"Seraphical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attractions. Christianity added very little to Art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their Saints and Madonnas the seraphic sentiments of Christian love and angelic purity. Art even declined in the Roman world from the second century after Christ, in spite of all the efforts of Christian emperors. In fact neither Christianity nor Paganism creates it; it seems to be independent of both, and arises from the peculiar ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... were unanimous—that, if sometimes there is a little treachery of this kind amongst the profession, it is no more than would be pronounced 'in reason' by all candid men. And certainly, said one of the three, you wouldn't look for perfection in a tinker? Undoubtedly a seraphic tinker would be an unreasonable postulate; though, perhaps, the man in all England that came nearest to the seraphic character in one century was a tinker—namely, John Bunyan. But, as my triad of tinkers urged, men of all professions do cheat at uncertain times, are traitors in a small ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... hear in heav'n's blest bow'rs your Nancy fair, And learn to imitate her language there. "Thou, Lord, whom I behold with glory crown'd, "By what sweet name, and in what tuneful sound "Wilt thou be prais'd? Seraphic pow'rs are faint "Infinite love and majesty to paint. "To thee let all their graceful voices raise, "And saints and angels join their songs of praise." Perfect in bliss she from her heav'nly home Looks down, ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... daughter sat in the high chair which Katherine Herne had given her, and looked upon the tiny, decorated tree with eyes of rapture, deep, dark-blue eyes in which a seraphic light shone. Her life was beginning far, very far, from the bleak prairie lands in which her Daddy's winter holidays had been spent, and while the silver spoon in her mouth was not of my giving, the one with which she bruised her chair-arm, was ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... looked so very large because it shone so much; and the long grey hair at its sides and back, like floss silk or spun glass, which looked so very benevolent because it was never cut; were not, of course, to be seen in the boy as in the old man. Nevertheless, in the Seraphic creature with the haymaking rake, were clearly to be discerned the rudiments of the Patriarch with the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... In yonder heaven deep the stars are lit For evening service of seraphic quires— Eternal pomp of serried, blazing worlds, The heraldry of God, ere yet Time was. The moon hangs low, her golden orb impearl'd In a sweet iris of delicious light, That leaves the eye in doubt, as swelling die Round trills of music on the raptur'd ear, Where it doth fade in blue, or softly ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... frequent chairman was Ryland, who was soon to train missionaries for the work at Bristol College. The treasurer was the only rich man of the twelve, who soon resigned his office into a layman's hands, as was right. Of the others we need now point only to Samuel Pearce, the seraphic preacher of Birmingham, who went home and sent L70 to the collection, and who, since he desired to give himself like Carey, became to him dearer than even Fuller was. The place was a low-roofed parlour ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... word, in this sense, in the poem 'At a Solemn Music,' where the 'saintly shout' of the seraphic choir, with 'loud uplifted angel-trumpets,' 'immortal harps of golden wires,' and the singing of psalms and hymns, are collectively called 'that melodious noise.' Also in his Hymn on the Nativity, verse ix., he has ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... was definitive. Law or gospel, physics or metaphysics; himself alone superior to college, court, or convocation. Before him sunk scholiast and schools. In his presence the doctors all must stand uncapped: the seraphic, the subtle, and the singular; the illuminated, the angelic, and the irrefragable to him, were tyros all. Our censor in private, and in public our familiar: like a malignant demon, no respect, no place, no human barriers could exclude him. On no side could the offended eye turn, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Well, he has painted Robert, and it is an admirable likeness.[32] The expression is an exceptional expression, but highly characteristic; it is one of Fisher's best works. Now he is about our Wiedeman, and if he succeeds as well in painting angels as men, will do something beautiful with that seraphic face. You are to understand that these works are done by the artist for the artist. Oh, we couldn't afford to have such a luxury as a portrait done for us. But I am pleased to have a good likeness of each of my treasures extant in the possession of somebody. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... quick!" and as a seraphic smile overspread her face, she added, "Leave me alone till he comes, Lizzie, but be quick. I would see him now, now; all is light, light, light! Joy, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... me quite, Steals my senses, shuts my sight, Drowns my spirit, draws my breath? Tell me, my soul, can this be death? The world recedes, it disappears: Heaven opens on my eyes, my ears With sounds seraphic ring: Lend, lend your wings: I mount, I fly; O grave, where is thy victory! O death, where ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... a child between nine and ten years of age spending long hours on her knees before the tabernacle, her little hands devoutly joined, her soul absorbed as if in ecstasy, and her very countenance wearing a seraphic expression. She spoke of her childish wants, with simple confidence to our Lord and His Blessed Mother, and every day she asked that dear Mother that she might see her at least before death. From constant association with Him who is the joy of the angels, and ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... marked as his piety. There is a charm about his name and the story of his life, that is not likely soon to pass away. He belonged to a class of men who seem to be chosen of Heaven to illustrate the sublime possibilities of Christian attainment—men of seraphic fervor of devotion, and whose one overmastering passion is to win souls for Christ and to become wholly like Him themselves. Into this goodly fellowship he was early initiated. There is something startling in the depth and intensity of his religious emotions, as recorded in his ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... "Sonnet" (of twenty-three lines) which appeared in the issue following Miss Carewe's debut. Mr. Chenoweth wrote that while dancing the mazourka with a Lovely Being, the sweetest feelings of his soul, in a celestial stream, bore him away beyond control, in a seraphic dream; and he untruthfully stated that at the same time he saw her wipe the silent tear, omitting, however, to venture any explanation of the cause of her emotion. Old General Trumble boldly signed his poem in full. It was called "An ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... Father reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high; Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... lest thinking the lovely lights, and lovely sounds and lovely movements are only terms descriptive of physical, though impalpable phenomena, we lose the deep and beautiful symbolism that is the magic secret of the seraphic poesy of the Paradiso. Of the brilliancy and movement of the spirits of the Sphere of Venus—spirits who in this life failed in Christian ideals because of their amours, Dante says, and his description is that of an expert musician distinguishing between the singing of one who sustains ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... O seraphic Sextum! continued Homenas, how necessary are you not to the salvation of poor mortals! O cherubic Clementinae! how perfectly the perfect institution of a true Christian is contained and described in you! O angelical ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... animal never beheld by human eyes, even to the mingling contrasts of scales and wings, of feathers and hair. Through the combined lenses of science and imagination, we look back into ancient times, so dreadful in their incompleteness, that it may well have been the task of seraphic faith, as well as of cherubic imagination, to behold in the wallowing monstrosities of the terror-teeming earth, the prospective, quiet, age-long labour of God preparing the world with all its humble, graceful ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... if for you to choose, Discretion in the interval, With gay delays he goes To some superior tree Without a single leaf, And shouts for joy to nobody But his seraphic self! ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... did, to get a place by himself in heaven. He was 'a little lower than the angels', like our own Bishop Jewells and Berkeleys; and yet he was no poet. He was too delicately, not to say feebly, absorbed in his devotions, to join in the energies of the seraphic choir. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... procession on its way towards Malabar Hill, and followed it to the Towers. For a moment after arriving there the face of the corpse was exposed, showing the marble features of a young girl of some fifteen years, wearing upon her pale face an expression of seraphic loveliness. The body was covered with a snow-white sheet, exhibiting the outline of a beautiful, budding form suddenly snatched from life. Over and around the body were white buds and half-blown pale flowers, indicative of youth, recalling to mind a similar ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... claimed Azazel as his right, a Cherube tall: Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurl'd Th' imperial ensign, which, full high advanc't Shon like a meteor streaming to the wind, With gemms and golden lustre rich emblaz'd Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metall blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host up-sent A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through the gloom were seen Ten thousand banners rise ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... looked furious, and the exultant way in which Dennison told me what had happened must have annoyed him tremendously. I felt that Dennison with his seraphic smile was a much bigger idiot than Ward, so I said, "Well, I can't see where the joke comes in, I think it is thundering rough luck," which remark I considered rather noble, for I did think that Ward had been scored off beautifully, only Dennison ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Hark! strains seraphic fall upon the ear, From shining ones around th' eternal gates: Glad that man's load of guilt may disappear, Infinite ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... not meant, "thou shalt not tempt ME," but rather, "it is not permitted me to tempt God." In this extreme case Jesus depends on God's protection. This is the devil's final defeat and the seraphic company for which our great Example had refused to ask instantly surrounds and receives him. ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... the glittering staff unfurled Th' imperial ensign, which, full high advanced, Shone like a meteor, streaming to the wind, With gems and golden lustre rich imblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host upsent A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. Paradise Lost, Bk. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... The horses continued to step out freely, making nothing of the light fabric they drew after them. Duke, the white of his coat soiled and muddied by frequent and grateful plunges, loped alongside, his pink tongue hanging from one corner of his mouth, and a seraphic expression on his countenance. Occasionally he rolled his eyes up at his masters in ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... light, which through the windows lit up the hostels of the country round, certain muleteers that were going into Romagna arose, believing that the day had dawned, and saddled and laded their beasts; and going on their way, they saw the said light die out and the material sun arise. In the seraphic vision, Christ, the which appeared to him, spake to St. Francis certain high and secret things, the which St. Francis in his lifetime desired not to reveal to any man; but after his life was done ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... substitution of quantity for value? Surely, X., you are hair-splitting a little in this instance, and mean to amuse yourself with my simplicity, by playing off some logical legerdemain upon me from the "seraphic" or ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Bert imagine that these would be the last words Dr. Chrystal would address to him personally, or that, as he turned away with a seraphic smile upon his face, he would see him ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... that wild, sweet face, Which thus and ever gleams, And smiles, with a seraphic grace, ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... when their eyes did meet, her glance was so perfectly unconcerned, that Karl wished he might look at her for ever without the fear of her looking at him again. She seemed like one whose love had rushed out glowing with seraphic fire, to be frozen to death in a more than wintry cold: she now walked lonely without her love. In the evenings, he was expected to continue his drawing by lamplight; and at night he was conducted by Teufelsbuerst ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... boy of energy, very decided, although not very intelligent. His uncle, Fray Jose de Calasanz, when he knew him, grew fond of him. Fray Jose enjoyed great esteem in the Order that is called,—nobody knows whether it is in irony,—the Seraphic Order. Fray Jose consulted several competent persons and they advised him to send his nephew to study outside of Spain. It is known that among her ministers the Church prefers men without a country. Catholicism means universality, and the ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... passionately. Religion had confirmed him. The words that were read aloud on Sunday to him and to other respectable men were the words that had once kindled the souls of St. Catharine and St. Francis into a white-hot hatred of the carnal. He could-not be as the saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a little ashamed of loving a wife. "Amabat, amare timebat." And it was here that ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... a man of genius and a courtly artist, struck by the seraphic countenance of Lady Alice Gordon, when a child of very tender years, painted the celestial visage in various attitudes on the same canvass, and styled the ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... been made of Raphael's personal beauty. Only thirty-seven when he died, his seraphic beauty was never ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... proposing to himself the model of this excellent person, who for his piety was named the Seraphic Doctor. BOSWELL. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Norton, Edmund Quincy, Francis H. Underwood, Judge Hoar, J. Elliot Cabot, and others. Lowell and Holmes were the wits par excellence, though Judge Hoar did not fall far behind. Emerson sat always with a seraphic smile upon his face, and Longfellow thoroughly enjoyed every good sally, though not adding to the mirth-making himself. Dr. Appleton, who met Dr. Holmes at ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... it," said Emmeline, who was seated on Paddy's shoulder, holding on tight to him, and gazing upon the island, the green of whose trees was now visible, an oasis of verdure in the sparkling and seraphic blue. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... my dear, but I am seasoned; I have great experience: you would not repent, and shall not, by the Face on the Handkerchief! But happen you see my master, happen he wear his brocade of white and gold—it is all peacocks' eyes, my seraphic heart, in gold and blue upon snowy white—happen again he look, 'Come' at you—why, off you trot as a hound to the platter, and I speed you thither with open heart. Thus walks his world, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... her eyes can do in a second. Baltimore laughs lightly, returns her glance four-fold, and draws his chair a quarter of an inch closer to hers. To move it more than that would have been an impossibility. Lady Swansdown makes a slight movement. With a smile seraphic as an angel's, she pulls her lace skirts a little to one side, as if to prove to Baltimore that he has encroached beyond his privileges upon her domain. "People should not crush people. And why do you want to get so very close to me?" This question lies within ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... institutions of this kind, have a curiosity to see, in its first rudiments, this seat of primitive piety; for such it must be called by future ages, to the eternal honour of the founders. I have read Madonella's excellent and seraphic discourse on this subject." The lady immediately answers, "If what I have said could have contributed to raise any thoughts in you that may make for the advancement of intellectual and divine conversation, I should think myself extremely happy." He immediately ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... of Afric's sunny strands, I smite my lyre to sing thy praise unsung; In strains far sweeter than seraphic bands, A lay deep in my bosom's core is sprung. Fair Queen, although my years as yet be young, Deep thoughts and musings of thy history old, Where odes and fiery epics long have hung, Live centuries in my immortal soul And strike ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... make him recognizable by any one who had ever had the privilege of knowing him in the faulty flesh. She eliminated all his bad qualities, and projected from her imagination a Mr. O'Rourke as he ought to have been—a species of seraphic being mixed up in some way with a violin; and to this ideal she erected a costly headstone in the suburban cemetery. "It would be a proud day for Larry," observed Margaret contemplatively, "if he could ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the purity of her features. Whoever has seen the sublime Virgin of Titian in his great picture of the "Presentation" at Venice, will know that Veronique was in her girlhood,—the same ingenuous candor, the same seraphic astonishment in her eyes, the same simple yet noble attitude, the same majesty of ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... now and don't let me see you again until you are thoroughly rested, even if it takes a year." He arose and stood smiling. He was mightily pleased with himself. He liked to perform in this way. He was almost seraphic as he thrust the check for a ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... construction. Mr. Browning, with his little son, drove over to the wild, curious town of Bagnorgio, which, though near Orvieto, is very little known. But this was the birthplace of Giovanni da Fidenza, the "Seraphic Doctor," who was canonized as St. Buonaventura, from the exclamation of San Francesco, who, on awakening from a dream communion with Giovanni da Fidenza, exclaimed, "O buona ventura!" Dante introduces this saint into the ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... he looked up had in it all of that quality which at times made it almost seraphic. His ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... is love? 'Tis not the crown of kings, Nay, nor the fire of white seraphic wings! Is it a child's heart leaping while he sings? Even so say I; Even ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... boars from Hesse Darmstadt; wild boars from Egypt; bush pigs from Africa; peccaries from South America; and two painted pigs from West Africa; all "de grege porci," and in excellent health: to say nothing of two hippopotamuses; four "seraphic" giraffes; antelopes (we did not number them); brush turkeys from Australia; an apteryx from New Zealand; the curious white sheathbills from the South Seas; the refulgent metallic green and purple-tinted ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... but it was evident that he was enjoying his own melody. Such pure, sweet notes—now rippling softly, now with a gay little quiver of joy, now a tender prolonged note, now a succession of trills, high and low, that set the air throbbing, and every now and then a great burst of seraphic music, as if his little heart was so full of happiness he was compelled to pour it forth to all who chose to listen. Our party would gladly have listened for a long time, and have omitted the story altogether; but after some minutes of delicious song the strains suddenly ceased, and a little ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... bending to the movement of her hands. She played fluently, without much expression; but what a Picture she made, the faint golden radiance, a sort of angelic atmosphere hovering about her! Who could have passionate thoughts or wild desires in the presence of that swaying, white-clothed girl with the seraphic head? She played a thing of Schumann's called "Warum?" Then Halliday brought out a flute, and the spell was broken. After this they made Ashurst sing, Stella playing him accompaniments from a book of Schumann songs, till, in the middle of "Ich grolle nicht," ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... whole choruses of deep-throated echoes, and attending and retentive ocean, catching the strains on her beryl strings, bore them whither—and how far? To palm-plumed equatorial isles, where dying auricular nerves mistook them for seraphic utterances? To toiling mariners, tossed helplessly by fierce typhoons, who, pausing in their scramble for spars, listened to the weird melody that presaged woe and wreck? To the broken casements of fishermen's huts, on distant shores, where anxious wives peered out in the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... your thoughts into the proper channel. As she pinched you, the Kitten dropped her eyes so that you noticed how long and black were her eyelashes. Then, having punished you, she raised her eyes to yours with so seraphic an expression that you thought of "large-eyed cherubim" and entirely forgot that she had pinched you at all, unless next day as you looked in the glass you happened to notice a little blue mark on your cheek. The Kitten could ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... his short life of Donne has painted a figure of almost seraphic beauty. When Donne was but a boy, he declares, it was said that the age had brought forth another Pico della Mirandola. As a young man in his twenties, he was a prince among lovers, who by his secret marriage with his patron's niece—"for ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... words, familiar in street circles, ran through his mind, but did not issue from his lips, and his face remained perfectly calm—almost seraphic in expression. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... it there without artificial aid, the immense value of his influence remained. He is one of the most interesting representatives, not only of his own, but of all similar periods of exaggerated feelings and ideals. Despite his loftiness of thought and speech, and his seraphic raptures, he was not without a full share of sensuous development, and women's eyes, or a girl's rosy lips, would draw him away from the finest ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... by inductions both rapid and sagacious, he beheld one of those masterpieces of Nature whose creation appears to demand as its right all the happiness of love. Here was a fair young face, on which the sun of Spain had cast faint tones of bistre which added to its expression of seraphic calmness a passionate pride, like a flash of light infused beneath that diaphanous complexion,—due, perhaps, to the Moorish blood which vivified and colored it. Her hair, raised to the top of her head, fell thence with black reflections round the delicate transparent ears and defined the ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... from seraphic heights, I should imagine! "There shall be only one love in a man's life, and it shall be directed only to ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... the newspapers. I found him playing the violin with a look of sweet peace and serenity on his face, which I never noticed on the countenances of those within hearing distance. I knew this expression of seraphic calm indicated that Kombs had been deeply annoyed about something. Such, indeed, proved to be the case, for one of the morning papers had contained an article eulogising the alertness and general competence of Scotland Yard. So great was Sherlaw Kombs's contempt for Scotland Yard that he never would ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... earth house of six feet is to imprison forever the intellect of a La Place, whose telescopic eye, piercing the unfenced fields of immensity, systematized more worlds than there are grains of dust in this globe? the heart of a Borromeo, whose seraphic love expanded to the limits of sympathetic being? the soul of a Wycliffe, whose undaunted will, in faithful consecration to duty, faced the fires of martyrdom and never blenched? the genius of a Shakspeare, whose imagination exhausted worlds and then invented ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... and fashion'd every sphere, Spaced out their suns, and round each radiant goal, Orb over orb, compell'd their train to roll, Bade heaven's own harmony their force combine. Taught all their host symphonious strains to join, Gave to seraphic harps their sounding lays, Their joys to angels, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... seraphic face of Sylvia, chastened by terrible suffering, must have suggested to Mrs. Chilton the idea of caution. "Have you thought of the humiliation this must inflict upon ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... that seraphic death, towards the close of the year 1891, an epidemic of influenza raged in the Community; I only had it slightly and was able to be about with two other Sisters. It is impossible to imagine the ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... if to kiss thy Mistress' skirt Amaze thy brain, scorn not the Priest Whom greater honours do not hurt. Stand off and gaze, if more than this Be more than thou canst understand, Revering him whose power of bliss, Angelic, dares to seize her hand, Or whose seraphic love makes flight To the apprehension of her lips; And think, the sun of such delight From thine own darkness takes eclipse. And, wouldst thou to the same aspire, This is the art thou must employ, Live greatly; so shalt thou acquire ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... little wink As deep I go into the merit Of this and that distinguished spirit— His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink, As long I dwell on some stupendous And tremendous (Heaven defend us!) Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous Demoniaco-seraphic Penman's latest piece of graphic. Nay, my very wrist grows warm With his dragging weight of arm. E'en so, swimmingly appears, Through one's after-supper musings, Some lost lady of old years With her beauteous vain endeavor And goodness unrepaid as ever; The face, accustomed ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... cheerfully undertakes it; bids one Lynar bestir himself upon it. Count Lynar, an esteemed Official of his, who lives in those neighborhoods; Danish Viceroy in Oldenburg,—much concerned with the Scriptures, the Sacred Languages and other seraphic studies,—and a changed man since we saw him last in the Petersburg regions, making love to Mrs. Anton Ulrich long ago! Lynar, feeling the axis of the world laid on his shoulder in this manner, loses not a moment; invokes the Heavenly Powers; goes on it with an alacrity ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... held in his hand; and to read it he had taken the only candle upon the card-table, paying no heed to his guests or their pleasure. Eugenie, to whom such a type of perfection, whether of dress or of person, was absolutely unknown, thought she beheld in her cousin a being descended from seraphic spheres. She inhaled with delight the fragrance wafted from the graceful curls of that brilliant head. She would have liked to touch the soft kid of the delicate gloves. She envied Charles his small hands, his complexion, the freshness and refinement of his features. In short,—if ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... harbourage installed, Lulled by the murmurous hum of London's traffic To that full calm which may be justly called Seraphic, ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... obstinacy of a veteran, to some of the darling Dalilahs of his youth, "to the admirable and soul-ravishing knowledge of the three great Hypostatical principles of nature, salt, sulphur, and mercury," and, proh pudor! to alchemy and astrology—and those seraphic doctors and professors, Crollius, Libavius, and Van Helmont. He closed his literary performances with this noble fabric of logic and learning, not the less striking, and scarcely less useful, because it is chequered ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, "Give me money." Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. "Budge's Boots are the Best" simply means "Give me money"; "Use Seraphic Soap" simply means "Give me money." It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... us of intoxication. I felt that the falling shades of evening were sympathetically drunk with God. When darkness recovered from its nightly swoon, I faced the new morning bereft of my ecstatic mood. But ever enshrined in memory is the seraphic son ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... in the most thorough and conscientious manner. She revelled amongst California grapes and pears, and quaffed the California wines with appropriate delight and hilarity. She also studied JOHN CHINAMAN in all his phases, and came to the conclusion that he would do. She thought it would be a seraphic experience to see the pride and importance of Misses BRIDGET and GRETCHEN taken down a little. JOHN would certainly not possess the voluble eloquence—of the first, nor the stolid impudence of the second, nor would he have, like the pretty Swede, a train of admirers ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... the Italiens. Never had that beautiful and enchanting woman looked more seraphic, more ethereal. Nobody in the house could have believed that she had debts which reached the sum total mentioned by de Marsay that very morning. No single one of the cares of earth had touched that sublime forehead of hers, full of woman's pride of the highest kind. ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... Doctor, in a voice that was only too seraphic to be called hysterical, "is it——? It is!" he cried. "Oh, my son, my son!" And he sat down upon the hamper and sobbed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... do, but his hesitation did not last long. A piece of pine wood lay near him, and picking it up he drew from under his belt a great keen-bladed bowie-knife, with which he began to whittle long slender shavings that curled beautifully; then a seraphic smile of content spread over ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... touching and tender. There is, however, an absolute impotence to reproduce the actual, to deal with groups of humanity upon a liberal scale. There is his usual want of discrimination, too, in physiognomy; for if the seraphic and intellectual head of the penitent thief were transferred to the shoulders of the Saviour in exchange for his own, no one could dispute that it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... buy season tickets for both your groups, if you will only make your limit of age include me. I am only five feet ten, and I 'll sit very low if you 'll admit me to the charmed circle. Shall you have a stage name? I would suggest 'The Seraphic Sapphira.'" ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... looking at this brief memorial, when I heard a woman's dress rustling upon the long rank grass, and turning suddenly, saw my darling coming towards me, very pale, very pensive, but with a kind of seraphic resignation upon her face which made her seem to me more beautiful than I had ever seen ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... aspiration and sensitiveness; and lo! there is born from this pain, the spiritual Self, which embraces the lesser consciousness, enfolding all your consciousness in the softness and bliss of pure, Seraphic Love—the heritage of ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... with these seraphic, and, as far as my boyish experience extends, novel, elements of pantomime, there were yet some of its old and fast-expiring elements. There were, in speciality, two thoroughly good pantomime actors—Mr. W. H. Payne and Mr. Frederick Payne. All that these two did, was done ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... and remained his most intimate friend. He also came to know Fichte, and eagerly absorbed his Doctrine of Science. A little later he came into close relations with Wilhelm Schlegel and Tieck in Jena. He experienced a seraphic love for a delicate girl of thirteen, whose passing away at the age of fifteen served to transport the youth's interests almost exclusively to the invisible world: "Life is a sickness of the spirit, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... The "seraphic Doctor" was rector of Penshurst, near Tunbridge Wells, the seat of the Sydneys. From Hammond, who was a zealous adherent of Charles I., Temple received much of his early education. When the Parliament drove Dr. Hammond from his living, ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... her of a principality! That seraphic being whose lustre even now haunts my vision; the ring of whose silver tone even now lingers in my ear. He must be a fiend who could injure her. I am that fiend. Let me ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... delight, and be carefully preserved, as a memorial of your friendship; and for which I beg to return my sincere thanks. May the meridian sunshine of happiness brighten your days through the voyage of life; and may your soul be borne on the wings of seraphic angels to the realms of bliss eternal in the world to come is the sincere wish and fervent prayer of Charus Domina, your most obedient, most respectful, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... them in tender and mellifluous threnodies. It would be easy to trace many parallelisms in their prose and poetry, but to have dared to name any man whom we have known in our common life with the seraphic singer of the Nativity and of Paradise is a tribute which seems to savor of audacity. It is hard to conceive of Emerson as "an expert swordsman" like Milton. It is impossible to think of him as an abusive controversialist ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... alcove floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back, fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... that religious fanaticism should be inoffensive, the heart in which it exists must be very pure. It is true that even in that case it is unproductive of good. But the hearts that have been born without the seraphic purity which establishes a premature Limbo on the earth, are careful not to become greatly inflamed with what they see in retables, in choirs, in locutories and sacristies, unless they have first erected in their own consciences an altar, a pulpit, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... their chapel-choir is not inferior to Saint George's itself; and the Boniface ale the best in Oxbridge. In the comfortable old wainscoted College-Hall, and round about Roubilliac's statue of Saint Boniface (who stands in an attitude of seraphic benediction over the uncommonly good cheer of the fellows' table) there are portraits of many most eminent Bonifacians. There is the learned Doctor Griddle, who suffered in Henry VIII.'s time, and Archbishop ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... amid the forms of light, Seraphic and divine, The painter's wand had summoned from The dim Ideal's shrine; And felt within my fevered soul Ambition's wasting fire, And seized the pencil with a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... girl, lying naked side by side, were joined through the silent hours, in the seraphic promiscuousness of the shadows; such dreams as were possible to their age floated from one to the other; beneath their closed eyelids there shone, perhaps, a starlight; if the word marriage were not inappropriate to the situation, they were husband and wife after the fashion of the angels. Such innocence ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... coming down the stairs. Then, Mr Brass left off writing entirely, and, with his pen in his hand, hummed his very loudest; shaking his head meanwhile from side to side, like a man whose whole soul was in the music, and smiling in a manner quite seraphic. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... "And this seraphic ocean-child And heroine was Orlie Wilde: And thus it was I came to hear Her voice's music in my ear— Ay, thus it was Fate paved the way That I walk ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... clock striking ONE before it occurred to me that it was time to depart. Again I traversed the streets at that solemn hour, insensible to every feeling, and regardless of every object but the flaming torch lit up in my heart and the seraphic image of Laura. At length I was warned by the scrutinizing gaze of a watchman to repair to my lodgings. But my pillow afforded no rest. All night long I pondered on the exhilarating events of the day. Many were the endearing accents that escaped my lips as I addressed in fancy ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... love; All praise (to speak her worth) is faint; Her manners show'd the yielding dove, Her morals, the seraphic saint: She never breath'd nor look'd complaint; No equal upon earth had she - Now, what is this fair thing I paint? Alas! as ...
— Miscellaneous Poems • George Crabbe
... standard. That proud honour claimed Azazel as his right, a Cherub tall: Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled Th' imperial ensign; which, full high advanced, Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind, With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host up-sent A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... at home when this telegram came. It was the first he had ever received. With trembling hands he tore it open, his rosy face broke into a seraphic smile, and the tears came into his eyes. He rushed to his mother, threw his ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... great sensation was when he got into the pulpit. The manner in which he dropped on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, and showed his beautiful rings was, as a young lady said behind me, simply seraphic. We understood his celebrity, from that moment—I wonder whether I can remember ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... to describe her ineffable loveliness, for, like the beauty of a flower, it was incapable of analysis. Nothing that I could write would give you any adequate idea of this girl's seraphic face, for she was like unto no one you have ever seen in this cold Western world. I watched in a wild, nervous transport, I know not how long—time and space had no part in this new ecstasy of mine! I could think of nothing, do nothing—only feel,—feel the hot blood deluge ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... is the vehicle of the sacred word which shall spring from my lips. Hear, then, with the ears of the soul and the heart, that the words of the Lord may not fall on a stony ground, but that they may grow and shoot upward in the field of our seraphic father, St. Francis. You, sinners, captives of those Moors of the soul who infest the seas of the eternal life, in the doughty ships of the flesh and the world; you who row in the galleys of Satan, behold with reverent ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... couch, still breathless, motionless, sleep's self, Wax-white, seraphic, saturate with the sun That filled the window with a ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... he was told and wondered as he came nearer to the shell fineness of her cheek and her seraphic smile. ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of Raffaelle, it seems to shine out in still more truthful vividness from the brow of a young person rapt in religious ecstasy. The hands clasped in prayer,—the upturned eyes,—the expression of humble confidence and seraphic hope, (displayed, let me suggest, on a beautiful face,) constitute a picture of which, having witnessed it, I can never forget the force. Yet I knew it was only a trance. So one knows that village churches are built by common mechanics. Yet when we look over an extensive country, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various |
