"Robustness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the man beneath the veneer by expertly chipping at his feelings," said Lydia, laughing. "But I was serious, Lucian. Alice is energetic, ambitious, and stubbornly upright in questions of principle. I believe she would assist you steadily at every step of your career. Besides, she has physical robustness. Our student-stock needs an infusion ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... American town. Shakespeare was the teacher who replaced the "school marm," with her dull and formal lessons. Her quick perceptive mind grasped his great and noble thoughts, which gave a vigor and robustness to her mental growth. Since those days she has assimilated rather than acquired knowledge, and there are now few women of her age whose information is more varied, or whose conversation displays greater ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... personal appearance, as it was then and for ten or twelve years subsequent to this, I have the idea of a blooming girl of a florid complexion and vigorous health, with a tendency to robustness, of which she was painfully conscious, and which, with little regard to hygienic principles, she endeavored to suppress or conceal, thereby preparing for herself much future suffering. With no pretensions to beauty then, or at any time, her face was one ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... seems directed to be as expensive as they possibly can, in every useless article of living; who, by long practice, can reconcile the most pernicious foreign drugs to their health and pleasure, provided they are but expensive, as starlings grow fat with henbane; who contract a robustness by mere practice of sloth and luxury; who can play deep several hours after midnight, sleep beyond noon, revel upon Indian poisons, and spend the revenue of a moderate family to adorn a nauseous, unwholesome living carcase? ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... noteworthy, because, so far as the principles of Evangelicalism were concerned, there was no reason why there should not have been many Lady Huntingdons among the Evangelical leaders. That there were not, is, perhaps, owing to the fact that there was a certain robustness of character common to all the chiefs of the party. One can scarcely conceive Venn, or Newton,[834] or Scott, or the Milners being led by women. There is, however, one exception ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... to his people now and what he will be to eternity: the consolations of hope are mine; but for the present, I feel like the sparrow on the house-top, or like a pelican in the wilderness; and when I think on my years and the robustness of my constitution, and that I may have a long journey before me, I am not able to look at it. At the same time, when I consider my children, who, having lost their pastor, who bore them on his heart to the throne of grace, have double need of a mother, ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... may preface them by saying that Louis Roche, a native of Avignon, justified to the close his master's high opinion. He was again engaged for nearly a year in Switzerland, and soon after, poor fellow, though with a jovial robustness of look and breadth of chest that promised unusual length of days, was killed by heart-disease. "The brave C continues to be a prodigy. He puts out my clothes at every inn as if I were going to stay there twelve months; calls me ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... not, however, be assumed that the rural immigrants are in the mass better suited to urban life than the urban natives. It is probable that, notwithstanding their energy and robustness, the immigrants are less suited to urban conditions than the natives. Consequently a process of selection takes place among the immigrants, and the survivors become, as it were, immunized to the poisons of urban life. ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... production, voluntarily chose, as the heroes of his stories, creatures very near to primitive existence, peasants, sailors, poachers, girls of the farm, and the source of the vigor with which he describes these rude figures. The robustness of his animalism permits him fully to imagine all the simple sensations of these beings, while his pessimism, which tinges these sketches of brutal customs with an element of delicate scorn, preserves him from coarseness. It is this ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... seemed to him that there was a certain dryness in the young people's greeting. Miss Van Tuyn was looking lovely, and almost alarmingly youthful and self-possessed, in a white dress. Craven, fresh from his successes at golf, looked full of the open-air spirit and the robustness of the galloping twenties. In appearance the two were splendidly matched. The faint defiance which Braybrooke thought he detected in their eyes suited them both, giving to them just a touch of the arrogance which youth and health render charming, but which ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... by our speed had chilled me bitterly, I noticed Miss West coming along the narrow deck, and could not avoid being struck by the spring and vitality of her walk. Her face, despite its firm moulding, had a suggestion of fragility that was belied by the robustness of her body. At least, one would argue that her body must be robust from her fashion of movement of it, though little could one divine the lines of it under the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... poetic spirit of the times." In addition to this remarkable poetic power, he was a splendidly-trained musician, a great adept in style, and one of the most original masters of rhythm and harmony that the records of music show. All his works, though wanting in breadth and robustness of tone, are characterized by the utmost finish and refinement. Full of delicate and unexpected beauties, elaborated with the finest touch, his effects are so quaint and fresh as to fill the mind of the listener ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... which seemed to cast a sort of aerial bridge over the impassable gulf produced by difference of race. He was below the middle height, and robust and agile in figure. Valentin de Bellegarde, Newman afterwards learned, had a mortal dread of the robustness overtaking the agility; he was afraid of growing stout; he was too short, as he said, to afford a belly. He rode and fenced and practiced gymnastics with unremitting zeal, and if you greeted him with a "How well you are looking" he ...
— The American • Henry James
... certainly the sight was one to amuse a wiser head than a bear's. The standing-place of the paunchy little animal being very green and slippery, and the leg which he so tightly clasped belonging to a fellow creature of no ordinary robustness, the struggle was diversified every few seconds by the fat fellow toppling on to his nose or back, or being dragged behind the heap, and then suddenly reappearing, still holding with passionless determination to that devoted leg, and tumbling ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... contemporary faces and clothes, which give them the air of realistic portraits, are truthful and living, if not remarkably beautiful. Round the sides of the tomb are small images of the apostles. There is a kind of masculine completeness in the work, and a certain robustness of taste. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... a low, short, silent flight: this gives you a concise description of the female, who is strongly equipped for her arduous task. The male, being a mere philanderer, sports a more elegant pair of horns, is more daintily clad and has a more graceful figure, without altogether losing the quality of robustness which ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... borne out by the evidence of his own writings. Impulse with him took the place of conscience. Moral law, accompanied by the sanction of power, and imposed by outside authority, he rejected as a form of tyranny. His nature lacked robustness and ballast. Byron, who was at bottom intensely practical, said that Shelley's philosophy was too spiritual and romantic. Hazlitt, himself a Radical, wrote of Shelley: "He has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Indian of literature—perhaps a little too noble to be entirely true to life—and various simple, strong seamen. His Chingachgook and Uncas and Long Tom Coffin justly brought him added fame. In these narrative gifts, as well as in the robustness of his own character, Cooper was not unlike Sir Walter Scott. He once modestly referred to himself as "a chip from Scott's block" and has frequently been ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... young men come to the use of women, and thus very long preserve the vigour of youth. Neither are the virgins hastened to wed. They must both have the same sprightly youth, the like stature, and marry when equal and able-bodied. Thus the robustness of the parents is inherited by the children. Children are holden in the same estimation with their mother's brother, as with their father. Some hold this tie of blood to be most inviolable and binding, and in receiving of hostages, ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... found his new acquaintance awaiting him. It was long since Laurie Fernald had had a person of his own age to talk with. In fact, he had never before seen a lad whose friendship he desired. Most boys were so well and strong that they had no conception of what it meant not to be so, and their very robustness and vitality overwhelmed a personality as sensitively attuned as was that of Laurie Fernald. He shrank from their pity, their blundering ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... which, I believe, we can show vastly more samples than Great Britain. Indeed, I believe, for the most part, that the brutality of the English people is only the excess and plethora of that healthful, muscular robustness and full-bloodedness for which the nation has always been famous, and which it should prize beyond almost anything else. But for our brutality, our recklessness of life and property, the brazen ruffianism in our great cities, the hellish greed and robbery and plunder in high places, I should ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... art here is, it reveals, not for the last time, the influence of Giorgione with which its beginnings were saturated. The beautiful head of St. John shows the Giorgionesque type and the Giorgionesque feeling at its highest. The Joseph of Arimathea has the robustness and the passion of the Apostles in the Assunta, the crimson coat of Nicodemus, with its high yellowish lights, is such as we meet with in the Bacchanal. The Magdalen, with her features distorted by ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... sagacity and quick-wittedness in the science of horse-flesh, and was eminently expert in the arts of shooting, fishing, and hunting. Nor did he confine himself to these, but added the theory and practice of boxing, cudgel play, and quarter-staff. These exercises added ten-fold robustness and vigour ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... changed immensely in mere physical appearance, and the full brown cheeks, the brighter eyes of absolute health, and the general air of vigour and robustness that had come to replace his customary lassitude and timidity, had worked such an improvement that I hardly knew him for the same man. His voice, too, was deeper and his manner bespoke for the first time a greater measure of confidence in himself. He now ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... dandies of the present day. Apparently the master of the house was himself a man of health and strength, and therefore liked to have his apartments adorned with none but folk of equal vigour and robustness. Lastly, in the window, and suspected cheek by jowl with Bobelina, there hung a cage whence at intervals there peered forth a white-spotted blackbird. Like everything else in the apartment, it bore a strong resemblance to Sobakevitch. When host and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... The nouveau riche, by concealing his origin and trafficking with the College of Heralds, can intercept some of the homage paid to high birth. And (though the rich nobleman who is an invalid can make no tangible gain by pretending to be robust, since robustness is an advantage only from within) the rich, robust nobleman can, by employing a clever private secretary to write public speeches and magazine articles for him, intercept some of the homage which is paid ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... incredible to her, still, that Jerry and she had parted, and it would, she knew, seem so to her mother when she should be told. She sat eating cup-cake delicately, but with an ostentatious relish, to prove the robustness of her state. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... altar-piece? Where in Florentine painting is there anything more fascinating than the playfulness of his children, more poetic than one or two of his landscapes, more charming than is at times his colour? And with all this, health, even robustness, and almost unfailing good-humour! Yet by themselves all these qualities constitute only a high-class illustrator, and such by native endowment I believe Fra Filippo to have been. That he became more—very much more—is due rather to Masaccio's potent influence ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... they were selling. I often saw the Tetchy girls hoeing and weeding, and have no doubt they performed a very large part of that important labor. It was light work, as well as home-work, such as I was extremely anxious to obtain. The wholesome out-door exercise, I was confident, would give robustness to my health,—and, if the summer sun did change me from a blonde into a brunette, the winter intermission would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Training for a boxer)—Ver. 315. "Pugilem." This means "robust as a boxer," or "athlete." These persons were naturally considered as the types of robustness, being dieted for the purpose of increasing their flesh ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... fault in her loveliness before, it was that it remained always equal: the same light seemed always to play over face and hair, the liquid clearness of her eyes was always undimmed, and there was a trifle of over-robustness about the rounded contours of her figure. In spite of all her beauty, it had at times been hard for me to realize that she was a woman to give herself thoroughly to love. I had already had many dreams ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... the defects of their counsel, and had retained Mr. Pinkney, who stood at that time at the head of the bar of the United States. He had all the qualifications of a great lawyer, except perhaps that of robustness. He was keen, strong, and learned; diligent in preparation, he was ready and fluent in action, a good debater, and master of a high order of eloquence. He was a most formidable adversary, and one whom Mr. Webster, then just at the outset of his career, had probably ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... acquainting myself with the inner life of these inchoate millions, which must be well worth knowing. Papa, on arriving at our door, plunged into an altercation with a cab-tout. What a man! And yet sometimes I could find it in my heart to envy his robustness, his buoyancy. A Huntley and Palmer's Nursery Biscuit in a little hot water has somewhat quieted my nerves, which suffered cruelly during the scene. I believe I shall ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... genius in a man will always cover many defects of manner, and much will be excused to the strong and the original. Without genuineness and individuality, human life would lose much of its interest and variety, as well as its manliness and robustness of character. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the robustness and depth that are so clearly in evidence in most of the writings that have been dealt with in this volume, but there is a beauty, a simplicity, a sweetness, a sincerity born of experience, which give this book an unusual flavour and perfume. The writer says that there is "an endless ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... are really better, ideals of passion, of mysticism, of a sense of the youth and adventurousness of the earth; but it will be well for us if we achieve as much by our frenzy as they did by their delicacies. It scarcely seems as if we were as robust in our very robustness as they ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... fishing villages many of which I visited. Everywhere I saw fine strong men and vigorous women; and it struck me that the extraordinary plenty and cheapness of nutritive food had quite as much to do with this robustness as climate and constant exercise. So easy, indeed, is it to live in Oki, that men of other coasts, who find existence difficult, emigrate to Oki if they can get a chance to work there, even at less remuneration. An interesting spectacle to me were the vast processions of fishing-vessels which always, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... only when the law compels you, and observe them closely while there, for health is far more important to them than education. "Infant prodigies" lack the mental staying power and physical robustness which real success demands, though they may do well for a time. Go to your old school: the successes of to-day were dunces twenty years ago; about those whose names are proudly emblazoned in fading gold on Rolls of Honour, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... shopkeeping class, where the parents still gave their children religious lessons at home. Then ladies of refined habits and delicate feelings as mistresses of elementary schools—that was a new idea to him. A certain robustness seemed, perhaps, more desirable; teaching a crowd of imperfectly washed little boys and girls was not fancy-work; also he believed that essential propriety existed to the full as much amongst the ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... now obviously declining towards the grave. A man of vast physique—'your immense', an Irish servant used respectfully to call him—of sanguine temperament, of genial disposition, of versatile capacity, he seemed to have engrafted upon the robustness of his English nature the facile, child-like, and expansive qualities of the South. So far from being a Bishop Blougram (as the rumour went) he was, in fact, the very antithesis of that subtle and worldly-wise ecclesiastic. He had innocently looked forward all his life to the reunion of England ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... left a shadow on the assemblage, for, though faint sounds came through the closed doors, they were somewhat lacking in the robustness of youth. Ray did not deign an effort to remember. More than that, he hoped that it never would come back, for it might be disturbing to his solitudes. Of his attempts to remember the attack on the boy ten years ago, there had never come any result but the recollection of a wholly disconnected ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London |
