"Seemliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with which to set about ordering and beautifying their churches, by suggesting arrangements on too grand and expensive a scale: on the contrary, he enters with hearty sympathy into all plans for attaining a simple and inexpensive seemliness where more cannot be accomplished. And I think he hits with remarkable felicity the just mean between an undue and excessive regard to the mere externalities of worship, and a puritanical bareness and contempt ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the scurrilous gods—their flinging us upon oblivion with so indecent, so lewd a disregard for every sort of seemliness—is answered in Guy de Maupassant by a ferocious irony almost equal to ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... he leave to wear his sword Beside the strange king's festal board Where feasted many a knight and lord In seemliness of fair accord: And Balen asked of one beside, "Is there not in this court, if fame Keep faith, a knight that hath to name Garlon?" and saying that word of shame, He scanned that place ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... are expected to serve. The object of public worship must ever be kept in view, and no forms, however attractive, are to be admitted by which that object may be hidden or obscured: on the other hand, order and seemliness demand a due attention, and it is an error, only less mischievous than the former, to have regard to the spirit of worship alone, and thus to neglect whatever suitable forms and methods may best secure the orderly and appropriate performance of ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston
... in this panic is just to promote suicide, if ye like the responsibeelity of that," said the doctor to Master Swift, who had confided his doubts as to the seemliness of the entertainment. "I tell ye there's a lairge proportion of folk dies just because their neighbors have died before them, for the want of their attention being directed to something else. Away wi' ye, schoolmaster, and take ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... And bounty, lowliness, and courtesy, And seemliness, and faithful company, And dread of shame that will not do amiss; For he that faithfully Love's servant is, Rather than be disgraced, would chuse to ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... patronise the sun, to revel in the companionship of the sea, to confirm the usage of beaches, to admonish winds to seemliness and secrecy, to approve good-tempered trees, to exchange confidences with flowering plants, to claim the perfumed air, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... country, or so powerful in its influences on national character." But this was written in 1872. Dr. Inge says now, "The English Church represents, on the religious side, the convictions, tastes, and prejudices of the English gentleman, that truly national ideal of character. . . . A love of order, seemliness, and good taste has led the Anglican Church along a middle path between what a seventeenth century divine called 'the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome and the ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... them back again to you. Your field is a world, and all men are your spectators, and all men respect the true and great-hearted service you render. And yet it is not spectator nor spectacle that concerns either you or me. The whole world is sick of that very ail, of being seen, and of seemliness. It belongs to the brave now to trust themselves infinitely, and to sit and hearken alone. I am glad to see William Channing is one of your coadjutors. Mrs. Jameson's new book, I should think, would bring a caravan ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... again she might see it differently. Might she? No. He knew in his heart that she would not. It was probable that Rendel's ambition, his determined purpose, would always be hampered by his old-fashioned, almost quixotic ideas of loyalty, his conception of the seemliness, the dignity of the relations between husband and wife. In a matter that he felt was a question of right or wrong he would probably without hesitation have used his authority and decided inflexibly that ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... The criers were perspiring, the refreshment sellers were walking up and down in front of their tents like greedy beasts of prey. Things had not got into full swing yet, for most of the people were still out and about seeing the sights, or amusing themselves in all seemliness, exerting themselves in trials of strength or slipping in and out of the conjurers' tents. There was not a man unaccompanied by a woman. Many a one came to a stand at the refreshment-tents, but the woman pulled him past; then he would yawn and allow himself to be dragged up into ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... neighbouring village says Mass for the tiny hamlet, where all are very old or very young—for the heyday of life has no part under the long shadow of the hills, but is away at sea or in service. There is a beautiful seemliness in the extreme youth of the priest who serves these aged children of God. He bends to communicate them with the reverent tenderness of a son, and reads with the careful intonation of far-seeing love. To the old people he is the son of their old age, God-sent to guide their tottering ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... glance of his velvety eyes glided over her. She was more keenly conscious of this glance than ever, and dared less than ever to meet it. A strange feeling, half delight and half resentment, overcame her. And yet she had no cause to complain that his attention passed the boundary of rigid seemliness. ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... painting above, affords the figures of the procession a delightful setting. The Syracusan bride leads a lioness, and these are followed by a train of maidens and wild beasts, the last reduced to a pictorial seemliness and decorative calm, very fortunate under the circumstances. The procession is seen approaching the door of the temple, and a statue of Diana serves as a last note in the ideal harmonies of form and colour to which the whole is attuned. As compared with the Cimabue's Madonna, ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... musings he awoke with a shudder, as there came back to him many a memory of lofty pitying words, with which he had gently drawn aside the cloak of seemliness wherein some sinner had sought to wrap his sin. His dream of the perfect joint-life, what was it but a sham tribute to decency, a threadbare garment for the hideousness of naked passion? Had he taught himself ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... incarnate Deity—consequently, the best possible guide, but in no strict sense an example;—while those who regard him as a mere man, the chief of the Jewish Prophets, both in the pulpit and from the press ground their moral persuasions chiefly on arguments drawn from the propriety and seemliness—or the contrary—of the action itself, or from the will of God known by the light of reason? To make St. Paul prophesy that all Christians will owe their holiness to their exclusive and conscious imitation of Christ's actions, is to make St. Paul a false prophet;—and ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and hope, Being itself benign. My drift I fear Is scarcely obvious; but, that common sense May try this modern system by its fruits, 295 Leave let me take to place before her sight A specimen pourtrayed with faithful hand. Full early trained to worship seemliness, This model of a child is never known To mix in quarrels; that were far beneath 300 Its dignity; with gifts he bubbles o'er As generous as a fountain; selfishness May not come near him, nor the little throng Of flitting pleasures tempt him from his path; The wandering beggars propagate ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... essence of which is often social pretentiousness, is different. It ends in a mournful and distracted kind of fatigue, a tired sort of padding along after life, a timid bewilderment at conditions which one cannot alter, and which yet have no dignity or seemliness. ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... out and no more coal in the house. And it had been done to her violently by the brute force of decay, for her structure was unalterably lovely, the bones of her face were little but perfect, the eye lay in an exquisitely-vaulted socket; and everything that could be tended into seemliness was seemly, and the fine line of her plait showed that she brushed her grey hair as if it were still red gold. Age had simply come and passed ugliness over her, like the people in Paris that she had read about in the paper who threw ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... need The embarrassed look of shy distress, And maidenly shamefacedness: Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear The freedom of a mountaineer: A face with gladness overspread! Soft smiles, by human kindness bred! And seemliness complete, that sways Thy courtesies, about thee plays; With no restraint, but such as springs From quick and eager visitings Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach Of thy few words of English speech: A bondage sweetly ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... commercial interest; the panic of property struck by the late revolution; the short-sightedness of the careful; the carelessness of the far-sighted; and all those many and various events which have given to a decorous profession of religion, and a seemliness of private morals, such an unwonted weight in the attainment and preservation of public power. We are unable to determine whether it be more consolatory or humiliating to human nature, that so many complexities of event, situation, character, age, and ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... are many mansions where men may strive worthily and live cleanly lives. All Art is worthy, and can be seriously considered, so long as the intention be good and the efforts to achieve success be conducted with seemliness. And let me here say, that of all the arts none requires greater intention than the art of acting. Throughout it is necessary to do something, and that something cannot fittingly be left to chance, or the unknown inspiration of a moment. I say "unknown," for if known, then ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... feet left the haste that takes the seemliness from every act, my mind, which at first had been restrained, let loose its attention, as though eager, and I turned my face unto the hill that towards the heaven rises highest from the sea. The sun, which ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... in the fifty years that were still in futurity. Extravagance of attire still persisted, though the extravagance had changed its expression. The gigantic hoops in which ladies had delighted had diminished, had dwindled, and gowns were of a slender seemliness. But reformed below, fantasy rioted above. The headdresses of women in the early days of the third George were as monstrous, as horrible, and as shapeless in their way as the hideous hoops had been in theirs. Vast pyramids of false hair were piled on the heads ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy |
