"Pleasurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... miscellaneous wilderness of limitation the Personal Life. But at last I have decided to divide this vast territory of difficulties into two subdivisions and make one of these Indulgence, meaning thereby pleasurable indulgence of sense or feeling, and the other a great mass of self-regarding motives that will go with a little stretching under the heading of Jealousy. I admit motives are continually playing across the boundary of these two divisions, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... passed from one to another, "It is Sunday!" "It is Sunday!" and they set up a shout that demonstrated that they had not forgotten to love the institutions of civilization, even after so long an absence from a civilized country. Few who were present at this time, will ever forget the thrill of pleasurable surprise which we all experienced at hearing once more the sounds which so ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... neat, commodious frame building, prettily white-washed in front, and hedged in by a rustic fence, with a little gate opening next the road. This was the dwelling of our schoolmistress, the remembrance of whom will ever be an oasis upon the deserts of memory—for to her I owe some of the most pleasurable moments of my boyhood existence. A more Christian-like spirit, a soul fraught with greater or intenser sympathies, and a mind less selfish in its manifestations, or imbued with more genial influences than hers, never existed ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... on Lake Erie, and to others on Lake Simcoe,' said Robert, rescuing his hand, which tingled, and yet communicated a very pleasurable sensation to his heart. 'We are not quite decided on our ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... faith. The element of faith fertilizes life and causes it to bring forth in abundance. Man must have faith in himself, faith in the people about him, and faith in his own plans and purposes to make his life potent and pleasurable. By faith he attaches the truths of science to his plans and thus to the processes of life; for without the faith of man these truths of science are but static. Faith gives them their working qualities. There is faith in the plowing of each furrow, faith in the sowing of the seed, faith in ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... back and provide in the interim for the afflicted children. This was Pauline's opportunity; she naturally succeeded to the position of leading lady, and kept it until her faults of temper developed and she had the pleasurable excitement of a fierce quarrel with her manager. Thus, while her talent was conceded, her stormy temperament prevented her achieving anything like permanent success, and every few months she would reappear at St. Ignace, live drearily ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... milder form of St. Vitus' dance, not uncommon in his time, which was accompanied by involuntary laughter, and which bore a resemblance to the hysterical laughter of the moderns, except that it was characterized by more pleasurable sensations, and by an extravagant propensity to dance. There was no howling, screaming, and jumping, as in the severer form; neither was the disposition to dance by any means insuperable. Patients thus affected, although they had not a complete control over their understandings, yet were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain, upon the bleak walls, upon the vacant eye-like ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... a drug which is brought into Aden from the interior, and largely used, especially by the Arabs, as a pleasurable excitant. It is generally imported in small camel-loads, consisting of a number of parcels, each containing about forty slender twigs with the leaves attached, and carefully wrapped so as to prevent as much as possible exposure to the atmosphere. The leaves form the edible ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... same habit, though an attempt was made to cure her.[10] I will give one instance which has fallen under my own observation, and which is curious from being a trick associated with a peculiar state of mind, namely, pleasurable emotion. A boy had the singular habit, when pleased, of rapidly moving his fingers parallel to each other, and, when much excited, of raising both hands, with the fingers still moving, to the sides of his face on a level with the eyes; this boy, when ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... through the study of its possessor. It may be presupposed that everybody acts according to his own advantage—the question asks merely what this advantage is in the concrete, and whether he who seeks it, seeks it prudently. Even the satisfaction of revenge may be felt as an advantage if it is more pleasurable than the pain which follows confession—the matter is one of relative weight and is prudently sought as the substitution of an immediate and petty advantage for ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... however, think occasionally of the jed of that distant kingdom, but the reaction to these thoughts was scarcely pleasurable. They still brought a flush of shame to her cheeks and a surge of angry blood to her heart. She was very angry with the Jed of Gathol, and though she should never see him again she was quite sure that hate of him would remain fresh in her memory forever. Mostly her thoughts revolved about ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... benignity made him accessible to all kinds of pleasurable sensations from external objects. In his letters and journals, instead of detailing circumstances with the technical precision of a mere navigator, he notices the beauties of nature with the enthusiasm of a ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Barthrop were at home, and alone, the servant told me; and in another few moments I was shaking hands with them. Naturally, they called my visit an unexpected pleasure. It was, in fact, not a very pleasurable quarter of an hour for either one of us. For years I had known nothing of their interests, or they of mine. Our talk was necessarily shallow, and I dare say Cynthia, no less than her husband, was glad when I rose to take my leave. The ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... travelling more than he himself thought would have been possible. Thus he did not reach the place of his destination till noon on the day preceding his birthday. It seemed as if he had been carried away with an unwonted tide of pleasurable sensation, so as to forget in some degree what his father had communicated concerning the purpose of his journey. He halted at length before a respectable but solitary old mansion, to which he was directed as the abode of his ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... remained with him always. Carlton had reached a point in his life, and very early in his life, when he could afford to sit at ease and look back with modest satisfaction to what he had forced himself to do, and forward with pleasurable anticipations to whatsoever he might choose to do in the future. The world had appreciated what he had done, and had put much to his credit, and he was prepared to draw ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... in her black eyes, the risen woman sat there much as living people sit—her head bent forward—her lips apart—and a look of expectation upon her face. But she was doomed to disappointment. Rosamond knew nothing of the past, and with a cry of pleasurable surprise she started forward, exclaiming, "Oh, Miss Porter, I felt so cross when told a visitor was here, but now I know who 'tis, I am so glad, for I am very ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... or excesses in pleasurable pursuits, one may make greater demands upon the energy of his body than it can properly supply. The resulting condition, known as exhaustion, is not only a matter of temporary inconvenience, but may through repetition lead to a serious impairment of the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... the natural outgo of humanity, its fruit. We are not mere receptacles, we are productive engines, of immense capacity; and, having produced, we must distribute the product. To give, naturally, is to shed, to bear fruit; a healthy and pleasurable process. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... horrors positively distasteful! Did he expect even Englishmen to become enthusiastic over the hiring of British troops to the infamous Surajah Dowlah for the massacre of the brave Rohillas? Did he expect them to peruse with pleasurable pride the robbery of the Princesses of Oude, the brutal execution of Nuncomar, or the forged treaty by which Ormichund was entrapped? Having painted the atrocities and craven cowardice of Chief Justice Impey, could he reasonably ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... he entered the room, Eloquent was conscious of the pleasurable thrill that things beautiful and harmonious never failed to evoke. The windows faced west; the red sun, just sinking behind Redmarley Woods, shone in on and was reflected from walls covered from floor to ceiling with books; books bound for the most part in mellow brown and yellow calf, that ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... the first emotion was anything but pleasurable; but Captain Keppel's conciliatory and kind manner soon removed any feeling of fear; and was all along of the greatest use to me in our subsequent doings. The first qualification, in dealing with a Malay, is a kind and gentle manner; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... the hard strain of his face. Slowly her own eyes lost the glow of pleasurable interest and saddened with the realization of being ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... storm and it stands now, almost as a monument to the energy of James Woods, its manager. There has always been a soft spot in our hearts for the Hotel St. Francis, and it is here that we have always felt a most pleasurable emotion when seeking a place where good things are served. Whether it be in the magnificent white and gold dining room, or the old tapestry room that has been remodeled into a dining room, or in the electric grill below stairs, it has always ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... of nearly seventy deceased Artists, from various collections. Among them are Reynolds, Hogarth, Gainsborough, Morland, Wilson, Fuseli, Zoffani, Blake, Opie, De Loutherbourg, Northcote, Harlow, Jackson, Bonington, Lawrence, &c. &c.; and, as many of the specimens are associated with pleasurable recollections, we will endeavour to notice a few of them, in succession with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... beautiful in reality, is impossible. In the narrow view the lust of the eye and the pride of life may seem beautiful, but in the broad perspective of the inward world they take on ugliness; in the moment they may seem pleasurable, but in the backward reach of memory they take on pain; to assert eternity against the moment, to see life in the whole, to live as if all of life were concentrated in its instant, is the chief labour of the mind, the eye, the heart, the enduring will, all together. To represent a villain ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... countries, and perhaps the climate of Bengal, producing lassitude and low spirits, and a yearning for their native land, of which they are so justly proud, contribute to make our countrymen in the East even more than usually unsusceptible of pleasurable emotions until at last they turn away in positive disgust from the scenes and objects which remind them that they are in a state ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... pocket. He felt himself moving in what was to some extent an unreal atmosphere. His senses were tingling with the excitement of the last few hours—for the first time he knew the full fascination of a woman's intellectual sympathy. He had gone to his task wholly devoid of any pleasurable anticipation. It spoke much for the woman's tact that before he had read half a dozen pages he was not only completely at his ease, but was experiencing a new and very pleasurable sensation. The memory of it was with him now—he had no mind to disturb it by ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thoughts of wakefulness and the dreams of sleep. It seemed to me that the gulf between mind and matter had been passed over, and that I had entered upon a new existence. I had no memory, no hope, no sorrow; nothing but a dim consciousness of a pleasurable and tranquil being. Gradually, however, the delusion vanished. I was sensible of still wearing the fetters of the flesh, yet they galled no longer; the burden was lifted from my heart, it beat happily and calmly, as in childhood. As the stronger influences of my opiate ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... As long as those giving the entertainment are local people, friends or relatives, the audience takes a more or less sympathetic part in the performance and is not actuated solely by the desire to purchase pleasurable sensations as is the case with commercial amusements. I mean by commercial amusements those which are operated solely for profit, whose advantages the individual purchases for his own pleasure rather than with any ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... to be made for the entertainment of to-morrow's guests, and the children were in a flutter of pleasurable excitement. ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... is that of inducing young people to read, to cultivate in them a habit of reading and reflection, and to excite the imagination, the feelings, and the better emotions of their nature in a pleasurable and judicious manner. ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... gods. How shall I dare to deceive, insult, or ill-treat another man, in whom I see and feel my fellow, who, like myself, is a god? Then, and then only, shall life be rich and beautiful.... Our daily life shall be a pleasurable toil, an enfranchised science, a wonderful music, an everlasting merrymaking. Love, free and sovereign, shall become the ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... debris between the banana trees, into which in the day-time they would always scamper when any one passed, and my natives told me that the end of the rainy season was the incubating period. As it was within a few weeks of that time, I was filled with pleasurable anticipations, and counted the days. Alas, for my hopes! One night, a predatory village pig, smelling the fruit which was always placed in the enclosure daily, rooted a huge hole underneath the bambods, and in the morning my pets were gone, ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him,—to the length of sixpence.—Clothes too, which began in foolishest love of Ornament, what have they not become! Increased Security and pleasurable Heat soon followed: but what of these? Shame, divine Shame (Schaam, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the Anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a mystic grove-encircled shrine ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... of whatever kind; even bad news gives them merely a feeling of pleasurable excitement, unless it is something that affects them or ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... A warmth of pleasurable relief passed through Donald; but he managed to reply formally, "I am pleased; but I hope that you didn't ease up any because of anything ... er ... on ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... storm, till her nerves were strung to a state of ecstatic tension, and her mind fairly revelled in the sense of danger. When her father was at home in the evening, she would sit still beside the fire in the sitting-room, listening in breathless awe, and excitement wholly pleasurable, to the gale raging without; but if Captain Caldwell had not returned, as frequently happened now that the days were short, and the roads so bad, well knowing the risks he ran, she would see the car upset a hundred times, and hear the ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... doors the snow and rain swept the roofs, and with a low, rushing sound ran along the gurgling gutters; sometimes a gust of wind forced itself beneath the tiles, which rattled together like castanets, and afterward it was lost in the empty corridor. Then a slight and pleasurable shiver thrilled through my veins: I drew the flaps of my old wadded dressing-gown around me, I pulled my threadbare velvet cap over my eyes, and, letting myself sink deeper into my easy-chair, while ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Five pleasurable days we had together on board The Queen. Muir was vastly amused by the motley crowd of excited men, their various outfits, their queer equipment, their ridiculous notions of camping and life in the wilderness. "A nest of ants," ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... What his particular personal interest might be he could not tell, nor did he care much. In fact, at this time the question of his visitor's motives hardly occupied his mind at all, so greatly were his thoughts occupied with pleasurable reminiscences of his own ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... of nave at Beauvais, of spires at Bourges, and, yet again, regret even with more pain the monstrousness of the cast-iron fleche which has been added to the central tower at Rouen. But these are after all minor imperfections—seldom, if ever, in aught but pleasurable anticipation, do we see in the masterpieces of art or nature a perfect unity; so why seek to negative their virtues by futile criticism? It would seem to be all-sufficient that such details, sins of omission or commission, should be noted merely, that we may pass ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... entreaty in his manner which Helen could not resist; and hardly knowing why she did it, she consented. Her son went off to his bed, fairly worn out with pleasurable excitement, and she staid with Lord Cairnforth, as he seemed to wish, for another half hour. They sat by the library fire, listening to the rain beating and the wind howling—not continuously, but coming and going in frantic blasts, which seemed like the voices of living creatures ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... subject. Beginning with mild, alternately warm and cool sprays, which are pleasant and agreeable to everyone, we gradually increase the force and lower the temperature until the patient is so inured to cold water that the blitzguss becomes a delightful and pleasurable sensation, ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... silence. Sergeant Lumbe's brain—such as it was—was in too much of a whirl to permit him to talk coherently; Tufnell, habitually a taciturn individual, had been rendered more so than usual by the events of the night; and Caldew was plunged into such a reverie of pleasurable expectation, regarding the outcome of his investigations of the moat-house murder, that the stages of his promotion through the grades of detective, sub-superintendent, and superintendent, flashed through his mind as rapidly ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... up such a wishful mouth,—so wishful for one of the pleasurable duties of mouths, that Belle blushed, laughed, and looked down, and as she did so saw that one of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the Truro river and the Fal to Falmouth at any time of the year is a pleasurable experience that can never be forgotten. Truro is an ideal centre for South Cornwall. Wild sea coast and moorland, and woods and sheltered creeks, are all close at hand, yet the city itself has the cloistered calm peculiar ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various
... noticed with unfeigned and real pleasure, The rapid growth of Cycling. (How it jumps!) To those who have the energy and leisure It affords—(Confound this saddle! it so bumps!) What otherwise would be quite unattainable, A healthy, and a pleasurable form Of exercise. (Yes, health is hereby gainable; But I am most ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... some art, in which he takes especial pleasure himself, and which gives to his leisure, perhaps, its greatest charm: he may be sure that there are many of his people who could be made to share in some degree that pleasure, or pursuit, with him. It is a large, a sure, and certainly a most pleasurable beneficence, to provide for the poor such opportunities of recreation, or means of amusement, as I have mentioned above. Neither can it be set down as at all a trifling matter. Depend upon it, that man has not made any great progress in humanity who does not care for the leisure ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... all the details of the execution to us. By the early autumn the financial success of the scheme was fully assured and made known to him by cable; but he did not seem altogether to realise the full measure of relief from money anxieties which the assurance was meant to convey to him. Other pleasurable circumstances were the return of Mr. Graham Balfour after a prolonged absence; the visit of a spirited and accomplished young English man of business and of letters, Mr. Sidney Lysaght (see below, pp. 385, 388, etc.); and the frequent society of the officers of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hands, McKinstry transferring his rifle to the hollow of his elbow to offer his unwounded left. The master watched him slowly resume his way towards the ranch. Then with a half uneasy and half pleasurable sense that he had taken some step whose consequences were more important than he would at present understand, he turned in the opposite direction to the school-house. He was so preoccupied that it was not until he had nearly reached it that ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... were open-work and embroidered, and the cheapest were fifteen francs a pair. It had to be decided whether these should be upheld by suspenders or by garters. Owen's taste was for garters, and the choice of a pair filled them with a pleasurable embarrassment. In the next shop—it was a glove shop—as she was about to consult him regarding the number of buttons, she remembered, in a sudden moment of painful realisation, the end for which they had met. She turned pale, and the words caught in her throat. Fortunately, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... arms to his nephew, whose lingering panic he mistook for pleasurable excitement, and having enfolded him to his bosom turned to greet ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... of motion resulting from the swing of the frame of the Otto gives a pleasurable sensation, which those who have only experienced the constrained motion of a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... thought how good it is to be satisfied. How many times we have heard people testify and rejoice that they had reached this experience! I would not depreciate this sense of satisfaction, for out of it come many enjoyable things. It is a very pleasurable feeling and one that most people very earnestly desire. There are times, however, when such a feeling would be anything but a blessing. Perhaps this surprizes you as it did the sister. God has made provision to satisfy us. Christ said that he who would drink of the water of life should ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... steamboats, railway stations, and at every turn. His profits are small, he has a great amount of anxiety and care, and no little amount of personal wear and tear. He is indispensable to civilization and freedom, and he is looked for with pleasurable excitement every day, except when he lends the paper for an hour, and when he is punctual in calling for it, which is sometimes very painful. I think the lesson we can learn from our newsman is some new illustration of the uncertainty of life, some illustration of its vicissitudes and fluctuations. ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... and the small tract of ground they had cultivated in a desultory manner had done little beyond supplying themselves with vegetables and the horses with some extra feed. She had no great opinion of agriculture; and though she had taken part in planting and hoeing with a pleasurable zest, she had never entertained herself with the thought that she was engaged in a great work. As to dugouts, they had no place in her dreams of the future. Since Wilfred had chosen to handicap himself with the same limitations ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... flannels, and he looked ruddy and well, but the ruddiness was not quite of the right sort. He had begun drinking early, and his eye had that incipient gloss which always appears about the time when the one pleasurable moment of drunkenness has come. There is but one pleasant moment in a drinking bout, and men make themselves stupid by trying to make that fleeting moment permanent. Bob cried, "Come on, sonny. Oh! what would I give for your thirst! Mine's gone! I'm three parts copped already. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... bringing the conduct of one into harmony with that of others. In commerce, each aims at the satisfaction of his own wants, but can gain his own profit only by furnishing some commodity or service to another. Thus in aiming at the increase of his own private pleasurable states of consciousness, he contributes to the consciousness of others. Again there is no doubt that this view expressed and furthered a heightened perception of the values of conscious life, and a recognition that institutional arrangements are ultimately ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... parting fro' my love, nigher draws the Severance-day * Ah well-away for parting! and again ah well-away! And in tway is torn my heart and O pine I'm doomed to bear * For the nights that erst witnessed our pleasurable play! No help for it but Envier the twain of us espy * With evil eye and win to us his lamentable way. For naught to us is sorer than the jealousy of men * And the backbiter's eyne that with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... not in one, but in several of my previous letters, in spite of others having given up the idea in despair, I gave you hope of being able at an early date to quit your province, not only that I might as long as possible cheer you with a pleasurable belief, but also because I and the praetors took such pains in the matter, that I felt no misgiving as to the possibility of its being arranged. As it is, since matters have so turned out that neither the praetors by the weight of their influence, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the year, when the insect has nothing to do and retires to winter quarters, the observer profits by the mildness of the sunny nooks and grubs in the sand, lifts the stones, searches the brushwood; and often he is stirred with a pleasurable excitement, when he lights upon some ingenious work of art, discovered unawares. Happy are the simple of heart whose ambition is satisfied with such treasure-trove! I wish them all the joys which it has brought me and which it will ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... and pleasure in the love of producing offspring, because all that is delightful, pleasurable, blessed, and happy, in the whole heaven and in the whole world, has been from creation brought together into the effort and thus into the act of bringing forth uses; and these joys increase in an ascending degree to eternity, according to the goodness and excellence of the ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... purpose of distributing the powers of life, and the placenta for the purpose of oxygenating the blood, and the additional absorbent vessels, for the purpose of acquiring aliment, are first formed by the irritations above mentioned, and by the pleasurable sensations attending those irritations, and by the exertions in consequence of painful sensations similar to those of hunger and suffocation. After these an apparatus of limbs for future uses, or for the purpose of moving the body in its present natant ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... you once contract the habit of blabbing out a secret when nobody's by, how on earth can you resist it when you have the pleasurable excitement of telling it to all the world? Vanity, vanity—woman's vanity! Woman never could withstand rank—never!" The Doctor went on railing for a quarter of an hour, and was very reluctantly appeased by Mrs. Riccabocca's ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... of this famous woman, by Miss Thomas, is the only one in existence. Those who have awaited it with pleasurable anticipation, but with some trepidation as to the treatment of the erratic side of her character, cannot fail to be pleased with the skill by which it is done. It is the best production on George Sand that has yet been ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... flower that has been bruised, in the tranquillising influences about her, the young lady got up, expanded, and grew like herself again—not like enough, indeed, to say much, but to listen and follow his manly, refined, and pleasant talk, every moment with a pang, that had yet something pleasurable in it, contrasting the quiet and chivalric tone of her present companion, with the ferocious duplicity of the sly, smooth terrorist who ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... this, that the actions she has enjoined us for our necessity should be also pleasurable to us; and she invites us to them, not only by reason, but also by appetite, and 'tis injustice to infringe her laws. When I see alike Caesar and Alexander, in the midst of his greatest business, so fully enjoy human and corporal ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... length came to a place where the trail ended or merged in a rough road that showed evidence of considerable travel. Horses, sheep, and cattle had passed along there that day. This road turned southward, and Jean began to have pleasurable expectations. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... occasionally for weeks, until "the Spike of the Universe" graciously condescended to receive them. Here also was the place of public execution. In the days before the white men came, public executions on the aloun-aloun provided pleasurable excitement for the inhabitants of Djokjakarta, who attended them in great numbers. The method employed was characteristic of Java: the condemned stood with his forehead against a wall, and the executioner drove the point ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... sovereign good consisted in pleasure, opposing the unfeeling austerity of the Stoics by the softness of pleasurable emotions, his principle was soon disregarded; while his word, perhaps chosen in the spirit of paradox, was warmly adopted by the sensualist. Epicurus, of whom Seneca has drawn so beautiful a domestic scene, in whose garden a loaf, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... pushing his chair a little away from the table, opened the papers wide, and began scanning them one after another, with the mild and pleasurable excitement of the man who feels confidently abreast of circumstances. Then, as he took up the Arbiter, his eye suddenly fell upon a heading that took his breath away. What was this? He dropped the ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... which must be carefully shielded from the light and admired only in the dark room, would be neither pleasurable nor practical. If there were some way by which the hitherto unaffected silver chloride could be totally removed, it would be possible to take the plate into any light without fear. To accomplish this, the unchanged ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... determined haste was at an end. She was about to enjoy the feminine luxury of time. The combing of her hair became a delightful and leisurely function in the silky feel of the strands in her fingers and the refreshing pull at the roots. The flow of the bath water made the music of pleasurable anticipation, and immersion set the very spirit of physical life leaping and tingling in her veins. And all the while she was thinking of how to ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... my eye to scrutinize this prospect, I forced my mind to dwell on it for a time, and when I found that it communicated no pleasurable emotion to my heart—that it stirred in me none of the hopes a man ought to feel, when he sees laid before him the scene of his life's career—I said to myself, "William, you are a rebel against circumstances; you are a fool, and know not what you want; you have chosen trade ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... monstrous clever fellow, Jurgen. For this plump brown-haired bright-eyed little creature, this Chloris, he was honestly sorry. Into the uneventful life of a hamadryad, here in this uncultured forest, could not possibly have entered much pleasurable excitement, and it seemed only right to inject a little. "Why, simply in justice to her!" Jurgen reflected. "I must ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... blurred, lost its walls, became formless space; out of which, to his pleasurable surprise, he saw the carefully garbed figure of Colonel Mapleson walking toward him. He never forgot that tea rose! Confound him—probably another benefit for one of his indigent song birds. As Howat was about ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... into the jungle and found patches of sago-palms and a low forest vegetation, but the paths were everywhere full of mud-holes, and intersected by muddy streams and tracts of swamp, so that walking was not pleasurable, and too much attention to one's steps was not favourable to insect catching, which requires above everything freedom of motion. I shot a few birds, and caught a few butterflies, but all were the same as I ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... both Philosophicall and Airy, and in order to the maine designe for the most part purely scientifick and demonstrative; and after if all you shall think that you have not mispent your time by observing something that is either a usefull or pleasurable I shall have my designe ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... the mental and rational gratification wise men could desire. Views and times alter, and these richly-endowed young men, in after life, were prompt, and amongst the first to confess the fallacious schemes of their youth; but at this time the pleasurable alone occupied their field of vision, and confidence never stood more ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... prepared. The hour of supper being arrived, we repair to rooms illuminated with the lustre of a thousand tapers fragrant with amber. The supper-room is surrounded by three vast galleries, in which are placed musicians, whose various instruments fill the mind with the most pleasurable and the softest emotions. The young girls are seated at table with us, and, towards the conclusion of the repast, they sing songs, which are hymns in honour of the God who has endowed us with senses which shed such a charm over existence, and which promise us new pleasure from every fresh exercise ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Felix, feeling very uncomfortable at the time. This great effort of his life was drawing very near. There had been a pleasurable excitement in talking of running away with the great heiress of the day, but now that the deed had to be executed,—and executed after so novel and stupendous a fashion, he almost wished that he had not undertaken it. It ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... into the intricacies and difficulties of the discussion, beauty will here be regarded as that quality in literature which awakens in the cultivated reader a sense of the beautiful. This sense of the beautiful is a refined and pleasurable feeling; and, as we shall see, it is traceable to ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... carven ladles, and wonderful woven blankets to lay at the feet of their now acknowledged ruler, the great Tyee. And he, in turn, gave such a potlatch that nothing but tradition can vie with it. There were long, glad days of joyousness, long pleasurable nights of dancing and camp fires, and vast quantities of food. The war canoes were emptied of their deadly weapons and filled with the daily catch of salmon. The hostile war songs ceased, and in their place were heard the soft shuffle of dancing feet, the singing voices of women, the play-games ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... submitted. He sat down quite boldly on our operating chair, but grew pale when I advanced with the instrument; when I tried to open his mouth, he began to whimper, and finally, struggling out of my grasp, fled. I afterwards gave him sixpence, however, for affording me, as I told him, so much pleasurable anticipation. ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the evening. Sometimes a morning's interest would be excited by some story of plague in the Lazaretto, and a proposed adjournment of the ship to Vourlah, to be out of harm's way; and such speculations, though not exactly pleasurable, were at least anti-stagnative in character. In any thing like decent weather it is not bad fun to get down to Vourlah for a time, and to fly from the gaieties of the metropolis to the pleasures of the chasse at Rabbit Island. It must ever be soothing to a spirit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... daughter of a widow who had a small ranch on the cross-roads, near the new Free-Will Baptist church—the evident theatre of this pastoral. They led a secluded life; the girl being little known in the town, and her beauty and fascination apparently not yet being a recognized fact. The Colonel felt a pleasurable relief at this, and a general satisfaction he could not account for. His few inquiries concerning Mr. Hotchkiss only confirmed his own impressions of the alleged lover—a serious-minded, practically abstracted man—abstentive of youthful ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... leading or forcing others into wrong-doing and misfortune, while he keeps himself prosperous and honored, just because he can create beautiful things in art, or architecture, or music, or literature? Is the world in greater need of being made more beautiful and more pleasurable for the few than it is of being made better for the many? Would you condone a man for deliberately making it worse because he was adding to ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... moment. There is no stopping to weave garlands of flowers, to hang in festoons, around a favorite argument. On the contrary, every sentence is progressive; every idea sheds new light on the subject; the listener is kept perpetually in that sweetly pleasurable vibration, with which the mind of man always receives new truths; the dawn advances in easy but unremitting pace; the subject opens gradually on the view; until, rising in high relief, in all its native colors and proportions, the argument is consummated ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... themselves or anybody else—I am not writing for them; but only to those of the world's workers who go, or would like to go, every summer to the woods. And to these I would say, don't rough it; make it as smooth, as restful and pleasurable ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... issues of life and death are not in our hands. If you really understood his state, you would wonder that he is still alive. Keep all bad tidings from him," the doctor adds rather louder to Denise. "Tell him pleasurable things only; keep him cheerful. It cannot be for very long. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... 8. Reptiles and Insects. The forms of the serpent and lizard exhibit almost every element of beauty and horror in strange combination; the horror, which in an imitation is felt only as a pleasurable excitement, has rendered them favorite subjects in all periods of art; and the unity of both lizard and serpent in the ideal dragon, the most picturesque and powerful of all animal forms, and of peculiar symbolical interest to the Christian mind, is perhaps the principal of all the materials ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... short-legged, of no particular color, of little elegance in flight or movement, with a disagreeable flirt of the tail, always quarreling with their neighbors and with one another, no birds are so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in the beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection. The kingbird is the best dressed member of the family, but he is a braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... breakfast that first morning, and prepared to go out for a walk into the great unknown, perhaps the most pleasurable sensation in the world. Francesca was ready first, and, having mentioned the fact several times ostentatiously, she went into the drawing-room to wait and read "The Scotsman." When we went thither a few minutes later we ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... as he sat there that Helene had spent the first five years of her life at the Ursuline Convent in St. Peter. What had her mother—young and beautiful—been doing during those years, the years of a mother's most anxious devotion and pleasurable interest? He searched his memory for Club reminiscences of a Marie Delano of twenty years earlier, or less. No such name rewarded his mental explorations, and Marie Delano was not a name likely ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... if disproportionate thoughts to the matter in hand, which was the simplest sort of a Continental holiday. And I am certain that my companions, near as they are to me, felt no other trouble but the suppressed excitement of pleasurable anticipation. The forms and the spirit of the land before their eyes were their inheritance, not their conquest—which is a thing precarious, and, therefore, the most precious, possessing you if only by the fear of unworthiness rather than ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... lined up across the opening, two deep, eyes and mouths wide open. In the front rank Percy recognized the imp who had burnt his coat, Jabe's brother, whose chastisement had started the trouble. The lad was dancing up and down with pleasurable anticipation. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... charm, must always lead on to the conception of a higher consistency. Now it is the relation that these two opposite conceptions mutually bear which determines in an emotion if the prevailing impression shall be pleasurable or the reverse. If the conception of incongruity be more vivid than that of the contrary, or if the end sacrificed is more important than the end gained, the prevailing impression will always be displeasure, whether this be understood objectively of the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I'm going to have folks at last," murmured Joe. "And maybe not only a father, but brothers and sisters—Uncle Bill Duncan said he didn't know. I may have more than Blake, if I keep on," and then, with more pleasurable thoughts than worrying about an indefinable something, the lad finally lost ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... gustatory image is common enough, as the idea of eating lemons will testify. Sometimes the pleasurable recollection of a delightful dinner will cause the mouth to water years afterward, or the "image" of particularly atrocious medicine will wrinkle the nose long after it made ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... makes his sorrow most musical, this indeed being the meaning of joy in art—that incommunicable element of artistic delight which, in poetry, for instance, comes from what Keats called the 'sensuous life of verse,' the element of song in the singing, made so pleasurable to us by that wonder of motion which often has its origin in mere musical impulse, and in painting is to be sought for, from the subject never, but from the pictorial charm only—the scheme and symphony of the colour, the satisfying ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... of affairs when St. Valentine's day dawned. Alma's two weeks of school had seemed a little eternity to her; but this day she could feel that there was something unusual in the air, and she could not help being affected by the pleasurable excitement afloat in the room. She knew what the big white box by the door was for, and when, after school, Miss Joslyn was appointed to uncover and distribute the valentines, Alma found herself following the crowd, until, ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... They love the hedge and bush where they were born, they return to the same tree, or the same spot under the eave. On the other hand, they like to roam about the fields and woods, and some of them travel long distances during the day. When the pleasurable cares of the nest are concluded, it is possible that they may in some cases cross the sea solely for the solace of change. Variety of food is itself a great pleasure. By prehistoric memory is meant the unconscious influence of ancient habit impressed upon the race in times when ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... should mate himself with a sprightly woman, and vice versa; for otherwise they will soon grow weary of the monotony of each other's company. By the same rule should the choleric and the patient be united, and the ambitious and the humble; for the opposites of their natures not only produce pleasurable excitement, but each keeps the other in a wholesome check. In the size and form of the parties the same principles hold good. Tall women are not the ideals of beauty to tall men; and if they marry such, they will soon begin ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... were sunlight and freedom; the future gave him no anxiety; for he was disposed to accept from life whatever it could offer him. Sanine shut his eyes tight, and stretched himself; the tension of his sound, strong muscles gave him pleasurable thrills. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... in greeting him that most deeply gave the pleasure he had in their company. He often pondered the fact. It was, in their manifestation of it, as though he brought them something,—something very pleasurable to them and that they much wanted. Certainly he, for his own part, received such from them: a sense of warmth, a kindling of the spirit, a glowing of ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... this quality of emotion was wholly pleasurable and quite exciting, and instead of crying out "More misery! more unhappiness!" he could now, as he passed the mulberry, say to himself "More pleasures! ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... two teenaged boys, cousins, the father of one of them, and a family tutor. They decide to leave dear old England for a while, and pay a visit to Africa. Here all sorts of adventures befall them, some pleasurable, but many of them not so. There is one particularly awkward moment when one of the boys is pounced on by a lion. However, they get out of that one. As always with Fenn's books, there are numerous tight situations, many of which appear to have no solution, but they do get out of them, ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... in explanation. That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or excitement of the soul, which we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of the heart. I make Beauty, therefore—using ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... room to smooth my hair preparatory to commencing the labors of the day. If I stood over my mirror longer than usual, remember I was young, and had a laudable desire to please. As I surveyed myself in the glass, I was guilty of a pleasurable cognizance of the figure and face reflected there. The walk and unexpected encounter had given an unwonted brilliancy and vivacity to my countenance. My cheeks glowed; my eyes sparkled; and from my chestnut curls depended wild flowers, and wreaths of Herbert's twining; altogether a pleasing ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... dropped. He looked across the table. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes fixed upon his. There was something shining out of them which he did not wholly understand. He only knew that the question seemed to have stirred him in some new way. An intense sense of pleasurable content, a feeling as though he were listening to music, stole through his senses. This was a new thing. He was bewildered. He leaned a little further across the table. He found himself watching the faint blue veins of her delicate fingers, ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... still gripping her and one foot pressed against an iron rod. It was immediately after they had seen it pitch harmlessly into the road that a new sensation came to this phlegmatic young man. For the first time in his life, he realized that it was possible to feel a certain pleasurable emotion in the close grasp of a being of the opposite sex. Consequently, although she had now ceased to struggle, he kept his arms locked around her, looking into her face with an interest intense enough, but more analytical ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... detention of the provisions, owing to the same cause. Added to my other discomforts was the presence of mosquitoes in incredible numbers, so that the journey and the sojourn at the Plain were anything but pleasurable. I had taken the precaution to request Mr. Cummings, the interpreter, to summon the White Mud Indians as well as Yellow Quill's band, and those who adhered to the ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... hotel, in order that the club might think that he was entertained at friends' houses; but the two places were nearly the same to him, as he could achieve a dinner and half a pint of wine for five or six shillings at each of them. A more empty existence, or, one would be inclined to say, less pleasurable, no one could pass; but he had always a decent coat on his back and a smile on his face, and five shillings in his pocket with which to pay for his dinner. His asking what was up about Scarborough showed, at any rate, that he was very ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... apparently to ingratiate herself with the offended majesty of the nurse, Miss Levering said gravely over her shoulder, 'Now, lie down, Sara, and be a good girl.' Sara's reply to that was to (what she called) 'diddle up and down' on her knees and emit shrill squeals of some pleasurable emotion not defined. This, too, in spite of the fact that Dampney had picked up the pillow and was advancing upon Miss Sara with an expression calculated to shake the stoutest heart. It obviously shook the visitor's. 'Listen, Sara! If you don't be quiet and let nurse cover you up, she won't want ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... up, and every eye sparkled with joy. However ill fed they might have been, here, for once, there was plenty. Suffering and toil was forgotten, and they all seemed with one accord to give themselves up to the intoxication of pleasurable amusement. ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... day after day in quest of him for several days. Guns were fired from the Sirius every four hours, night and day, but all to no effect. He had met with some fatal accident, which deprived a wife of the pleasurable prospect of ever seeing him return to her and to his friends. He had once before missed his way; and it was reported, when his loss was confirmed, that he declared on the fatal morning, when stepping ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... of optimism and pessimism, Darwin held that though pain and suffering were very often the ways by which animals were led to pursue that course of action which is most beneficial to the species, yet pleasurable feelings were the most habitual guides. "We see this in the pleasure from exertion, even occasionally from great exertion of the body or mind, in the pleasure of our daily meals, and especially in the pleasure ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... first book-keeper in a leading bank, and he is master of the situation because he is able to add four columns of figures at once with absolute accuracy. He commands a first-class salary for first-class work, and it is pleasurable to watch the pride, the dignity, and the evident enjoyment with which he performs the duties of his station. On one occasion I went into the bank to settle an account of long standing, and at the ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... amount in smoking cigars. The French habit of coffee-drinking and the English habit of tea-drinking are also cases in point. They are quite as expensive as ordinary Tobacco-smoking, and, like it, defensible only on the ground of the pleasurable sensation they communicate to the nervous system. But these habits are so universal that no one thinks of attacking them, unless now and then some persecuted ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... make it a pleasant occasion—the distant tuning of the orchestra, the low hum of voices, the faint odor of violets, and the recollection of having been there before with that miracle of a girl,—all combine to fill us with pleasurable anticipation. In this way we give as much to the performance as it gives to us. According to some Aestheticians the indefinable emotions we sometimes feel when listening to music are the reverberations of feelings experienced countless ages ago. This may have some foundation in fact, but it is somewhat ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... There was quite a pleasurable excitement among the stay-at-homes at the tea table, when the incipient breaking up of the ice was declared; for on the proximity of narrow feeding-grounds to the ice-houses depended the hopes of good sport of our adventurers. To be sure they had thus far had nothing to complain ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... dearest mother, and that of my father and Ellen, I can well understand, but for myself I had no fear. Had I been alone, I believe a species of pleasurable excitement would have been the prevailing feeling, but for my Louisa I did tremble very often; the scenes passing around us were to a gentle eye and feeling heart terrible indeed, and so suddenly they had come upon us, we had no time to attempt retreat to a place of greater safety. Cannonballs ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... natural world amidst which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in joy and sympathy in trouble, only in books.... What share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our friends?... There is surely a reason for this want of inborn sympathy between the creature ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... any considerable time. That grief should be willingly endured, though far from a simply pleasing sensation, is not so difficult to be understood. It is the nature of grief to keep its object perpetually in its eye, to present it in its most pleasurable views, to repeat all the circumstances that attend it, even to the last minuteness; to go back to every particular enjoyment, to dwell upon each, and to find a thousand new perfections in all, that were not sufficiently understood ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... return from school the next afternoon, his expression was not altogether without apprehension, and he stood in the doorway looking well about him before he lifted a loosened plank in the flooring and took from beneath it the grand old weapon of the Williams family. Not did his eye lighten with any pleasurable excitement as he sat himself down in a shadowy corner and began some sketchy experiments with the mechanism. The allure of first sight was gone. In Mr. Williams' bedchamber, with Sam clamouring for possession, it had seemed to Penrod that nothing in the world ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... In the pleasurable pain of such a mood he drew his bow across the strings with a sweeping stroke, and then, for an instant, he ran hither and thither on the strings testing the quality and finding the range and capacity of the instrument. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... walking out with little boys in the fields, (who used to play me tricks, and never could be got to respect my awful and responsible character as teacher in the school,) Miss Birch's vulgar insolence, Jack Birch's glum condescension, and the poor old Doctor's patronage, were not matters in themselves pleasurable: and that that patronage and those dinners were sometimes cruel hard to swallow. Never mind—my connection with the place is over now, and I hope they have got a more ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... conquer an aversion he had to the sound of water running through pipes. A gentleman of the Court of the Emperor Ferdinand suffered epistaxis when he heard a cat mew. La Mothe Le Vayer could not endure the sounds of musical instruments, although he experienced pleasurable sensations when he heard a clap of thunder. It is said that a chaplain in England always had a sensation of cold at the top of his head when he read the 53d chapter of Isaiah and certain verses of the Kings. There was an unhappy wight who could not hear his own name ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... accumulate and prepare the items of suffering and enjoyment for the doer in his next life. Only the fruits of those actions which are extremely wicked or particularly good could be reaped in this life. The nature of the next birth of a man is determined by the nature of pleasurable or painful experiences that have been made ready for him by his maturing actions of this life. If the experiences determined for him by his action are such that they are possible to be realized in the life of a goat, the man will die and be born as a goat. As there ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... experienced little difficulty now in procuring promptly the very best accommodation which the house afforded. That this arrangement was accomplished somewhat to the present discomfort of two vociferous Eastern tourists did not greatly interfere with his pleasurable interest in ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... The sentiment of recognition was wholly genuine and almost rapturously pleasurable. It is true that in the confusion of our flight I had not been able to give a thought to our friend, who was, unless I am much mistaken, absent from her palace. Nor will I be so absurd as to pretend that I have, for a long while past, felt at all keenly the desire for her ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... the whole thing for ourselves as we go along. If one of us speaks well, applaud him; if one of us speaks ill, applaud him too; we are all in the same movement, we are all liberals, we are all in pursuit of truth." In this way the pursuit of truth becomes really a social, practical, pleasurable affair, almost requiring a chairman, a secretary, and advertisements; with the excitement of an occasional scandal, with a little resistance to give the happy sense of difficulty overcome; but, in general, plenty of bustle ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... he came down again, and he went out to sit on the sun-warmed veranda while he waited. He had already forgotten what she had said about the object of the drive—the proving of the philosophic charge against him—and was looking forward with keenly pleasurable anticipations to another outing with her, the second for that day. It had come to this, now; to admitting frankly the charm which he was still calling sensuous, and which, in the moments of insight recurring, as often as they can be borne, to ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... task of cheering her somewhat moody brother. She sat beside him, resting her hand with sisterly affection upon his shoulder, while in a low, sweet voice she talked to him, adroitly touching those topics only which she knew awoke pleasurable associations in his mind. Her words were sweet as manna and full of womanly tenderness and sympathy, skilfully wrapped in a strain of gaiety like a bridal veil which covers ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... association with certain states of the mind, owing to wholly inexplicable causes, and are undoubtedly inherited. I have elsewhere given one instance from my own observation of an extraordinary and complex gesture, associated with pleasurable feelings, which was transmitted from a father to his daughter, as well as some ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... country of "openings;" small prairies bounded by jungly forests, and interspersed with timber islands. These prairies were covered with tall grass; and buffalo signs appeared as we rode into them. We saw their "roads," "chips," and "wallows." These signs filled us with pleasurable anticipations; as who has not longed for the delicious "hump ribs," which, when once tasted in all their juicy richness, are never to be forgotten. The full-grown forms of the cacti were around us, bearing red and yellow fruit in abundance. We plucked the pears of the pita-haya, ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... traversing a few miles of dark volcanic stone we neared a crater in the ground, whose gloomy aspect was fully in keeping with the destruction which such a phenomenon bespeaks as having occurred—silent as the death it produced, and void of all pleasurable features, of wild flowers, or even the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... you do." Not that there was any weak compliance for the sake of agreement, but a unison of thought and feeling between them which gave a pleasurable zest to ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... the place to try to make clear the importance of such secrecy and confidence between parents and child. There is a secrecy which adds a glamour of pleasurable naughtiness, leading straight to prudery and pruriency with all their consequences. Such secrecy is the sort that develops when parents do take the child into their confidence. Such harmful secrecy is not to ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... practiced by them and the gesture signs, which, even if not "natural," are intelligible to the most widely separated of mankind. A Sandwich Islander, a Chinese, and the Africans from the slaver Amistad have, in published instances, visited our deaf-mute institutions with the same result of free and pleasurable intercourse; and an English deaf-mute had no difficulty in conversing with Laplanders. It appears, also, on the authority of Sibscota, whose treatise was published in 1670, that Cornelius Haga, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... the scourge of his thoughts. The moment he rode into sight of men a remarkable transformation occurred in him. A strange warmth stirred in him—a longing to see the faces of people, to hear their voices—a pleasurable emotion sad and strange. But it was only a precursor of his old bitter, sleepless, and eternal vigilance. When he hid alone in the brakes he was safe from all except his deeper, better self; when he escaped from this into the haunts of men his force and will went ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... Makes cooking pleasurable, easy and delightful. Without previous experience or instruction, by the aid of this magic volume, the busy housewife can quickly learn to make hundreds of savory, appetizing, nourishing dishes, plain ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... days; first, the general hustle—small legs and arms working with concentric swing; then the impatient admonishment of fierce-jabbing spurs; and finally the welt-raising cut of a vicious, unreasoning whip. It was not a pleasurable prospect; and at the first shake-up, Lauzanne pictured it coming. All thoughts of overtaking the horses in front fled from his mind; it was the dreaded punishment that interested him most; figuratively, he humped his ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... overpowering sense of his own attractions. The question was simply should he earnestly set himself to accomplish this end? Without definitely making up his mind on this point, much less committing himself to this object, Samuel allowed himself the pleasurable occupation of trifling with the situation. But alas for Samuel's peace of mind! and alas for his self-esteem! the daily presence of this fascinating maiden in her new Canadian dress and with her new Canadian manners, which appeared ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... of the world. He unostentatiously opened his treasury of relics to all visitors, and his affability spread far and wide. He usually devoted three hours in the morning, from six or seven o'clock, to composition, his customary quota being a sheet daily. He passed the remainder of the day in the pleasurable occupations of a country life—as in superintending the improvements of the mansion, and the planting and disposal of the grounds of Abbotsford; or, as Walpole said of John Evelyn, "unfolding the perfection of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... among birds is their use of song and display of decorative plumage. With them it would seem, even more than among the mammals or with man, sexual desire raises and intensifies all the faculties, and lifts the individual above the normal level of life. The act of singing is a pleasurable one, an expression of superabundant energy and joyous excitement. Thus love-songs, serving first probably as a call of recognition from the male to the female, came to be used as a means of seduction. Every one is familiar ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... a full Corporal, and commenced to receive double pay. Now I felt a hero, and no mistake. All this time I had been a keen observer of both men and manners, and I had really seen all there was to be seen in Edinburgh and neighbourhood. It was, therefore, with pleasurable feelings that I heard that No. 7 Company, to which I belonged, was to be sent to the military garrison at Greenlaw—a bonny little village some ten miles from Edinburgh. I think the scenery in this district ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... upon a time) brachwurst. Such pinlike pink merry eyes as made me think of Kris Kringle himself. Such extraordinarily huge reddish hands as might have grasped six seidels together in the Deutsche Kuechen on 13th street. I gasped with pleasurable relief. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... not only dominated by an immeasurable calm, but is also beyond all expression contented. And in its very stuff there is a complete and changeless joy. This is surely what the great mind meant when it said to the Athenian judges that death must not be dreaded since no experience in life was so pleasurable as a deep sleep; for being wise and seeing the intercommunion of things, he could not mean extinction, which is nonsense, but a lapse into that under-part of which I speak. For there are gods ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... pastoral). From this analysis of "the Nature of the Human Mind," the characteristics of the true pastoral, such as the avoidance of the hardships and vulgarities of rural life, follow logically. Similarly, since a minutely drawn description deprives the reader's fancy of its naturally pleasurable exercise, pastoral descriptions should only set "the Image in the finest Light." Rapin, on the other hand, had determined the proper length of descriptions by examining Virgil and Theocritus. For the association of the pleasure ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... years, swelled his heart as he approached the shores of his native land. But scarcely had he touched his mother earth, when the whole course of his ideas was changed; and if his heart swelled, it swelled no more with pleasurable sensations, for instantly he found himself surrounded and attacked by a swarm of beggars and harpies, with strange figures and stranger tones: some craving his charity, some snatching away his luggage, and at the same time bidding him 'never trouble himself,' and 'never fear.' A scramble in the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... function proper to man as such. That can be none of the functions of the vegetative life, nor of the mere animal life within him. Man is not happy by doing what a rose-bush can do, digest and assimilate its food: nor by doing what a horse does, having sensations pleasurable and painful, and muscular feelings. Man is happy by doing what man alone can do in this world, that is, acting by reason and understanding. Now the human will acting by reason may do three things. It may regulate the passions, notably desire and fear: the outcome will be the moral virtues ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... the properties of this shrub is a wild, dreamy kind of happiness; the ideas are stimulated to a high degree, and all that are most pleasurable are exaggerated till the senses at length sink into a ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... that arises is: "Why does he not divide all feelings into pleasurable and not-pleasurable, rather than into 'painful and not-painful'?" A Westerner will not be at a loss to answer that: "Oh, the Hindu is naturally so very pessimistic, that he naturally ignores pleasure ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... there was formerly; for it is universally diffused.' Ante, April 29,1783. Windham (Diary, p. 17) records 'Johnson's opinion that I could not name above five of my college acquaintances who read Latin with sufficient ease to make it pleasurable.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... most entertaining sprightliness in all he said. Nor was Mrs Merton herself deficient in bestowing marks of admiration upon her son. To see him before, improved in health, in understanding, in virtue, had given her a pleasurable sensation, for she was by no means destitute of good dispositions; but to see him shine with such transcendant brightness, before such excellent judges, and in so polite a company, inspired her with raptures ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... 20, after discussing the question with Wild, I informed all hands that I intended to try and make a march to the west to reduce the distance between us and Paulet Island. A buzz of pleasurable anticipation went round the camp, and every one was anxious to get on the move. So the next day I set off with Wild, Crean, and Hurley, with dog teams, to the westward to survey the route. After travelling about seven miles we mounted a small berg, and ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... more Delight, and leaves a more pleasurable Impression behind it, than WIT, is universally felt and established; Though the Reasons for this have not yet been assign'd.—I shall therefore beg Leave to submit ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... played in society by the pathological liar is very striking. The characteristic behavior in its unreasonableness is quite beyond the ken of the ordinary observer. The fact that here is a type of conduct regularly indulged in without seeming pleasurable results, and frequently militating obviously against the direct interests of the individual, makes a situation inexplicable by the usual canons of inference. To a certain extent the tendencies of each separate case must be viewed in their environmental context to be well understood. For ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy |
