks to degrade its object; on the contrary, it magnifies every virtue, endows it with divinest attributes, and guards its chastity, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... burning with unclouded serenity, with triumphant feelings of cheerfulness and joy. Their orthodox enemies accused them of gratifying their passions at midnight assemblages in darkened rooms, to which both sexes in a condition of nudity repaired. A similar accusation, as is well known, was brought against the primitive Christians by ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... off, the young woman showed in the chaste nudity of her lovely form, preserving, in spite of so many centuries that had passed away, the fulness of her contours, and the easy grace of her pure lines. Her pose, an infrequent one in the case of mummies, was that of the Venus of Medici, as if the embalmers ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... June, 1893, a serious demonstration by the students occurred, for these students can fight as well as dance. Senator Beranger, having read one morning in the "Courrier Francais" an account of the revelry and nudity of several of the best-known models of the Quarter at the "Quat'z' Arts" ball, brought a charge against the organizers of the ball, and several of the models, whose beauty unadorned had made them conspicuous ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... goblins, an image Of nudity flouting the flood, Of shorn-headed brownies who scrimmage And splash in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... almost in a state of perfect nakedness?" he replied, "Yes; they used to think they tore their clothes all to pieces; some of them would do that." "In point of fact, were they not fastened to the tables, sitting in a state of perfect nudity?" Answer: "They used to be so at the table; they were chained all round." In regard to the apparatus, so ingeniously cruel, by which one of the patients (Norris) was chained ten or twelve years, Haslam, the apothecary ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... this time-honored spirit that we owe the mysteries lying buried in every human word? In the word True do we not discern a certain imaginary rectitude? Does not the compact brevity of its sound suggest a vague image of chaste nudity and the simplicity of Truth in all things? The syllable seems to me singularly ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... have a secret feeling of pious sympathy with his tragic sufferings, his divine contempt, and the loftiness of his chaste passions. With a pure barbaric love, like that of the master, he loved the religious nudity of his youths, his shy, wild virgins, like wild creatures caught in a trap, the sorrowful Aurora, the wild-eyed Madonna, with her Child biting at her breast, and the lovely Lia, whom he would fain have had to wife. But in the soul of the tormented hero he ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... lodging-house, and lived in comparative decency. Some score of us, or perhaps a dozen, went up together for surgical examination, and were made to strip stark naked in each other's presence. I had never objected to this amongst my own kind and kindred, when one exposed one's nudity by the side of the clean brook or yellow canal in which we used to bathe in boyhood; but amongst this crew it was hard, and even terrible. We had all been bathed, perforce, before the medical examination began; but a mere tubbing does ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... beheld such a sight. They were almost coal-black in colour, and inspection of them through the telescope showed them to be absolutely naked, wherefore I decided not to pay them a visit until some future occasion when Billy should not be with me, although, apart from their state of nudity, they impressed ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... the people and their conditions. I have seen nothing but horror, and yet I went into these places without prejudice, prepared to be interested in the industry of the Southern country, and with no idea of the tragedy and nudity of these people's existence. The ultimate balance is sure to come; meanwhile, we cannot but be sensible of the vast individual sacrifices that must fall to destruction before the scales ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... famous, the "Greek Slave." The statue was supposed to represent a maiden captured by the Turks, "stripped and manacled and offered for sale in the market place," and so had a sentimental appeal which went straight to the heart of a sentimental people, and overcame any antagonism which her nudity might have produced. It inspired Elizabeth Barrett Browning to a not very noteworthy sonnet, clergymen gave it certificates of character, so to speak, and "it made a sensation wherever shown, and was fondly believed to be the greatest ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... advance. We had literally to defend ourselves with the boat-stretchers which we carried, and knocked over several of them while on the wing as they flew towards us. They were incited, we discovered, to attack us in defence of their young, numbers of which, from the little gaping nudity just out of the shell to well-fledged bantlings, covered the ground. There was also a great number of eggs, many of which were newly laid. Of these we got a large store, besides half filling the boat with the birds we had killed. In vain, however, we searched all the ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... affect recruiting for our navy yet remains to be seen, though it is probable that but few civilized men can be found to join a service in which nudity is obligatory. In such torrid weather as we are having, JACK ashore with nothing on, except, perhaps, a Panama hat, will be a novel and refreshing ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... The candour, nudity, pose, tranquility, youth, grace, sex, counsel of a statue erect in the centre of the table, an image of Narcissus purchased by auction from P. A. Wren, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... would be considered an outrage to strip her and leave her stark naked in the middle of the room. I cannot see why a man should not be credited with some feeling of modesty about his soul. I detest having my last garments plucked from me in public. Complete spiritual nudity causes ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... on every hand The prairie all environs me; I see Nought save a stretch of green and treeless land, Conspicuous alone for nudity: A sea of earth, a boundless stretch unspanned Except by ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... a very good likeness of Wilhelm as Apollo in Olympian nudity, handsome, slender and vapid, in its resemblance to school copies of the antique. A charming little cat with Pilar's features was rubbing herself against his leg. The pussy blinked up at the young Greek god with an expression of adoration, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Marysville. Scanty fare on way. Meets husband. Falls from mule. An exhausting ride. A midnight petit souper at Marysville. Dr. C. leaves on muleback for Bidwell's Bar. The author follows in springless wagon. Beautiful scenery. Marysville Buttes. Sierra Nevada. Indian women, their near-nudity, beautiful limbs and lithe forms, picturesqueness. Flower-seed gathering. Indian bread. Marvelous handiwork of basketry. A dangerous precipice. A disclaimer of bravery. Table Mountain. Arrival at Bidwell's ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... than the serpent of Eden crept amongst them, and, with his glittering novelties and dangerous beauty, caused their total annihilation! I see, in spirit, the red hunter, lofty, fearless, and stern, stalking in his painted nudity, and displaying a form which Apollo might have envied, amidst the everlasting and silent woods; I see, in spirit, the bearded stranger from the rising sun, with his deadly arms and his more deadly fire-water, conversing with his savage fellow, and displaying the envied ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... tribus, the idola specus, the idola fori, and the idola theatri, are destroyed by his iconoclastic philosophy. After all these are destroyed, there remains nothing but uncertainty and doubt; and it is in this state of nudity, approaching very nearly to the tabula rasa of Locke, that the human mind should approach the new temple of nature. Here lies the radical difference between Bacon and Des Cartes, between Realism and Idealism. Des Cartes also, like ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Murder, thieves, murder, was repeated by many voices, and rendered him almost immoveable. In the next moment, the butler, the cook, the groom, and indeed every person in the house, appeared on the stair-case, some almost in a state of nudity, and shrinking from each other's gaze, and all armed with such weapons as chance had thrown in their way, to attack ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... names the door swung wide and the man smiled a welcome. They entered amid a rabble of sled-dogs and puppies, which rolled about the floor in a seemingly inextricable tangle, with numerous dusky youngsters of various ages and conditions of nudity. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... men of their city stripped naked in their exercises, themselves little heeding to cover their thighs in walking, believing themselves, says Plato, sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe. But those, of whom St. Augustin speaks, have given nudity a wonderful power of temptation, who have made it a doubt, whether women at the day of judgment shall rise again in their own sex, and not rather in ours, for fear of tempting us again in that holy state. In brief, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... know that Bateato?" quizzed the young man absently, his attention being gripped by a stunning aphrodite rising from the sea in a glory of nudity and rainbows. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... They laughed, and shouted, and skipped, and then commenced traffic with the greatest eagerness, some of them stripping off the skins which formed their only covering, until they were almost in a state of nudity; the women, however, always retaining their breeches. They drove, as they fancied, a hard bargain; yet, being ignorant of the value of the skins, they raised shouts of triumph when they exchanged them for a nail, saw, or razor. Hideous as were the old women, some of the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... decent clothing. I am weary, even more than I am ashamed, of seeing such things. Nowadays people are as good as born in their clothes, and there is practically not a nude human being in existence. An artist, therefore, as you must candidly confess, cannot sculpture nudity with a pure heart, if only because he is compelled to steal guilty glimpses at hired models. The marble inevitably loses its chastity under such circumstances. An old Greek sculptor, no doubt, found his models in the open sunshine, and among pure and princely maidens, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not, however, as happens in the visions of solitary ascetics, some strange queen or female magician, with stars in her eyes and witchery in her voice, some loose woman who held up the symbolical lamp immodestly, to light up her radiant nudity, and the pink and white bouquet of her sweet-smelling skin, some woman in search of voluptuous pleasures, whose lascivious appeals it is impossible for any man to listen to, without being excited to the very depths of his being. Neither a princess out of some ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... waists up as our university crews do, or used to do, and I missed the Greek joy I have experienced at New London, when the fine Yale and Harvard fellows slipped their tunics over their heads, and sat sculpturesque in their bronze nudity, motionlessly waiting for the signal to come to eager life. I think that American moment was more thrilling than any given moment at Henley; and though there is more comfort in a college barge, and ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... of stones as a fertility rite is found in the trial of Jonet Wischert, one of the chief witches at Aberdeen, and is there combined with a nudity rite. 'In hervest last bypast, Mr. William Rayes huikes [saw thee at] the heid of thi awin gudmannis croft, and saw the tak all thi claiss about thi heid, and thow beand naikit from the middill down, ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... upon the lights and girdled them with gold an expression of languorous rapture came into his eyes, and he felt happier than if he had been privileged to contemplate the Greek goddesses in their sovereign nudity, or the chatelaines of romance in ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... balconies gay with flags, and the vast architecture, fill this enormous canvas, which is much larger than even the Catharine Cornaro with which the Philadelphia Exhibition made Americans familiar. The nudity of the women mingled with clothed personages in the streets of a city of the sixteenth century has naturally called forth much adverse criticism, and people have fancied that they saw in it an unworthy attempt to achieve ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... embroidered silk. Polychrome figures of saints and Eighteenth Century hangings with mythological scenes were reflected in the deep azure mirrors above the consoles. The vaulted ceiling was painted in fresco, with an assemblage of gods and goddesses seated on clouds, whose rosy nudity and bold gestures contrasted sharply with the dolorous visage of a great Christ which seemed to preside over the salon, occupying a wide space on the wall between two doors. The Popess recognized the sinfulness ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... time, however, he is as yet under the charm of Southern art and of ancient models; he does not weary of invoking and depicting the gods of Olympus. Nudity, which the image-makers of cathedrals had inflicted as a chastisement on the damned, scandalises him no more than it did the painters of Italy. He sees Venus, "untressed," reclining on her couch, "a bed of golde," ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... been said of the illumination next introduced. Now, however, common kerosene lamps are no longer so much of a sight even in Japan. Indeed, I had the assurance to ask for a shade to go with the one they set on the table in all the glaring nudity of a plain chimney. This there was some difficulty in finding, the search resulting in a green paper visor much too small, that sat on askew just far enough not to hide the light. The Japanese called it a hat, without the least intention of ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... bound, Came one who wore my lost career With star on star pinned round, And stood him by my bones to stare. With pity's ancient sneer He mocked my bleachen nudity; Then did she turn, then did she care, And pausing where I might not see She let the winds blow back ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... its women not dressed if they are not half undressed, and with his sensibilities further calloused by a night devoted to restaurants the entree to which, for women, seemed to be conditioned on at least semi-nudity, Lanyard was none the less inclined to think he had never seen, this side of footlights, a gown quite so daring as that which revealed the admirably turned person of the lady who named herself Liane. There was so little of it that, he reflected, its cost must have been something ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... the person mean?" I thought it, however, most prudent to obey his command, and followed him down the staircase. The shop and the portal were now thronged with the inhabitants of Finisterra, men, women, and children; the latter for the most part in a state of nudity, and with bodies wet and dripping, having been probably summoned in haste from their gambols in the brine. Through this crowd the figure whom I have attempted to describe pushed his way ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... For that purpose they had borrowed or got together about a dozen Arab dresses of kinds, wherewith to cover the bodies and limbs of the unsophisticated Shilluks. The national costume for men is a state of nudity, but they occasionally sprinkle their bodies with red or grey ashes. The women usually wear scant leather or thong aprons. When the Sirdar ascertained the true cause of the delay, time pressing, he intimated he would waive for the nonce ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... prisoner; and although stripped by the Indians of every article of his clothing, and reduced to perfect nudity, he was protected from bodily injury by a French officer, who took him to his tent and supplied him with clothes. Grant who had wandered all night with five or six of his men, came in, on the morning after the engagement, and surrendered himself ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the wealthy Maitre Boucher kept in his house were doubtless nude. The painters of those days depicted on small panels allegories and bathing scenes, and they painted nude women. Full foreheads, round heads, golden hair, short figures of small build but with embonpoint, their nudity minutely represented and but thinly veiled; many such were produced in Flanders and in Italy. The illustrious masters, to whom those pictures appeared corrupt and indecent, doubtless wished to reproach ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... laborious. Each load consists of from fifty to seventy-five pounds of metal, which is carried in a very irksome and inconvenient manner in an untanned hide, called a capacho. The hapire performs his toilsome duty in a state of nudity, for, notwithstanding the coldness of the climate, he becomes so heated by his laborious exertion, that he is glad to divest himself of his clothing. As the work is carried on incessantly day and night, the miners are divided into parties called puntas, each party working for twelve successive ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... treated best, and with most profession of love, and who commonly rode by his side, equipped with spear and shield, to his military inspections and reviews of the soldiery, though not particularly beautiful, was exhibited to his friends at banquets in a state of absolute nudity. His motive for treating her with so much kindness, was probably that she brought him a daughter; and her he acknowledged as his own child, from the early brutality with which she attacked the eyes and cheeks of other infants who were presented to her as play-fellows. Hence it would appear that ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... satisfied, and they made him march five or six miles to visit a distinguished chief. This was done in a state of nudity, without anything like sandals or mocassins to protect his feet from the flint stones and sharp shells, and under the burning rays of an intolerable sun. Blood marked his footsteps. The king met him and compelled him to debase himself ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... this one still be added: make for thyself a definition or description of the object ([Greek: to phantaston]) which is presented to thee, so as to see distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and tell thyself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into which it will be resolved." Such an examination implies a use of Dialectic, which Antoninus accordingly ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... courtesan there; and, taking it altogether, if Louis XV. is worse than Claudian, Madame Dubarry is better than Messalina. Paris combines in an unprecedented type, which has existed and which we have elbowed, Grecian nudity, the Hebraic ulcer, and the Gascon pun. It mingles Diogenes, Job, and Jack-pudding, dresses up a spectre in old numbers of the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the landings were littered with bedding, pots, pans, drying clothes, fire wood, boxes, all manner of rubbish, the overflow of the crowded little flats. Over these obstructions and down the ladders were falling and stumbling men, women, children, babies, in all degrees of nudity—for many of the big families that slept in one room with windows tight shut so that the stove heat would not escape and be wasted when fuel was so dear, slept stark naked. Susan contrived to get Etta and the old woman to the street; not far behind them came Tom and Ashbel, the son's face ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... militarists of Germany but many of its foremost philosophers and teachers have become so intoxicated with the dream of Pan-Germanism that in the utmost sincerity they have espoused and with a certain pride proclaimed the vicious principles of Machiavelli in all their moral nudity. There is an emotional and mystical element in the advanced German thinker, which makes him capable of accepting in full sincerity intellectual and moral absurdities of which the more robust common sense of other nations would ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... records of history, it is manifest that after their own rules and estimates, their lives were chaste and proper, though it was admissible for kings to have several wives. Moreover, though living in a state of nudity, they religiously observed the decencies of life, and were more outraged by Spanish lasciviousness than can be clearly expressed. This debasing trait, together with the greed for gold exhibited by the new-comers, disabused the minds of the natives as to the celestial origin of their visitors, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... South Brazil thus writes of a famous monk: "There, in a shed at the back of a small farm, half sitting, half reclining on a mat and a skin of some wild animal, was a man of about seventy years of age, in a state of nudity. A small piece of red blanket was thrown over his shoulders, barely covering them. His whole body was encrusted with filth, and his nails had grown like claws. His vacant look showed him to be a poor, helpless idiot. Beside him a large wood fire was kept burning. The ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... sex than in the other, especially during the breeding-season. I am informed by Mr. Bartlett that, as these animals gradually reach maturity, the naked surfaces grow larger compared with the size of their bodies. The hair, however, appears to have been removed, not for the sake of nudity, but that the colour of the skin may be more fully displayed. So again with many birds, it appears as if the head and neck had been divested of feathers through sexual selection, to exhibit ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... are to consider—as has been urged already—the age in which he lived. You are to remember that it was an age in which the passions and the emotions wore no such masks as they wear to-day, but went naked and knew no shame of their nudity; an age in which personal modesty was as little studied as hypocrisy, and in which men, wore their vices ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... the park, a semicircle of five large niches of rocks surmounted by balustrades and separated by gigantic Terminus gods. One of these gods, at a corner of the monument, dominated all the others by his monstrous nudity, and lowered on ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... no pay, but were satisfied with what plunder they got after a battle; and accordingly, this principle stimulating them, they were always foremost on any contest, dispute, or battle. They begin the campaign almost in a state of nudity, and seldom return to their homes without abundance of apparel, arms, horses, camels, and money; but this property quickly disappears, and these people are soon again reduced to their wonted misery and nudity, and become ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... and trouble, of satisfied vanity and wounded modesty. Her dressing-gown was a little open; she folded it over with a sort of violence, and crossed it upon, her feet, abruptly drawn back towards the arm-chair. She had a feeling of nudity. It seemed to her that all Paris was there, in her room, and that the Prince de Nerins was in front saying to all Paris, "Look, look! She is the most beautiful ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... into an ascent of the solitary tower, from which you may look down on the big sallow river and glance at diminished Tarascon and the barefaced, bald-headed hills behind it. It may appear that I insist too much upon the nudity of the Provencal horizon—too much considering that I have spoken of the prospect from the heights of Beaucaire as lovely. But it is an exquisite bareness; it seems to exist for the purpose of allowing one to follow the delicate lines of the hills and touch ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... related that the Pope, scandalized at the nudity of certain figures, a nudity which Daniele da Volterra was afterwards charged to clothe, sent word to Michael Angelo that he must ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... There was no softness anywhere. The stone which on other planets underlay soil, here showed harshly. There was no soil. There was no microscopic life to nibble at rocks and make soil in which less minute life could live. The nudity of the stones led to glaring colors everywhere. The colors were brilliant as nowhere else but on Earth's moon. There was ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... vanished innocence. Her slightest action suggested her profession; as soon as she removed her veil and gloves it was as though she were partially undressed, and her uncovered face and hands seemed to be only portions of her nudity. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... all the same. Each gave the same impression of spotlessness and nudity. Each was stiffly rectangular like the honey squares fitted into a hive. Above all, there was nothing about any of them to indicate their individual use, or the character of the person to whom they were specially assigned. No ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... if men were about the streets. Their dances were of the most disgusting kind that could be conceived; the most lascivious attitudes and gestures, young girls and married women, travelling with their fathers, would indulge in, to the extent of frisking about the streets in a state of nudity. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... represented as minute and semi-transparent, and furnished with long bristles. One of the creatures resulting from this elaborate term of gestation was observed in the very act of emerging, in its first-born nudity, and sought concealment in a corner of the apparatus. Some of them were observed to go back into the parent fluid and occasionally they devoured each other; and soon after they were called to life, they were disposed to multiply their species in the common ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... we know all about that. One hand up—so—and one foot—so!" And she put herself in an attitude which, to use Rabelais' phrase, stripped Crevel bare from his brain to his heels, so quaint and delicious was the nudity revealed through ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Life, her young lover." The structural novelty of the work is that, beginning with complexity—typifying the gorgeously robed Istar—the theme discloses itself little by little, as she is stripped of her jewels, until at last, when she stands forth in the full splendor of nudity, the theme is heard unaccompanied, like Isis unveiled or, to change the figure, like a scientific law which has been disclosed. The work is based on three generative themes; the second, derived ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... notes in the attic above her head. Dim, flattened, constrained by their confinement, they had never appealed to her as now, when they wandered in the still air with a stark quality like that of nudity. To speak absolutely, both instrument and execution were poor; but the relative is all, and as she listened Tess, like a fascinated bird, could not leave the spot. Far from leaving she drew up towards the performer, keeping behind the hedge that he might not ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... immense strength; and the enormous muscles had even more than the prominence we find in some statues, but so seldom meet with in men of these effeminate times. These particulars were the more easily noted, as their style of costume, in the daytime at least, approached very closely to nudity. But their size was as nothing to their appetites; and deep and vasty as their internal accommodations must have been, it remains a matter of perplexity to me to this day to determine by what mysterious process they managed to stow away one-half ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... If the Elizabethans had been forced to drive in closed cars through the Nevada desert in the summertime, they might have started a cult of nudity, Malone felt. It was bad enough now, in what was ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... of life. When I speak of life, I include art, which is life to him. I should like you to see what a wonder of light and colour and space and breathable air, he put into his Venus rising from the sea—refused on the ground of nudity at the Paris Exhibition this summer. The loss will be great to him, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... stark naked; but it must be allowed that their nudity is not so startling as would be that of an European without clothes, for the faces, arms, and generally every part of their bodies are tattooed. Sometimes the taste of these designs is really wonderful. They pierce ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... of the Indians of Iquitos went about in almost a state of nudity. The Spaniards and half-breeds alone were clothed, and much as they scorned their indigenous fellow-citizens, wore only a simple shirt, light cotton trousers, and a straw hat. All lived cheerlessly enough in the village, mixing little together, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... a deep sadness that anything so gorgeous could be so stupid. Stirred to self-consciousness by her near-nudity, ...
— High Dragon Bump • Don Thompson
... breathed, or lived, or burned within us. Never, perhaps, did two beings as irreproachable in their looks, or in their very thoughts, bare their hearts to one another more unreservedly, and reveal the mysterious depths of their feelings. The innocent nudity of our souls was chaste, though unveiled, as light that discovers all, yet sullies nothing. We had nought to reveal but the spotless love which purified as ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... truth, it is proper to add that in order not to be immoral Art must appeal to those who have a feeling for it. Where the artist sees only beautiful forms, the gross see only nudity. I have seen a good man scandalized at the sight of ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... a crow-bar? Yet these are simple, they have no superfluous parts, they exactly serve their ends, they stand related to all things through the laws of chemistry and physics. A flower is beautiful, a shell on the beach is beautiful, a tree in full leaf, or in its winter nudity, is beautiful; but these things are not very simple. Complex things may be beautiful also. A village church may be beautiful no less than a Gothic cathedral. Emerson was himself a beautiful writer, a beautiful character, and his works are ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... knew: in the centre of Mrs. Willy P. Goldmark's yellow and gold drawing-room, under a thousand-candle-power chandelier, with reflectors aimed at her from every point of the compass. I had seen her wincing and shivering there in her outraged nudity at one of ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... provider for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons. Plaintiff the Naturist Action Committee ("NAC") is the nonprofit political arm of the Naturist Society, a private organization that promotes a way of life characterized by the practice of nudity. The NAC Web site provides information about Naturist Society activities and about state and local laws that may affect the rights of Naturists or their ability to practice Naturism, and includes nude ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... them in a state of almost complete nudity, but the complicated tattooing on their dark skins gave them the appearance of being more clothed than they really were. Their arms consisted chiefly of enormous clubs of hardwood, spears, and bows; and, ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... Her nudity always surprised Dorn. Her body seemed always to have grown more beautiful and impersonal. A shout of rain sounded in the night and a chill wind burst with a clatter in the darkness. He thought of Rachel as he darkened the room. There came to him a picture ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... uncanny bang and in the bang stood a fragile minute queer figure, remotely suggesting an old man. The chief characteristic of the apparition was a certain disagreeable nudity which resulted from its complete lack of all the accepted appurtenances and prerogatives of old age. Its little stooping body, helpless and brittle, bore with extraordinary difficulty a head of absurd largeness, yet which moved on the fleshless ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... and cackle, congratulate themselves upon their worldly wisdom and conspicuous modernity, while, all the time, silently, diligently, relentlessly plucking. Now, awakening suddenly to the fact of their nudity, they were in a terrible taking; scandalised, flustered, very sore, poor birds, and quite past recollecting that feathers grow again if the system is sound and the cuticle health. To Iglesias these purse-proud, self-righteous, middle-aged gentlemen ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... And a picture of a mere naked woman, however well executed, is never art if art means idealism. The realism of the thing was its offensiveness. Ideal nakedness may be divine,—the most godly of all human dreams of the superhuman. But a naked person is not divine at all. Ideal nudity needs no girdle, because the charm is of lines too beautiful to be veiled or broken. The living real human body has no such divine geometry. Question: Is an artist justified in creating nakedness for its own sake, unless he can divest that nakedness of every ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... parting this! Love's ever-feared moment, Longing's much-dreaded end, Yet no voice sorrows in our being, No woe dims the moon-face tonight. Between the sheltering dunes and fading light On an aerial couch lying, Adorned in kiss-woven garments of nudity Our spirits garlanded with myriad embraces, Borne on passion's flaming wings Cross this ocean of parting Unto that far island of Cythera Where only love ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... round their heads, declaring they would continue doing so till the children died, if the police did not leave the camp. Sometimes also the women of a gang have been known to throw off all their clothing and appear in a perfect state of nudity, declaring they would charge the police with violating their modesty. Men of this tribe are expert cattle-lifters, but confine themselves chiefly to buffaloes, which they steal while out grazing and very dexterously disguise by trimming ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... carpenters, whose places were taken by others at night, working by electric light. Ten days more and they would have the triumphal opening; already Paris was covered with picture placards: you saw Tom, as a caryatid, supporting the weight of a palace; the Three Graces entwined in their radiant nudity; the impersonator standing, like a Don Juan, surrounded by a bevy of women: the ballet-girl, the shop-girl, the fine lady; then, besides those, the New Trickers—"My idea!" thought Lily, but she didn't care a jot now—the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... picture, the product of a talented hand, but an execrable picture from a moral point of view. Yes, M. Flaubert knows how to embellish his paintings with all the resources of art, but without the discretion of art. With him there is no gauze, no veils, it is nature in all her nudity, in all ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... its artificial islet, relieved against the shimmering lagoon, and shimmering itself with sun and tinned iron, was all day crowded about by eager men and women. Within, it was boxed full of islanders, of any age and size, and in every degree of nudity and finery. So close we squatted, that at one time I had a mighty handsome woman on my knees, two little naked urchins having their feet against my back. There might be a dame in full attire of holoku and hat and flowers; ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... itself, but, in a more general sense, their divisions are but three, viz, those who eat human bodies, the dog eaters, and those who have no custom of the kind. Early in the morning the pupils would be out on, the beach, or on the rocks, in a state of nudity. Each had a place in front of his own tribe, nor did intense cold interfere in the slightest degree. After the poor creature had crept about, jerking his head and screaming for some time, a party of men would rush out, and, after surrounding him, would ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... the Venus de Milo,—from the aerial posture of John of Bologna's Mercury, to the inimitable and firm dignity in the attitude of Aristides in the Museum of Naples,—from the delicate lines which teach how grace can chasten nudity in the Goddess of the Tribune at Florence, to the embodied melancholy of Hamlet in the brooding Lorenzo of the Medici Chapel,—from the stone despair, the frozen tears, as it were, of all bereaved maternity, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... his present surroundings) on account of a kind of coiffuring he favoured, his hair having been shaped after what seemed a Mongol inspiration. Only upon the top of the head was actual hair perceived, the rest appearing to be nudity. And even more than by any difference in mode he was set apart by his look and manner, in which there seemed to be a brooding, secretive and jeering superiority and this was most vividly expressed when he felt called upon for his loud, short, lop-sided laugh. Whenever he uttered it Alice laughed, ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... was admirably fortified by the technicals of the law, and the Bible phraseology. The quarrel had been waged for some time, and poor Tommy, the bone of contention, sitting all the while between the contending parties in a state of utter nudity, kept up a fine running accompaniment to the full tones of the wranglers, by crying ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... (But did they really all of them believe?) How was it they managed it then?—One did not dare to ask. Not to believe, standing all alone among all those who do believe, is like one who lacks some organ, superfluous perchance, but one that all the others possess; and so, blushing, one hides one's nudity from the public. ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... something forced, if not feigned, in our taste for pictures of the old Italian school." Of the profane subjects, he instances the Fornarina, "with a deep bright glow on her face, naked below the waist, and well pleased to be so, for the sake of your admiration—ready for any extent of nudity, for love or money—the brazen trollop that she is! Raphael must have been capable of great sensuality to have painted this picture of his own accord, and lovingly." These are the iconoclasms of the Goth and Vandal at their first advent to Rome. They remained to alter ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... as ignoble an animal as a Barbary ass, goaded by a dusky little islander almost in a state of nudity, that, an hour before sunset on the day of his arrival, the English traveller approached the casino of the Consul's daughter, for there a note from Major Ponsonby had invited him to repair, to be introduced to his daughter, and to taste his oranges. The servant who received him ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... elevation, and make itself familiar to the comprehension even of a child. Strength must let the Graces bind it, and the arbitrary lion must yield to the reins of love. For this purpose taste throws a veil over physical necessity, offending a free mind by its coarse nudity, and dissimulating our degrading parentage with matter by a delightful illusion of freedom. Mercenary art itself rises from the dust; and the bondage of the bodily, at its magic touch, falls off from the inanimate and animate. In the aesthetic state the most slavish tool is a free ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Artists may not execute as well, but because they will not so readily find models; or, what is perhaps more to the point, they will not find a taste so capable of appreciating the merits of their performances. In Italy the eye is familiar with the human form in a state of almost complete nudity; and the beauty of muscular expression, and of the osteological proportions of man, is there as well known as that of the features and complexion of his countenance; but the same degree of nakedness could ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... miserable twelve-feet-square mud-and-log cabins we passed by. Every farmer we met was a perfect picture of wretchedness and misery; their women dirty and covered with rags, which could scarcely conceal their nudity; the cattle lean and starving; and the horses so weak, that they could ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... while the other eats her dinner. The second volume has a fine illumination divided into four parts, with a handsome border—not quite perhaps so rich as the preceding. Among the subjects, there is a singular one of Lancelot du Lac helping a lady out of a cauldron in a state of nudity: two gentlemen and a lady are quietly looking on. The text appertaining to this subject runs thus: "Et quant elle voit lancelot si lui dist hoa sire cheualiers pour dieu ostes moy de ceste aure ou il a eaue qui toute mait Et lancelot vint a la aure et prent la damoiselle par ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... mysterious metamorphosis of the individual into his or her nagual was about to take place, the person must strip to absolute nudity;[49-*] and the lascivious fury of bands of naked Nagualists, meeting in remote glades by starlight or in the dark recesses of caves, dancing before the statues of the ancient gods, were scenes that stirred the fanaticism of the Spanish missionaries to its highest pitch. ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... which the water had already found its way through the bulk-head scuttles. Jumping overboard, he seized a plank, and was swimming towards a small sandy quay (key) about three miles distant, when a boat picked him up, and conveyed him thither in a state of nudity. It is worthy of remark, that James Morrison endeavoured to follow his young companion's example, and, although handcuffed, managed to keep afloat until a boat came to ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... native, named Tomby, who speaks excellent Arabic. This fellow has been twice to Khartoum, and he wears clothes, instead of walking about in a state of absolute nudity like his countrymen. He has an excellent rifle that was given to him by his old master, a French trader, Monsieur Bartholome. Tomby has been employed as interpreter; and having been born and bred in these parts, he is a perfect chronicler. It appears that Abou ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... own recollections of his only visit to the National Gallery some years ago he should say that these noble fellows were better outside that place than in. One painting that he saw there was so scandalous in its nudity that he blushed even now when he thought of it. Better far that our defenders from the Dominions should continue to walk up and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... religious spirit, to clear and purify the human conscience. A perfect Christian spirit can exist quite outside civilisation as well as in the midst of the most complicated civilisation. A Christian negro, in his nudity, picking up dates under a palm tree, can be as good and saintly a man as any business man from the Strand in London or from the Fifth Avenue in New York. And, on the contrary, the most civilised men, like Bismarck and Nietzsche can be of a much more anti-Christian spirit ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... at this Allahabad mela was a quantity of human hair, and was told that it had been cut off after the fulfilment of vows, reminding one of a custom to which we find frequent reference in both the Old and New Testaments. I also saw a very disgusting sight—men in stark nudity, sitting in a very composed dignified fashion, and women approaching them with folded hands, and paying them profound homage. These were deemed men of great sanctity, whose blessing brought signal benefit, while their curse entailed ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... which seems to know not whether its train is loaded or empty. We are used to force in the muscles of horses, in the expansive potency of steam, but here we have force stripped stark naked,—nothing but a filament to cover its nudity,—and yet showing its might in efforts that would task the working-beam of a ponderous steam-engine. I am thankful that in an age of cynicism I have not lost my reverence. Perhaps you would wonder to see how some very ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... dancers' of Ceylon. In Africa the witch doctor discovers who has been guilty of sorcery by the aid of inspiration furnished during a dance. The whirling dance of the Eastern dervish is well known. Dancing also figures in the Bible. The Jews danced around the golden calf (Ex. xxxii. 19) in a state of nudity. David, too, danced naked before the Lord. Dancing was also part of the religious ceremonies attendant on the worship of Dionysos or Bacchus.[28] Along with the drinking of certain vegetable decoctions, dancing formed an important part of the witches' saturnalia ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... especially snake-bite. One day all the women were transplanting rice, and it was found that Lona could do as much work as all her companions put together. So they watched her, and when she thought she was alone she stripped off her clothes (nudity being an essential element in magic), muttered some spells, and threw the plants into the air, when they all settled down in their proper places. Finding she was observed, she tried to escape, and as she ran the earth opened, and all the water of the rice-fields followed her and thus was ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... moment—should it ever come—when Richard would again recognise her, and give himself to her again. And those vigils proved a searching enough experience, notwithstanding her long apprenticeship to service of sorrow—which was also the service of her son. For, in the mental and moral nudity of delirium, he made strange revelation, not only of acts committed, but of inherent tendencies of character and of thought. He spoke, with bewildering inconsequence and intimacy, of incidents ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... very refreshing; and adapted to that awful atmosphere. It was the nearest approach to nudity I ever saw, even amongst ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... with the monotony of a pendulum—was situated midway on the block on the north side of the street. It boasted a front yard fenced off from the sidewalk with a rusty railing: a plot of arid earth scantily tufted with grass, suggesting that stage of baldness which finally precedes complete nudity. Behind this, the moat-like area was spanned to the front door by a ragged stoop of brownstone. The four-story facade was of brick whose pristine coat of fair white paint had aged to a dry and flaking crust, lending the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... full of cursing and bitterness. The execrations they poured on each other were incredible. In very wantonness, when they met they would pelt each other with curses, and then perhaps burst into a fit of laughter. The women, like the men, went about in almost total nudity, and seemed to know no shame. So reckless were the chiefs of human life, that a man might be put to death for a single distasteful word; yet sometimes there were exhibitions of very tender feeling. The headman ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... Week, a few years ago, the captain of the Civil Guard in Tayabas Province went to the town of Atimonan, and saw natives in the streets almost in a state of nudity doing penance "for the wounds of Our Lord." They were actually beating themselves with flails, some of which were made of iron chain, and others of rope with thongs of rattan-cane. Having confiscated ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... deliberately inviting them to build their structures on sand instead of rock." [Footnote: Edmond Holmes, What is Poetry, p. 68.] Every reader of contemporary poetry is aware that along with its exhilarating freshness and force there has been a display of singularity and of silly nudity both of body and mind. Too intimate confidences have been betrayed in the lyric confessional. It is a fine thing to see a Varsity eight take their dip in the river at the end of an afternoon's spin. Those boys strip well. But there are middle-aged poets who strip very badly. Nature never ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... cut, unless it be that it is trimmed over the eyes to form bangs, and it wears clothing only on very special occasions. The children are by no means innocent in sexual matters; but absolute familiarity with nudity has removed all curiosity and false modesty, and the relations between the sexes are no ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... What nudity is beautiful as this Obedient monster purring at its toil; These naked iron muscles dripping oil And the sure-fingered rods that never miss. This long and shining flank of metal is Magic that greasy labor cannot spoil; While this vast engine that could ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay |
