"Prettiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slow prettiness to Alma. It came upon you like a little dawn, palely at first and then pinkening to a pleasant consciousness that her small face was heart-shaped and clear as an almond, that the pupils of her gray eyes were deep and dark, like cisterns, and to young Leo Friedlander (rather apt the comparison, ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... threw off his velvet and lace, and designedly let his thoughts turn to Arenta. "She is pretty beyond all prettiness," he said softly as he moved about, "She dances well, talks from hand to mouth, and she gave me one sweet glance; and I think if she has gone so far— she might go further." At this reflection he smiled again, and lifting ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... been less beautiful—if Envy's self could have found aught else to sneer at—he might have felt his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again, and glimmering to-and-fro with every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her heart. But, seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable, with every moment ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... little of his family and less of his native town, but a nostalgia for open spaces and free wanderings had been always with him. He had come to hate the city with its hard walled-in ways and its dirty air, and also the eastern country-side with its little green prettiness surrounded by fences. He longed for a land where one can see for fifty miles, and not a man or a house. He thought that alkaline dust on his lips ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... situations. Lisbeth and Valerie offered the touching spectacle of one of those friendships between women, so cordial and so improbable, that men, always too keen-tongued in Paris, forthwith slander them. The contrast between Lisbeth's dry masculine nature and Valerie's creole prettiness encouraged calumny. And Madame Marneffe had unconsciously given weight to the scandal by the care she took of her friend, with matrimonial views, which were, as will be seen, to ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... than mere prettiness there, but I don't know that I want to keep it now," he said. "It's way behind the original. She has grown in the meanwhile—just as one would expect that girl ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the road. The family took possession of this new home early in June, and it soon took on the habitual look of their domicile, which, wherever it might be, had a character of its own. Mrs. Hawthorne, as usual, was much pleased with everything, and wrote an enthusiastic account of its prettiness and comfort, though no important changes were then made in the house itself. She describes the "Study," and the passage, which is in a letter to her mother, gives the very ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... What had come over him, anyway? He had seen women with violet-blue eyes in more countries than one; beautiful women with every enhancement which breeding and wealth could bestow. It must have been sheer surprise in discovering any attribute of prettiness at all about so uncompromisingly homely a ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... coursed among the water plants which made it ripple. Then, amid a clump of oaks, appeared the big shed sheltering the wheel, and the other buildings garlanded with ivy, honeysuckle, and creepers, the whole forming a spot of romantic prettiness. And at night, especially when the mill slept, without a light at any of its windows, there was nothing of more dreamy, more ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... lovely fairy awaiting him in the old Devonshire rectory. Tall for her age, exquisitely trained, possessing something better than her mother's infantile prettiness. Eyes of so dark a gray that in some lights they were black, and hair of a soft ripe-wheat tint, fine and abundant. But the soul and spirit in her face drew him toward her more than the personal loveliness. She was extremely shy at first, though she had been taught to expect ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... not obeyed the call her eyes always made upon all of them for notice at her entrance, or before she took her seat, were spoken of with haughtiness, as, Jacks, or Toms; wile her favourites, with an affectedly-endearing familiarity, and a prettiness of accent, were Jackeys and Tommys; and if they stood very high in her graces, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... world around the episcopal throne of Chartres, carrying its various aptitudes as if to a perfect triple flower; restless Amadee de l'Autrec, who was to be a soldier, dazzled early into dangerous, rebellious paths by the iron ideal of the soldiers of "the religion," and even now fitting his blond prettiness to airs of Huguenot austerity; Camille Pontdormi, who meant to be a lawyer in an age in which certain legists had asserted an audacity of genius after a manner very captivating to youth with any appetite for predominance over its ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... herself; but the moment that he suggested to her that there might be a quarrel, she was reduced to a prayer that he would not desert her. Such a friendship has charms for a young man, especially if the lady be pretty. As to Lizzie's prettiness, no man or woman could entertain a doubt. And she had a way of making the most of herself, which it was very hard to resist. Some young women, when they clamber over rocks, are awkward, heavy, unattractive, and troublesome. But Lizzie had at one moment touched him as a fairy might ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... decision," said the Head, and sneezed twice. She was really very wretched, and so she was unfair. "She is pretty and sweet. But I cannot run my training school on prettiness and sweetness. Has Doctor ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... those who do not stop in the first stage! It is certain that Mr. Southard's music pleased, and that some of the most critical of the audience were roused to a real enthusiasm. And it is to be borne in mind that the music is cast in a grand mould; it has no prettiness; it is either great in itself, or wears the semblance of greatness. On the whole, we are inclined to think that the "Diarist" in Dwight's "Journal of Music" was not extravagant in saying that no first work since the time of Beethoven ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... dull achievements of his followers. In the better class of books were excellent designs by artists of some repute fairly well engraved. Colouring by hand, in a primitive fashion, was applied to these prints and to impressions from copperplates. A certain prettiness was the highest aim of most of the latter, and very few were designed only to amuse a child. It seems as if all concerned were bent on unbending themselves, careful to offer grains of truth to young minds with an ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... a snob. A pitiful, beautiful little snob!" Joan wafted a kiss. "Your prettiness saves you. If you had a turned-up nose ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... had left a faint flush of prettiness like the afterglow of a sunset faded into twilight. She was of the kind that old age would never wither. In the deep blue eyes was a patient, reflective look that told of a past but unforgotten romance. ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... of a theatre or the panels of a boudoir. The Olympus of Homer and of Virgil, as has been well said, becomes the Olympus of Ovid. Strength, sublimity, even stateliness disappeared, unless we admit some of the first two qualities in the landscapes of Vernet. Not only is beauty replaced by prettiness, but by prettiness in season and out of season. The common incongruity of introducing a spirit of elegance and literature into the simplicities of the true pastoral, was condemned by Diderot as a mixture of Fontenelle with Theocritus. We do not know ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... in the Methodist version of John Wesley Among those few, however, happens to be myself, which arose from the accident of having, when a boy of eleven, received a copy of the "De Imitatione Christi" as a bequest from a relation who died very young, from which cause, and from the external prettiness of the book— being a Glasgow reprint by the celebrated Foulis, and gaily bound—I was induced to look into it, and finally read it many times over, partly out of some sympathy which, even in those days, I had with its simplicity ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... the minister's gate, I was invited in with a whole-heartedness that was altogether charming. The minister's wife, a faded-looking woman who had once possessed a delicate sort of prettiness, was waiting for us on the steps with a fine chubby baby ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... not tell why, Charmian felt that there was a dawning of hope in her sky. Her depression seemed to lift a little. She was conscious of her youth, of her grace and charm, her prettiness, her intelligence. She was able to put a little ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... stockings. She kissed him willingly and studied him with wide-opened hazel-brown eyes. There wasn't another girl in Greenstream, in Virginia, with Hannah's fetching appearance, he decided with a glow of adoration. She had a—a sort of beauty entirely her own; it was not exactly prettiness, but a quality far more disturbing, something a man could ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... intelligence, prettiness, and youth—must have them at any cost! So that's understood. Of course, there are certain questions to be settled, arrangements to be made. For example, I assume responsibility for your losses at bridge, because playing when I wish you to ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... height, as she had fancied them, the personal man might feel his littleness, and the soul triumph in its immensity. So, in her earlier visits, when the compassed splendor Of the actual interior glowed before her eyes, she had profanely called it a great prettiness; a gay piece of cabinet work, on a Titanic scale; ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... resist it! She would never be swayed by gold,—but power! Her genius would rise to it—her beauty would grow to it like a rose unfolding in the sun! 'Past youth, and without beauty' as she says of herself! My God! Compare the tame pink- and-white prettiness of youth with the face of Lotys,—and that prettiness becomes like a cheap advertisement on a hoarding or a match- box! Contrast the perfect features, eyes and hair of the newest social 'beauty,'—with the magical expression, the glamour in the eyes of Lotys,—and perfection of feature ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... a smoke-begrimed sparrow on the sill with eyes at once vacant and tender. She was slighter and smaller than her sister, of different complexion, with soft, grey eyes and a broad, humorous mouth. Her whole expression was kindly. She had a delicate prettiness of colouring, and a vivacity which seemed to place her amongst a different order of beings. Never were sisters more like and unlike ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... never been so even in youth; and age had told its tale upon those large, strong features—"thoroughly Scotch features," they would have been called by those who think all Scotchwomen are necessarily big, raw-boned, and ugly; and have never seen that wonderfully noble beauty—not prettiness, but actual beauty in its highest physical as well as spiritual development—which is not seldom ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... ant-heap, with full granaries and long hours of leisure. But even then I think the whip will be in the overseer's hands, and not in vain. For, when it comes to be a question of each man doing his own share or the rest doing more, prettiness of sentiment will be forgotten. To dock the skulker's food is not enough; many will rather eat haws and starve on petty pilferings than put their shoulder to the wheel for one hour daily. For such as these, then, the whip will be in the overseer's hand; ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the body, so of the heart. The springs of feeling in him showed no signs of drying up. On the contrary, they threatened to gush forth in a new flood over the Widow Brown, on whose plump prettiness, hardly dimmed by her three-score years, he looked with appreciative and ardent eyes. Indeed, his conduct justified the womenfolk of his household in apprehensions, for witness to the seriousness of the affair was afforded the ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... from the other side—at least so I conjectured, and with reason. A look decided it. They were clad in pronouncedly cool costumes, dresses that would make a full ball toilet in Canada, but which exposed much prettiness to the ruthless action of the sun and wind on this hot midsummer afternoon. They were using their lips and tongues in a violent manner, accompanying commonplace remarks with the most exaggerated varieties of facial expressions I ever saw. But they ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... maitresse," thought the Frenchman, seeing her roll herself about so softly and coquettishly. She licked off the blood which stained her paws and muzzle, and scratched her head with reiterated gestures full of prettiness. "All right, make a little toilet," the Frenchman said to himself, beginning to recover his gaiety with his courage; "we'll say good morning to each other presently;" and he seized the small, short dagger which he had taken from ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac
... finely pencilled were his eyebrows. He was growing up fast, and his teeth were a little decayed and blackened,[100] which gave a peculiar beauty to his smile, and the prettiness of his appearance only served to increase her regret; and with a profound pensiveness ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... ancient or modern, whom the consent of ages has marked out as classics: typical, immortal, peculiar teachers of our race? Alas! the Paradise Lost is lost again to us beneath an inundation of graceful academic verse, sugary stanzas of ladylike prettiness, and ceaseless explanations in more or less readable prose of what John Milton meant or did not mean, or what he saw or did not see, who married his great-aunt, and why Adam or Satan is like that, or unlike the other. We read a perfect library about the Paradise Lost, but the Paradise Lost ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Estate, a little chearful House, a little Company, and a very little Feast, and if I were ever to fall in Love again, (which is a great Passion, and therefore, I hope, I have done with it,) it would be, I think, with Prettiness, rather than with Majestical Beauty. I would neither wish that my Mistress, nor my Fortune, should be a Bona Roba, as Homer uses to describe his Beauties, like a daughter of great Jupiter for the stateliness and largeness of her Person, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... off by rail to see it. If true talent, engaged it. Pounds a week for talent—four pound—five pound. Banjo Bones was undoubted talent. Hear this instrument that was going to play—it was real talent! In truth it was very good; a kind of piano-accordion, played by a young girl of a delicate prettiness of face, figure, and dress, that made the audience look coarser. She sang to the instrument, too; first, a song about village bells, and how they chimed; then a song about how I went to sea; winding up with an imitation of the bagpipes, which Mercantile ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... picturesque, and a visit to it was not unpleasant. But unfortunately the ground was in its nature soft and deep, composed of red clay; and as the frost went and the wet weather came, mud became omnipotent and destroyed all prettiness. And I found that the cold weather, let it be ever so cold, was not severe upon the men. It was wet which they feared and had cause to fear, both for themselves and for their horses. As to the horses, but few of them ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... comfortable, fat lady, who loved the state of peace she had been born in, had married into, and had never lost. Aggie was her eldest daughter, and she was a little vexed to think that she might have married five years ago if she hadn't been so particular. Meanwhile, what with her prettiness and her superiority, she was spoiling her younger sisters' chances. None of her rejected suitors had ever turned to Kate or Susie or Eliza. They were well enough, poor girls, but as long as Aggie was there they couldn't help looking plain. ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... sunbeam, don't force me to see it! Let me go back and try to be better before I see my likeness. I am afraid now. The outside prettiness is n't anything, unless one's spirit is lovely too; and I—I could not look, for I know—I know how hateful mine would be. I have learned about it now, and it's like a book; if the story the book tells is not beautiful, the pictures won't be good ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... his chair he studied her. Her eyes were dreamy—the rose-red was still in her cheeks. For the first time he realized the prettiness of Emily; it was as if in her plea for others she had brought to life something in ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... down in the chair with as good a grace as she could muster, and arranged her big picture hat so that the spring sun should not draw Sir Jonathan's attention to the methods she employed to combat the rapidity with which what remained of her prettiness, prematurely faded by the ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... those men who feel that within them there is an inexhaustible wealth of tenderness and consoling pity for a creature so gracious in weakness, so strong with love? It is the ordinary nature that is attracted by young, smooth, pink-and-white beauty, or, in one word, by prettiness. In some faces love awakens amid the wrinkles carved by sorrow and the ruin made by melancholy; Montriveau could not but feel drawn to these. For cannot a lover, with the voice of a great longing, call forth a wholly new ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... our habiliments on pegs, giving Elise's a little womanly caress for their prettiness. She brought in exchange a costume which made us helpless from laughter, until we were painfully sobered by the thought of the spectators outside. A pair of white duck trousers that might have been made of pasteboard, so stiff were they and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... she's got to believe in you again, and in the deep purpose you stand for. But before you can do that, you've got to stand for some deep purpose. It's no good faking one up. You won't take a woman in, not really. Even when she chooses to be taken in, for prettiness' sake, it won't ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... the scenery have pleased Cobbett better if it had been "wild or bold"? Probably not, since he calls Hindhead "the most villainously ugly spot on God's Earth." Cobbett liked smiling pastures and well grown crops. His prettiness is good timber ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... who appears to have been a somewhat Dobbin-like individual, proved an affectionate husband and step-father. The little girl's prettiness and precocity appealed to him strongly. He could not do enough for her; and he spoiled her by refusing to check her wayward disposition and encouraging her mischievous pranks. It was not a good upbringing; and, as dress and "society" filled ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... ill-connected, and interminable word, which seemed to fill the mouth with a mixture of very stiff clay and very crumbly pebbles. Zenobia suggested "Sunny Glimpse," as expressive of a vista into a better system of society. This we turned over and over for a while, acknowledging its prettiness, but concluded it to be rather too fine and sentimental a name (a fault inevitable by literary ladies in such attempts) for sunburnt men to work under. I ventured to whisper "Utopia," which, however, was unanimously scouted ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... about thirty years of age, dressed poorly, in old garments, but still with decency, and with some attempt at feminine prettiness. There were flowers in the bonnet on her head, though the bonnet had that unmistakable look of age which is quite as distressing to bonnets as it is to women, and the flowers themselves were battered and faded. She had long black ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... not the only one who looks nice," said Connie, who, in spite of her prettiness, was ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... she stood, half in shadow, half in moonlight, I could not help but be conscious of her loveliness. She was no pretty woman; beneath the high beauty of her face lay a dormant power that is ever at odds with prettiness, and before which I felt vaguely at a loss. And yet, because of her warm beauty, because of the elusive witchery of her eyes, the soft, sweet column of the neck and the sway of the figure in the moonlight—because ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... prodigious reception to which people "looked in" for half an hour, and where on one occasion he found Elinor alone, with that curious dignity about her, a little tragical, which comes of neglect. He agreed with her mother, that he had never imagined Elinor's youthful prettiness could have come to anything so near beauty. There was a strained, wide open look in her eyes, which was half done by looking out for some one, and half by defying any one to think that she felt herself alone, or was pursuing that search ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... thus erected between them, Philip Oswald could not but admire the rare loveliness into which Mary Grayson's girlish prettiness had expanded, and again, and yet again, while she was speaking to his mother, and could not therefore perceive him, he turned to gaze on her, fascinated not by the finely turned form or beautiful features, but by the countenance beaming with gentle ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... impression of a delicate prettiness, a superior sort of prettiness, like that of the daughter of the Big White House on the Hill, the Squire's house, at Parthenon; though Nelly was not unusually pretty. Indeed, her mouth was too large, her hair of somewhat ordinary brown. But her face was always changing with emotions ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... has been to Norway, or to Brittany, or to Wales, or to Algeria, and has come back with sixty-five sketches, which are now on view, let us say, at Messrs. Dowdeswell's Galleries, in New Bond Street, the home of all such exhibitions. The painter has been impressed by the savagery of fiords, by the prettiness of blouses and sabots, by the blue mountain in the distance and the purple mountain in the foreground, by the narrow shade of the street, and the solemnity of a burnous or the grace of a haik floating in the wind. The painter ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... bit, Mrs. Dennison. I dare say I am getting to be rather violent and careless in my way of talking. It's a reaction from the vagueness and prettiness of speech I used to hear down in Silvertree, where they begin their remarks with an 'I'm not sure, but I think,' et cetera. But, really, you must overlook my vehemence. If I could spend my time with sweet souls like you, I'd be a different sort ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... toy or doll, {286} so it is not so applicable as the Portuguese name, for the native image is not a doll or toy, and has far more affinity to the image of a saint, inasmuch as it is not venerated for itself, or treasured because of its prettiness, but only because it is the residence, or the occasional haunt, of ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... 1880 my father left London, and went to live at Harting, a village in Sussex, but on the confines of Hampshire. I think he chose that spot because he found there a house that suited him, and because of the prettiness of the neighborhood. His last long journey was a trip to Italy in the late winter and spring of 1881; but he went to Ireland twice in 1882. He went there in May of that year, and was then absent nearly a month. This journey did him much ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... disfigurement which Evangelina had fitted to her back prior to their departure from the Pan de Matanzas. She stood before him now, straight and slim and graceful—the Rosa of his dreams, only very thin, very fragile. Her poor tatters only enhanced her prettiness, so he thought. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... capitalist, and turned into the business premises of his large farm. Of the original monastery, founded in 1140, hardly a trace remains. Abutting on the outer wall is the chapel, and before it a small enclosed flower-garden full of wallflowers and flowering shrubs, a bit of prettiness welcome to the eye. Just beyond, too, was an old-fashioned, irregularly planted orchard, with young cattle grazing under the bloom-laden trees, the turf dazzlingly bright, but less so than the young corn and rye, now ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... her malice. An occasional deed of alms, done not for charity's sake, but for ostentation; an adroit deal of cards, or a horoscope cast to flatter a foolish girl; a word of sympathy, hollow as a water bubble, but colored with iridescent prettiness, averted suspicion from the darker traits of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was not decked out with all the prettiness Claudia, with a remembrance of other days, had looked for. Babette seemed to make the floor her waste-paper basket; and there was a shocking contempt for appearance in the way books and papers littered chairs and tables. Nor did Babette talk ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... ideal of art might again be "reformed" in the direction of restriction from the uncomely, the forced and the sensational, and in favor of the beautiful, the becoming and the divine. Nevertheless, it is the inevitable consequence of a prescription of this kind to run into mere prettiness and tuneful emptiness. Protection is a failure in art. The spirit must have freedom, or it will never take its grandest flights. And it is altogether possible that the needed corrective will presently be discovered of itself, through the progress of spirit into a clearer vision, a ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... cried out at the prettiness of it, and Emmeline ran and dabbled her hands in the water. Just above the little waterfall sprang a banana tree laden with fruit; it had immense leaves six feet long and more, and broad as a dinner-table. One could see the golden glint of the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Peggy in part dissipated by her scientific discovery, vanished completely when Peggy removed the rain-coat and the heavy veil which had obscured her charms. Peggy's make-up was very successful in effacing every suggestion of youth and girlish prettiness. Artistically designed wrinkles made her look seventy-five at the least computation, and suggested in addition, a quarrelsome disposition. Rosetta Muriel took one look, ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... aesthetic emotion by the hostile criticism of a neighbour or the superciliousness of an expert: "Dreadfully old-fashioned," "Archi-connu,""second-rate school work," "completely painted over," "utterly hashed in the performance" (of a piece of music), "mere prettiness"—etc. etc. How often has not a sentence like these turned the tide of honest incipient enjoyment; and transformed us, from enjoyers of some really enjoyable quality (even of such old-as-the-hills elements as clearness, symmetry, euphony or pleasant colour!) into shrivelled ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... down into one of the great chairs beside her. As Travers Gladwin's features passed through a series of vacant and bewildered expressions and as the attention of Whitney Barnes seemed to be focussed with strange intensity upon the prettiness of the shy and silent Sadie, anger flashed in Helen's expressive eyes as she again addressed the young man, who felt as if some mysterious force had just ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... traveller that which our country generally lacks, and which is so largely the attraction of Italy and Spain. Instead of adapting and modifying the houses and homes that the climate suggests, the new American comers have brought here from the East the smartness and prettiness of our modern nondescript architecture. The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, or patio, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the scent of flowers, is the sort of dwelling that would suit the climate and ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... this morning," replied Mrs. Ford, her eyes approving the fair prettiness of her daughter. "Are you going out? I thought you were deep in that ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... difficulty overcome and science well displayed can take the place of what is, after all, the one excuse and breath of art—charm. A little further, and he will regard charm in the light of an unworthy sacrifice to prettiness, and the omission of a tedious passage ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was admirable: nothing could exceed in beauty the lines of her cheeks or the shape and softness of her chin. Those who were fastidious in their requirements might object to them that they bore no dimple; but after all, it is only prettiness that requires a dimple: full-blown beauty wants no ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... model. How I detest models, particularly the Maggie kind! Now I know exactly what will happen. She'll go to Glendower with father and Basil, and won't she gush just! I know how she'll pet Lilias Russell, and how she'll paw her. And Lilias is just that weak sort of girl with all her grace and prettiness, to be taken in by that sort of thing. Lilias fancies that she has taken quite a liking for Maggie—as if she could make a friend of her! Why, Maggie's a baby, and a very ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... full of rectitude and good works—which of themselves so often fail of attraction—Miss Althea was possessed of a face so charming even in its slightly faded prettiness that one wondered how it was possible that she could successfully have withstood the suitors who must have crowded about her. Her house on Fifth Avenue was full of old engravings of American patriots, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... the Walls employs the same building methods as Eumenes Amedei: in the courses of cement she fixes, on the outside, small stones of minor bulk. Her work begins by being a turret of rustic art, not without a certain prettiness; then, when the cells are placed side by side, the whole construction degenerates into a lump governed apparently by no architectural rule. Moreover, the Mason-bee covers her mass of cells with a thick layer of cement, which conceals ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Brown was sitting on the fur rugs, not very far from Trenholme. She looked up at him, pretty herself in the prettiness of genuine admiration. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... pleasant one to see, shapely almost to prettiness, but growing thin and sharp-featured; though bright, smiling eyes made her appear more youthful than her years. Her hair, smoothed back from her forehead, was streaked with grey, and harmonized perfectly with the purity ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... Fairfax himself, who, upon the whole, and with regard to a work of any length, is the best metrical translator our language has seen, and, like Chapman, a genuine poet, strangely aggravated the sins of prettiness and conceit in his original, and added to them a love of tautology amounting to that of a lawyer. As to Hoole, he is below criticism; and other versions I have not happened to see. Now if I had no acquaintance with the Italian language, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... in denying the prettiness of his language," said Clara. As she spoke she hardly moved her lips, and Dalrymple went on painting from the model. It was clear that Miss Van Siever understood that the painting, and not the pretty speeches, was the important business ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... and the Woman Sewing. But that expression was of paramount interest to him we see clearly in the Angelus and the Man with the Hoe. The leading characteristic of his art is strength, and he distrusted the ordinary elements of prettiness as taking something from the total effect he wished to produce. "Let no one think that they can force me to prettify my types," he said. "I would rather do nothing than express ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... It would be infinitely more becoming to her than to Miss Brooke or Mrs. Ralph, though either of them would have worn it with spirit. She could not help feeling that both Mrs. Ralph's brilliancy and Miss Brooke's insouciant prettiness were not unworthy of being counted in the running, but Lady Agatha seemed somehow so much more completely the thing wanted. She was anxious that she should always look her best, and when she knew that disturbing letters were fretting her, and saw that they made her ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... breadth of light and shade, and a Correggio in its delicacy of sentiment and refined beauty of coloring. He was not often so fortunate in his Parmese efforts. They are usually marked by a timidity and an attempt at prettiness inconceivable in the haughty and impulsive master of the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... fortunately quite momentary,—such impulses are not uncommon"—and here, as he unravelled, to his own satisfaction, the tangled web of his impressions, his brow cleared, and he smiled gravely,—"I was, I say, moved by an insane desire to draw that dainty small bundle of frippery and prettiness into my arms—yes,—it was so, and why should I not confess it to myself? Why should I be ashamed? Other men have felt the same, though perhaps they do not count so many years of life as I do. At any rate with me the feeling ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... the dogcart in the station yard. Colin was changed. He was no longer the excited child who came rushing to you. He stood for you to come to him, serious and shy. His child's face was passing from prettiness to a fine, ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... set out, from hat to boot in the most approved Oxford bandbox-cut of trimness and prettiness. Sheffield was turning into the High Street, when Reding stopped him: "It always annoys me," he said, "to go down High Street in a beaver; one is sure to ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Tractarianism to Latitudinarianism, and from Agnosticism to Ultramontanism, gave a peculiar piquancy to his utterances on religion. He deserves remembrance on two quite different scores—one, that he was the first publisher to study prettiness in the production of even cheap books; and the other, that he was an early and enthusiastic worker in the cause of National Temperance. It was my privilege to be often with him in the suffering and blindness ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... far removed from her family and her companions and her familiar haunts, and driven or drawn into exile at Brighton, where she would only see the sea once a week, except through windows, and where she would have to work from fourteen to sixteen hours a day for a living, and sleep in a kennel. The prettiness, the pertness, and the naive contentedness of the child thus realizing an ambition ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of form and to seek after sublimity, without departing from the path of conscientious labour, in an age preoccupied on the one hand with technicality and naturalism, on the other with decorative prettiness and pietism. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... bluejackets; but not before we had caught a glimpse at a rather pleasing face, with small, straight nose, rosy lips, splendid teeth, the blackest of eyes, and the brownest of skin. The veils, which serve to hide their prettiness, are real works of art, composed of gold and silver coins, beads and shells, tastefully and geometrically arranged on a groundwork of black lace. After repeated hand kissing from our amorous tars—an action whose significance is apparently lost on these damsels—we bid good bye to the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... is very pretty; but remember, she is quite a rustic and unformed beauty—and I almost doubt whether she can read or spell properly. She is modest and good, I grant, and I never heard one syllable against her. Ronald, let me appeal to your better judgment—are a moderate amount of rustic prettiness and shy modesty sufficient qualifications for your wife, who will have ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... tables absolute fixtures on account of the weighty legs upon which they were built. In short, the careful and cultivated decorator finds it as imperative to guard against exaggerated simplicity as unsupported prettiness. ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... herself to remote, impersonal dreams. It was just as she entered Berkeley Square that she met Mrs. Mallison, that aunt of Gerald's who had struck her, some weeks ago, as so disconcerting, with her skilfully preserved prettiness and her ethical and metaphysical aspirations. This lady, furred to her ears, was taking out two small black pomeranians for an airing. She wore long pearl ear-rings, and her narrow, melancholy face was delicately rouged and powdered. Althea's ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... and very soft. To-day, without leaving the beautiful region to which we came on September 20th, we have returned to the woods. I like that less than the wide open view, but there is prettiness here too. And then the sky, now that the leaves have fallen, is ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... her father's arms, and lay on the sofa smiling; the firelight dancing on her small white face—white and unscarred. The disease had been kind to the blind child; she was, I think, more sweet-looking than ever. Older, perhaps; the round prettiness of childhood gone—but her whole appearance wore that inexpressible expression, in which, for want of a suitable word, we all embody our vague notions of the unknown ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... an architect, "is an immovable faith that the first duty of a human apartment is to look as high as possible. A cathedral, or the rotunda of the Capitol, must have height to produce an overpowering effect. But in an ordinary room of ordinary size, comfort, convenience and prettiness are more to be sought after ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... that she had given her beauty missed his eyes, the delicate artificial lights in her hair, her eyebrows drawn to a hair's breadth and carefully arched, the touch of rouge under her eyes and on the lobes of her ears. But she was beautiful, no matter what art had augmented her real prettiness. She was a charming, finished product, from her veil and hat to her narrowly shod feet. He liked finished things, well done. He liked the glaze on a porcelain; he liked the perfect lacquering on the ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... because I am well informed, that a certain gay lady was pleased to give herself airs upon learning of my sister's illness, as, That she would not be sorry for it; for now she should look upon herself as the prettiest woman in England.—She meant only, I suppose, as to outward prettiness, brother! ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... thrive. Saint Lateerin, a virgin of early Christian days, near here made her recluse, and every day she walked across the bog, and took "living fire" in her kirtle from the forge to her home. The smith once remarking the prettiness of her white feet, she momentarily forgot her vow of chastity, and the fire burnt through the homespun and blistered her feet. She went back to her cell, and prayed that no smith should ever thrive in Cullen, and none has ever ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... expressive mouth,—a man whom you would probably observe in whatever room you might meet him. And he knew how to talk, and had in him something which justified talking. He was no butterfly or dandy, who flew about in the world's sun, warmed into prettiness by a sunbeam. Crosbie had his opinion on things,—on politics, on religion, on the philanthropic tendencies of the age, and had read something here and there as he formed his opinion. Perhaps he might have done better in the world had he not been placed so early ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... had been by the book which she was reading, was almost startled by the gentle and rather wistful beauty of the face which she now showed to him. He had been prepared at the best for a fresh edition of the mother's worn and feverish prettiness. What he saw was distinct in quality. It seemed to him that an actual sympathy and friendliness looked out from her dark and quiet eyes, as though by instinct she understood with what an eager exultation he set out upon his holiday. Sylvia, indeed, ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... Esther, in a conventional prettiness, but no such beguilement as she had wafted through the telephone. "It's been so ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... These words represent only the primary colors of the moral spectrum. Each one is broken up into any number of secondary colors. Thus the Good ranges all the way from the good to eat to the good to sacrifice one's self for; the Beautiful ascends from the most trifling prettiness to the height of the spiritually sublime; while the True takes in all manner of verities, great and small. In comparing notes with my Philosopher I am chagrined at my own color-blindness. He recognizes so many superlative excellences to ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... have my moods sometimes, though I can hide them better than he can; and this morning I was in the wrong key for the idyllic peace and prim prettiness of Broek-in-Waterland. I should have liked better to be out on a meer in Friesland, in a stiff breeze; but since it had to be Broek, I made ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... toward them. Strutted would perhaps be the better word, since she stepped like a person for whom stepping means a calculation. She was about Letty's height, and about Letty's figure. Moreover, she was pretty, with that haughtiness of mien which turns prettiness to beauty. What was most disconcerting was her coming straight toward Letty, and standing in front of ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... neither piquant prettiness nor grave handsomeness, her soft littleness made people call her "Puss," and want to cuddle her as a child cuddles a kitten. If you noted Una at all, when you met her, you first noted her gentle face, her fine-textured hair of ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... nimble, and in no way mischievous. It delighted to be caressed by all persons who came into the house. It used to sleep in the hammock of its owner, or nestle in his bosom half the day as he lay reading. From the cleanliness of its habits, and the prettiness of its features and ways, it was a great favourite with every one. He himself had a similar pet, which was kept in a box, in which was placed a broad-mouthed glass jar. Into this it would dive when any one entered the room, and, turning round, thrust forth its inquisitive face to stare at the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... the unusual combination of prettiness and simplicity, for, in his experience, good looks without vanity were something unique. Possibly he was sceptical, for a smile of satire lurked at the back of his inscrutable eyes. At any rate, ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... and Predikants should have pretty wives, or they tend to waste themselves. A man with real work and money matters and the governing of cattle and land and Kafirs to fill his day, for such a one it is very well. Her prettiness is an interval, like the drink he takes in the noonday. But for an idle man it becomes the air he breathes. He is all-dependent on it, and it is a small and ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... first time he would see her at her best; might not her prettiness—bah! the thought disgusted her! That she, a typical, housewifely, modest New England woman should be calculating on her beauty to draw money from a man's pocket, even though that man were her husband, seemed to her immoral. She would plainly and directly ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... like these veg'table people," said the little girl. "They're cold and flabby, like cabbages, in spite of their prettiness." ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... all that was nobly, purely, and wisely lovely; but the Greeks also believed in powers of ill, and there was a goddess of beauty, called Venus (Aphrodite). Such beauty was hers as is the mere prettiness and charm of pleasure—nothing high or fine. She was said to have risen out of the sea, as the sunshine touched the waves, with her golden hair dripping with the spray; and her favourite home was in myrtle ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but the delicate beauty of one was under a cloud which only a connoisseur's eye could see through—badly-cut garments and an unfashionable hat! On the other hand, Lady Diana's highly-coloured and slightly dairymaidish prettiness would have been more attractive in simpler and less costly clothes. While they were coming to these conclusions about each other an inspector of tickets entered the carriage. Diana delightedly braced herself for a row, but there was no need for it. Whether it was the charm of the strange girl's golden ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... have felt for her only the appetite inspired by the freshness of her youth, experiencing nothing which resembled love. Other women dominated him then with the seduction of their artifices and refinements, but here, in his loneliness, seeing Margalida surrounded by the brown and rural prettiness of her companions, beautiful as one of those white goddesses which inspire religious veneration among peoples of coppery skin, he felt the dementia of desire, and all his acts were absurd, as if he had completely lost ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... learned by Marguerite of Navarre. Of his contemporaries, who were also disciples, the most distinguished was MELIN DE SAINT-GELAIS, and on the master's death Melin passed for an eminent poet. We can regard him now more justly, as one who in slender work sought for elegance, and fell into a mannered prettiness. While preserving something of the French spirit, he suffered from the frigid ingenuities which an imitation of Italian models suggested to him; but it cannot be forgotten that Saint-Gelais brought the sonnet from Italy into French ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... as a blue-eyed baby, too young to understand that its parents had just been drowned in the Nile. As brother and sister they grew up together until college separated the two. After four years Pauline's dainty prettiness struck Harry with a distinct shock, the delightful sort of shock known as love at first sight. It was really Harry's first sight of her as a woman. Every sense and instinct in him shouted, "Get that girl," and nothing ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... the beginning of the seventeenth century. From these every trace of the mystical and solemn conception of antiquity gradually disappeared; till, for the majestic ideal of womanhood, we have merely inane prettiness, or rustic, or even meretricious grace, the borrowed charms ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... to be of the best but he cares less for color than the Thoracic. Quality rather than style and plainness rather than prettiness are his ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... a coarse prettiness, laughed a mocking strident laugh that expressed the feelings of the crowd even more than the louder curses around her. The workers slowly dispersed, in little groups, talking in excited, angry tones. Dale Lynch detached himself from one of these groups and walked on alone, a frown ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... had lost her pink-and-white prettiness. Her face was pale, and she was thinner than before, while there was a hard, defiant look in her eyes. Besides, she seemed ill at ease and startled when I drew out a chair for her, and I too was singularly ill at ease. We had the long room to ourselves, however, for on the ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... struggle between luxury and starvation is written on filmy laces; you may picture the countenance of a queen under a plumed turban placed in an attitude that recalls and almost reproduces the absent features. It is all hideous amid prettiness! Juvenal's lash, in the hands of the appraiser, scatters the shabby muffs, the ragged ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac |
