"Voluptuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unhesitating. It was perhaps at that moment that a hidden characteristic of her features showed itself. Her mouth, sometimes almost too voluptuous in its softness, had straightened into a firm line of scarlet. The deeper violet of her eyes had gone. So a woman might have looked who watched suffering unmoved, the woman of the bull or ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... accented the first stanza with a voluptuous languor, she poured into these last words all the transports of Eros of old. As if the music had been powerless to express her wild delirium, she threw the guitar aside, and half rising from ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... to lunch, he stopped at the woodpile to get an armful of kindling for Mrs. Bade. The sober way she looked at him as he came in, hid from all but herself the almost voluptuous pleasure it gave her merely to be waited on, a pleasure she was more than half afraid to enjoy, for fear at jealous heaven might take it away, and leave her with all her work to do, and bad ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... down and solemnly kissed the unlovely, shortened limbs, not once or twice, but many times, yielding herself up with an almost voluptuous intensity to her own emotion. She clasped her hands about her knees, so that the child might be enclosed, overshadowed, embraced on all sides by the living defenses of its mother's love. Alone there, with no witnesses, she brooded over it, crooned to it, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... beards for you! beards grown where brandy freezes! but, they are thawed out now. Look at these men: hear their wild northern tongue, how it rolls out the sounds that frighten Italians back to sleepy sonnets and voluptuous songs. Hurrah, my Russians! look fate in the ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Paynim in the Holy Land, or scouring the Mediterranean, and scourging the Barbary coasts with their galleys, or feeding the poor, and attending upon the sick at their hospitals, they led a life of luxury and libertinism, and were to be found in the most voluptuous courts of Europe. The order, in fact, had become a mode of providing for the needy branches of the Catholic aristocracy of Europe. "A commandery," we are told, was a splendid provision for a younger brother; and men of rank, however dissolute, provided they ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... step, inhaling the night-air with voluptuous delight, Reginald Clarke made his way down Broadway, lying stretched out before him, bathed in ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... physical repulsion, Pedro acknowledged a secret marriage with Maria de Padilla, which legitimised her children; but for ten years before she had been treated with royal rights. The historian says that she was very beautiful, but her especial charm seems to have been that voluptuous grace which is characteristic of Andalusian women. She was simple and pious, with a nature of great sweetness, and she never abused her power; her influence, as runs the hackneyed phrase, was always for good, and untiringly she did her utmost to incline her despot lover to mercy. She alone sheds ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... another 'fore my eyes Moved on with pointed finger. In this guise Enforced, at the last by ocean's foam 610 I found me; by my fresh, my native home. Its tempering coolness, to my life akin, Came salutary as I waded in; And, with a blind voluptuous rage, I gave Battle to the swollen billow-ridge, and drave Large froth before me, while there yet remain'd Hale strength, nor from my bones all ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... French writer of the last century intending a satire upon the principles of vegetarianism adopted by Phillippe Hecquet, puts into the mouth of one of the characters in his book what, in the grossly voluptuous life of that country and time, the author no doubt imagined to be the greatest absurdities conceivable in reference to diet, but which, in the light of present civilization are but the merest hygienic truths. A doctor had been ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... as was used by the mediaeval flagellants; at the end of this whip was a metal plate bristling with sharp iron points; I had the medallion riveted to this plate and then returned it to its place over my heart. The sharp points pierced my bosom with every movement and caused such a strange voluptuous anguish that I sometimes pressed it down with my hand in order to intensify the sensation. I knew very well that I was committing folly; love is responsible for ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... lascivious old men seek by being whipped to excite new power of enjoyment, so old Rome endured monkish chastisement to find more exquisite delight in torture and voluptuous rapture in pain? Evil excess of stimulant! it took from the body of the state of Rome its last strength. It was not by division into two realms that Rome perished. On the Bosphorus, as by the Tiber, Rome was devoured by the same Jewish spiritualism, and here, as there, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of the sixteenth century, this castle was in the possession of Ferdinand, fifth marquis of Mazzini, and was for some years the principal residence of his family. He was a man of a voluptuous and imperious character. To his first wife, he married Louisa Bernini, second daughter of the Count della Salario, a lady yet more distinguished for the sweetness of her manners and the gentleness of her disposition, ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... fascinating woman," continued the major. "That Juno-like beauty which so distinguishes her on the stage scarcely shows itself in the drawing-room. On the stage she is queenly—in private, soft, voluptuous and winning as a houri. I don't wonder that ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... was a sound of revelry by night; And Belgium's capital had gathered then Her Beauty and her Chivalry; and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell;— But hush! hark! a deep sound ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... slightest link of connection between one and another. One moment she was full of the wild music and stirring scene with Manston—-the next, Edward's image rose before her like a shadowy ghost. Then Manston's black eyes seemed piercing her again, and the reckless voluptuous mouth appeared bending to the curves of his special words. What could be those troubles to which he had alluded? Perhaps Miss Aldclyffe was at the bottom of them. Sad at heart she paced on: ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... as if all her strength was exhausted, Milady sank, weak and languishing, into the arms of the young officer, who, intoxicated with love, anger, and voluptuous sensations hitherto unknown, received her with transport, pressed her against his heart, all trembling at the breath from that charming mouth, bewildered by the contact with ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... My wickedness to him, and left me hope That in mine own heart I can live down sin And be his mate hereafter in the heavens Before high God. Ah great and gentle lord, Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint Among his warring senses, to thy knights— To whom my false voluptuous pride, that took Full easily all impressions from below, Would not look up, or half-despised the height To which I would not or I could not climb— I thought I could not breathe in that fine air That pure severity of perfect light— I yearned for warmth and colour which I found In Lancelot—now ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Venice, Rome, Bologna, Milan, Florence, Vienna, Dresden, Paris, London, and Madrid. The most numerous are portraits, Madonnas, Magdalens, Bacchanals, Venuses, and other mythological subjects, some of which are extremely voluptuous. Two of his grandest and most celebrated works are the Last Supper in the Escurial, and Christ crowned with Thorns at Milan. It is said that the works of Titian, to be appreciated, should be seen ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... not have been goaded by two such shocks? As it was, this second violation of the sacred traditions of the nude, which had been exclusively reserved for allegorical subjects, was considered an outrage; and the innocent, natural model, of by no means voluptuous appearance, was regarded as a disgraceful intrusion into the chaste category of nymphs and goddesses. As a painter, however, Manet had shown himself unmistakably as ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... crown'd; and fetter'd to their king, The royal Midas, brought him. Midas once The Thracian Orpheus Bacchus' orgies taught, With sage Eumolpus; and at once he knew His old associate in the sacred rites; And joyful feasted with voluptuous fare, For twice five days, and twice five nights his guest. Th' eleventh time Phosphor' now the lofty host Of stars had chas'd from heaven; the jovial king Went forth to Lydia's fields, and there restor'd Silenus to the youth his foster-child. He, joy'd again his nursing sire to see, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... connoisseur in the smell supernatural, and has a trained psychic nose. He can distinguish between the spiritual perfume which characterises, let us say, St Stanislaus and the odorem suavitatis of Lucifer. He is also an authority on conditions, and gives a ravishing description of the voluptuous enervation diffused over all his limbs when he had a private memorandum from Isis by means of raps during the reception of a master in a blue lodge. On this occasion he tells us that he was inspired to pronounce one ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... feed voluptuous thought, The beauteous forms of nature wrought, Fair trees and lovely flowers; The breezes their own languor lent; The stars had feelings, which they sent Into ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and pure skin, round cheeks and the mouth animated as by an invisible kiss. The short skirt let little feet be seen, dancing, jolly, spirited feet. She held herself upright, but was round, somewhat thick-set, in her voluptuous perfection. Under the black velvet ribbon round her throat a little square of her bosom was visible, brown, but dazzling. She looked on me with an air of curiosity. I have said already how sleep had rendered me amorous. I rose ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... organization of the Moriscos lay in the character of their king. Aben-Humeya, at first popular, soon displayed traits of character which lost him the support of his followers. Surrounded by a strong body-guard, he led a voluptuous life, and struck down without mercy those whom he feared, no less than three hundred and fifty persons falling victims to his jealousy or revenge. His cruelty and injustice at length led to a plot for his death, and his brief reign ended ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... of me. But it is my misfortune that I am his sister. So long as I strive, while awake, to commit no such {attempt}, let sleep often return with the like appearance. No witness is there in sleep; and yet there is the resemblance of the delight. O Venus and winged Cupid, together with thy voluptuous mother, how great the joys I experienced! how substantial the transport which affected me! How I lay dissolved {in delight} throughout my whole marrow! How pleasing to remember it; although short-lived was that pleasure, and the night sped onward rapidly, and was envious of my attempts {at bliss}. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... police as to morality, we should see the poverty of the earlier ages, humble, modest, frugal, robust, industrious, and laborious. Then, indeed, the fable of Plato might be realised: Poverty might be embraced by the god of Riches; and if she did not produce the voluptuous offspring of Love, she would become the fertile mother of Agriculture, and the ingenious parent of the Arts ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... exhalation, and were thronged with the famous dead. Songsters that might have eclipsed both Apollo and his rival poured forth their lays; women, god-like in form, and draped like Minerva, swam round the marble courts in voluptuous but easy and graceful dances. Here sculptors carved away amidst admiring pupils, and forms of supernatural beauty grew out of Parian marble in a quarter of an hour; and grave philosophers conversed on high ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... when its sacred books were written, when its civilization began, what caused its progress, what its decline. Gentle, devout, abstract, it is capable at once of the loftiest thoughts and the basest actions. It combines the most ascetic self-denials and abstraction from life with the most voluptuous self-indulgence. The key to the whole system of Hindoo thought and life is in this original tendency to see God, not man; eternity, not time; the infinite, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Sousa's O Missionario. Antonio de Moraes, in this story, is not so strong in will as Taunay's vicar of sorrows. Antonio is a missionary "with the vocation of a martyr and the soul of an apostle," on duty in the tropics. The voluptuous magnetism of the Amazon seizes his body. Slowly, agonizingly, but surely he succumbs to the enchantment, overpowered by ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... especially for our times, when there is such a vast amount of mock modesty; when so much pretense of virtue covers such a world of iniquity and vice. The young lady who goes into a spasm of virtuous hysterics upon hearing the word "leg," is perhaps just the one who at home riots her imagination in voluptuous French novels, if she commits no grosser breach of chastity. The parents who are the most opposed to imparting information to the young are often those who have themselves indulged in sexual excesses. In the minds of such persons the sexual organs ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... the rest of my very unnatural life, but I'll be shot if I'll regulate mine or my wife'& behaviour by the twaddle they talk! I'll have that dagger." Slipping it slowly into its sheath he watched it travel home, the supple female curve gliding and yielding as a woman yields to a man's caress. "Voluptuous, I call it. Under the left breast, eh?" He drew it again and held it poised and pointing at his cousin. "Come, even I could cut your heart out with a gem of a blade like that." Lawrence held himself lightly erect, his big frame stiffening from head to foot and the pupils of his ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... flower-beds in the foreground, displayed around a basin of dark water framed in a marble rim, and in the distance the massed foliage of varied trees concealing the roofs of other houses. The town might have been miles away. It was a brilliantly coloured solitude, drowsing in a warm, voluptuous silence. Where the long, still shadows fell across the beds, and in shady nooks, the massed colours of the flowers had an extraordinary magnificence of effect. I stood entranced. Jacobus grasped me delicately above the elbow, impelling me to a ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Branches. Charles Beauclerk, Duke of St. Albans, born 8 May, 1670; James Beauclerk, born 25 December, 1671, ob, Septemher, 1680, the two sons of Nell Gwynne by Charles II. There is an exquisitely voluptuous painting by Gascar, engraved by Masson, of Nell Gwynne on a bed of roses whilst the two boys as winged amorini support flowing curtains and draperies. Her royal lover appears in the distance. There is also a well-known and beautiful painting of the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... inactive, those who fare daintily and live voluptuously, those who are furnished with the rarest delicacies, the richest foods, and the most generous wines, such as can provoke the appetites, senses, and passions, in the most exquisite and voluptuous manner; to those who leave no desire or degree of appetite unsatisfied, and not to the poor, the low, the meaner sort, those destitute of the necessaries, conveniences, and pleasures of life; to the frugal, industrious, temperate, laborious, and active, inhabiting barren ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... opened her eyes: the candle-flame was lightly stirred by a draught, somewhere in the house a child was whimpering,—a soft, unspeakably mournful sound,—and round about her lay the red feather-beds with their disagreeable voluptuous swellings, exhaling a sweetish odor of dust. They cast great shadows on the wall, and the round soft shapes quivered gently. Billy shook in boundless disgust: why was she here, what had she to do here? Ah yes, she loved Boris, that was it. Well, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... golden-scaled—that shot a shimmering iridescence with every movement of the limbs, whose whiteness their transparency rather betrayed than veiled, she trod the earth with such an air as Balkis may have worn when she came a-visiting Solomon. The painters of the antique world would have welcomed in that voluptuous flesh, in the poppy of her mouth, in the midnight of those eyes that glowed with the fires of Thessalian incantations, their ideal for some image of the goddess of all-conquering desire. The Sophists of the antique world would have read her story charactered in every lithe line, in every appealing ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to have had Lavater by my side, and heard his opinion of the characters of the different female waltzers. It is a very curious and interesting spectacle to see one woman assume a languishing air, another a vacant smile, a third an aspect of stoical indifference; while a fourth seems lost in a voluptuous trance, a fifth captivates by an amiable modesty, a sixth affects the cold insensibility of a statue, and so on in ever-varying succession, though all turning to the animating changes of the same lively waltz. In short I observed that, in this species of dance, the eyes ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... put forth in defending himself. He was the Voltaire of Germany, and very much more than the Voltaire; for his romantic and legendary poems are above the level of Voltaire. But, on the other hand, he was a Voltaire in sensual impurity. To work, to carry on a plot, to affect his readers by voluptuous impressions,—these were the unworthy aims of Wieland; and though a good-natured critic would not refuse to make some allowance for a youthful poet's aberrations in this respect, yet the indulgence cannot extend itself to mature years. An old man ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... pressed forward to claim Miss Liebenheim's hand for the next dance; a movement which she was quick to favor, by retreating behind one or two parties from a person who seemed coming toward her. The music again began to pour its voluptuous tides through the bounding pulses of the youthful company; again the flying feet of the dancers began to respond to the measures; again the mounting spirit of delight began to fill the sails of the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... unusually low and far back on her head; her nose was of that rare and matchless shape termed Grecian; and her mouth—in form, a triumph of all things heavenly, in expression, a triumph of all things hellish. The magnificent turn of its short upper lip, and the soft voluptuous line of its under lip; its sportive dimples and ripe red colour; its even rows of dazzling, pearly teeth were adorable; but they appealed to the senses, and in no sense or shape to the soul. Her brows, slightly irregular in outline, met over the nose; her eyelashes were of great length, and her eyes—slightly, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... welcome as the roses in May; welcomed; favorite; to one's taste, to one's mind, to one's liking; satisfactory &c. (good) 648. refreshing; comfortable; cordial; genial; glad, gladsome; sweet, delectable, nice, dainty; delicate, delicious; dulcet; luscious &c. 396; palatable &c. 394; luxurious, voluptuous; sensual &c. 377. [of people] attractive &c. 615; inviting, prepossessing, engaging; winning, winsome; taking, fascinating, captivating, killing; seducing, seductive; heart-robbing, alluring, enticing; appetizing &c. (exciting) 824; cheering ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... this vaguely desired government, the country obtained the feeble and irresolute Directory, composed for the moment of the voluptuous Barres, the intriguing Sieyes, the brave Moulins, the insignificant Roger Ducos, and the honest but somewhat too ingenuous Gohier. The result was a mediocre dignity before the world at large and a very questionable tranquillity ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... knotted carelessly about her head, from which the dark lustrous ringlets escaped, her eyes of fire gleamed as if they would burn their orbits. Her round face with its prominent cheek-bones, laughing lips and rather broad nose, that gave it a wild-wood, voluptuous expression, reminded the painter of the faun of the Borghese, a cast of which he had seen and been struck with admiration for its freakish charm. A faint down of moustache accentuated the curve of the full lips. A bosom that seemed big with love was confined by a crossed kerchief in the ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... turf, the leafy trees, the brilliant flowerbeds and the white walls of the villa. Under the green arch of the trees, where luminous insects, white and flame-colored butterflies, aimlessly chased one another, Marsa half slumbered in a sort of voluptuous oblivion, a happy calm, in that species of nirvana which the open air of summer brings. She felt herself far away from the entire world in that corner of verdure, and abandoned herself to childish hopes and dreams, in profound ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... these encounters was, that he dreamed day and night, absorbedly, of a voluptuous woman and of the meeting with a small, withered foreigner of ancient breeding. No sooner was his mind free, no sooner had he left his own companions, than he began to imagine an intimacy with fine-textured, subtle-mannered people such as the foreigner at Matlock, and amidst this subtle ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... other basic instinct. The law holds that no marriage is consummated until the sex act has taken place, regardless of the words of preacher or State official. The happiness of the first year or years of married life is mostly in its voluptuous bonds, for companionship and comradeship have really not yet arisen. Complementary to this it may be said that much of married misery, especially for the woman, arises from the first ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... everywhere. Those little blossoms of the Gothic with their perennial beauty, they are one of the smiles of that far time that shed cheer through the centuries. They are not the grandiose affairs of the Renaissance whose voluptuous development contains the arrogant assurance of beauty matured. They do not crown a column or trail themselves in foliated scrolls; but are just as Nature meant them to be, unaffected bits of colour and grace, upspringing from the sod. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... in front of the Hotel de Paris. It too was fantastically ornate, surely the most extraordinary hotel on earth, with a high roof of a gray severity which ironically frowned down upon gilded balconies and nude plaster women who supported them, robustly voluptuous creatures who faded into foliage below the waist, like plump nymphs escaping the rude pursuit of gods. Their bareness and boldness startled the convent-bred girl, even horrified her. She was the last to leave the omnibus, and then, instead of pushing in with ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... fatigue of his journey through the heat of the day had led him to look forward to a voluptuous hour of indolence following upon dinner, with pipe and book and glass. The hour was come, the elements were there, but since he could not abandon himself to their dominion the voluptuousness was wanting. The task before him haunted him ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... later ende/ when [the] god of all mercie shall haue compased the in on euery syde with temptacions/ tribulacions/ aduersities & combraunce/ to bringe [the] home agayne vn to thyne awne herte/ & to set thy sinnes wich thou woldest so fayne couer & put out of mynd with delectacion of voluptuous pastymes/ before [the] eyes of thy conscience: then call [the] faithfull ensample of Ionas & all lyke stories vn to thy remembraunce/ and with Ionas turne vn to thi father that smote [the]: not to cast [the] awaye/ but to laye a corosie and a freatinge playster vn to [the] pocke that ...
— The prophete Ionas with an introduccion • William Tyndale
... frequently it is rather like acting than like what we Occidentals call dancing—acting accompanied with extraordinary waving of sleeves and fans, and with a play of eyes and features, sweet, subtle, subdued, wholly Oriental. There are more voluptuous dances known to geisha, but upon ordinary occasions and before refined audiences they portray beautiful old Japanese traditions, like the legend of the fisher Urashima, beloved by the Sea God's daughter; and at intervals they sing ancient Chinese ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... bride, chosen for the honour of mating with the ruler of Florence, was a Roman lady of such noble birth that it was not considered essential that she should bring a substantial dowry. Clarice Orsini was dazzled at her wedding-feast by the voluptuous splendour of the family which ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... remaining drops in my glass and crossed the room to a chair where I could see his face. And he played the Prelude to the most passionately voluptuous opera ever written. It was my first real introduction to Wagner, my first glimpse of that enchanted field. I ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... and his brows contracted. I could easily perceive that he was annoyed. To change the tone of the conversation I gave a signal for the music to recommence, and instantly the melody of a slow, voluptuous Hungarian waltz-measure floated through the room. The dinner was now fairly on its way; the appetites of my guests were stimulated and tempted by the choicest and most savory viands, prepared with all the taste and intelligence a first rate chef can bestow on his work, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... him and helped him in all his undertakings with the utmost zeal was Lucius Aelius Sejanus, a son of Strabo, and formerly a favorite of Marcus Gabius Apicius,—that Apicius who so surpassed all mankind in voluptuous living that when he had once desired to learn how much he had already spent and how much he still had, on finding that two hundred and fifty myriads were left him became grief-stricken, feeling that he was destined to die of hunger, and took his own life. This Sejanus, accordingly, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... place of the festival, and it was filled already with a great company of children, their fathers and their teachers. Moors, Arabs, Berbers, and Jews, clad in their various costumes of white and blue and black and red—they were a gorgeous, a voluptuous, and, perhaps, a beautiful spectacle ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... coffee poems in English is Francis Saltus' (d. 1889) sonnet on "the voluptuous berry", as ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... used to portray the "finely-cut and well-moulded features," the "silken curls," the "dark and brilliant eyes," the "splendid forms," the "fascinating smiles," and "accomplished manners" of these impassioned and voluptuous daughters of the two races,—the unlawful product of the crime of human bondage. When we take into consideration the fact that no safeguard was ever thrown around virtue, and no inducement held out to slave-women to be pure and chaste, we will not be surprised when told that immorality ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... would say at first, second, or third sight of Angelique des Meloises. She was indeed a fair girl to look upon,—tall, and fashioned in nature's most voluptuous mould, perfect in the symmetry of every part, with an ease and beauty of movement not suggestive of spiritual graces, like Amelie's, but of terrestrial witcheries, like those great women of old who ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... pillow, she adjusted it beneath her head. She extended herself in the hammock with a deep breath of relief. She was not a supercilious or an over-dainty woman. She was not much given to reclining in the hammock, and when she did so it was with no cat-like suggestion of voluptuous ease, but with a beneficent repose which seemed to ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... repelled the charge; he was at Rome, he said, on the affairs of his see. In the full consistory Urban preached on the text, "I am the Good Shepherd," and inveighed in a manner not to be mistaken against the wealth and luxury of the cardinals. Their voluptuous banquets were notorious—Petrarch had declaimed against them. The Pope threatened a sumptuary law that they should have but one dish at their table: it was the rule of his own order. He was determined to extirpate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... when Philaster wounds Arethusa and the boy; and Perigot his mistress, in the "Faithful Shepherdess," both these are contrary to the character of manhood. Nor is Valentinian managed much better; for, though Fletcher has taken his picture truly, and shown him as he was, an effeminate, voluptuous man, yet he has forgotten that he was an emperor, and has given him none of those royal marks, which ought to appear in a lawful successor of the throne. If it be enquired, what Fletcher should have done on this occasion; ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... produced many plays, both tragedies and comedies, well known to readers of French poetry, his operatic poems are those which have rendered his memory illustrious. He died on November 29,1688. It is said that during his last illness he was extremely penitent on account of the voluptuous tendency of his works. All his lyrical dramas are full of beauty, but "Atys," "Phaeton," "Isis," and "Armide" have been ranked the highest. "Armide" was the last of the poet's efforts, and Lulli ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... underground house whose ceiling and walls were black as ebony, gave themselves up to day-dreams of shifting glory, in which the things of earth and the joys and passions of men reappeared, but transformed by the magic influence of the drug, made monstrous or fairylike, intensified or turned to voluptuous languors, through which the Ouled Nail floated like a syren, promising ecstasies unknown even in Baghdad, where the pale Circassian lifts her lustrous eyes, in which the palms were heavy with dates of solid gold, and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... say, Rose smiles in answer to my smile and we remain silent; our eyes gaze without seeing and our idle hands trail in the wet grass. We hear, without listening, the hoarse, fat, cooing-voluptuous voices of the doves: in the cool air of the morning, among the leaves, the flowers and the branches, it is an undercurrent of joy rising and falling, suspended for a moment and then ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... from the time Edith left him, he married Abby Wilson. She had grown into a voluptuous though coarse maturity, and was dashing in dress and manner. Her father had recently died, leaving her a fine property. She had always coveted Ben, and did not delay the nuptials from any sense of delicacy, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... in that of the Feast of Venus in the island of Cythera: about eleven feet by seven. There is also another, of himself, in the Garden of Love—with his two wives—in the peculiarly powerful and voluptuous style of his pencil. The picture is about four feet long. His portrait of one of his wives, of the size of life, habited only in an ermine cloak at the back (of which the print is well known) is an extraordinary production ... ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... mind several men of distinguished merit, whom he esteemed and hated, he adopted Aelius Verus a gay and voluptuous nobleman, recommended by uncommon beauty to the lover of Antinous. [40] But whilst Hadrian was delighting himself with his own applause, and the acclamations of the soldiers, whose consent had been secured by an ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... inexhaustible variety of her steps and her movements. First, in rapid transition, we saw her pass from a serious dignity to transports of pleasure, at first moderate, but growing more and more animated; then to soft and voluptuous languors; then to the delirium of joy, and then to some strange ecstasy more delirious still. Next, she disappeared in the far-off darkness of the huge hall, and the clash of the castanets grew feeble in proportion to the distance, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... came to see me at Clagny, and talked in a hopeless, desolate way about our dear one. He told me that neither glory nor ambition nor voluptuous pleasures could ever allure him or prove soothing to his soul. He assured me that life was a burden to him,—a burden that religion alone prevented him from relinquishing, and that he was determined to shut himself up in La Trappe or in some ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... company in 1787. Thus was created the famous "Northwest Company," which for a time held a lordly sway over the wintry lakes and boundless forests of the Canadas, almost equal to that of the East India Company over the voluptuous climes and magnificent ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Marianne's kiss on his lips, burning like ice. To-morrow,—in a few hours,—his first thought, his only thought would be to find that woman again, to experience that voluptuous impression, that dream that had penetrated his heart. A danger, Lissac had said. The feline eyes of Marianne had a dangerous ardor; but it was their charm, their strength and their adorable seductiveness, that filtered like a flame through ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... for my companion In short, madam, not to weary you with repetitions, I must tell you that I continued a whole year among those forty ladies, and received them into my bed one after another: and during all the time of this voluptuous life, we met not with the least kind of trouble. When the year was expired, I was greatly surprised that these forty ladies, instead of appearing with their usual cheerfulness to ask me how I did, entered my chamber one morning all in tears. They embraced me with great ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... and the insanities of passion are viewed from no standpoint of sentiment or soft emotion, but always in relation to philosophical ideas, or as the manifestation of something terrible in human life. Yet they lose nothing thereby in the voluptuous impression ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... down, and its long, golden rays streamed over hill and dale, palace and cot, clothing all in a voluptuous flow of rich light. ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... vice as a natural or amusing thing. Alcohol, gambling, and all unhealthy excitements must be shunned. Above all, the imagination must be controlled; nothing is more dangerous than the indulgence in voluptuous dreams. Longings so fostered, so pent up without outlet, are too apt to break out, in despite of scruples and resolves, if a favorable and alluring opportunity occurs. The battle against sin is won more in private than in the ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... finish the sentence. I can imagine that there is something rich and voluptuous and sating about amber, its color, and its lustre, and its scent; but for others, not for me. Yea, you have beauty, after all," turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye,—"beauty, after all, as you didn't say just now.—Mr. Willoughby ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... of her skin and the fine lines chiselled by tears around her eyes. Encircling her mouth, which Gay had once described as looking "as though it would melt if you kissed it," there was now a heavy blue shadow which detracted from the beauty of her still red and voluptuous lips. In many ways she was finer, larger, nobler than when he had first met her—for experience, which had blighted her physical loveliness, appeared, also, to have increased the dignity and quietness of her soul. Had Gay been able to ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... those of Debussy. Emerson is definite in that his art is based on something stronger than the amusing or at its best the beguiling of a few mortals. If he uses a sensuous chord, it is not for sensual ears. His harmonies may float, if the wind blows in that direction, through a voluptuous atmosphere, but he has not Debussy's fondness for trying to blow a sensuous atmosphere from his own voluptuous cheeks. And so he is an ascetic! There is a distance between jowl and soul—and it is ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... introduction of carriages. "Compare," he will say, "the fine gentleman of former times, ever on horseback, booted and spurred, and travel-stained, but open, frank, manly, and chivalrous, with the fine gentleman of the present day, full of affectation and effeminacy, rolling along a turnpike in his voluptuous vehicle. The young men of those days were rendered brave, and lofty, and generous, in their notions, by almost living in their saddles, and having their foaming steeds 'like proud seas under them.' There is something," he adds, "in bestriding a fine ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... as we swept rapidly past them, were as bathed in peace as when we had left them; there was even a more voluptuous content abroad: for the twilight was wrapping about the landscape its poppied dusk of gloom and shadow. Above, the birds were swirling in sweeping circles, raining down the ecstasy of their night-song; still above, far beyond them, across a zenith pure, transparent, ineffably ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... passion, the generation, from this passion, of voluptuousness, the transmission of this voluptuousness into passion, and the apprehension, by means of passion, of its unreality, forthwith altered his name for that of "Ch'ing Tseng" (the Voluptuous Bonze), and changed the title of "the Memoir of a Stone" (Shih-t'ou-chi,) for that of "Ch'ing Tseng Lu," The Record of the Voluptuous Bonze; while K'ung Mei-chi of Tung Lu gave it the name of "Feng ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... them what a priest could say in that style of poetry in a Catholic country. In vain did he write to his friends that "Don Juan" will be known by-and-by for what it is intended,—a satire on the abuses of the present state of society, and not a eulogy of vice. It may be now and then voluptuous: I can't help it. Ariosto is worse; Smollett ten times worse; Fielding no better. No girl will ever be seduced by reading "Don ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Nor yet, my country, do thy breezes bear, From citrons, or the blooming orange-grove, As in Rousillon's jasmine-bordered vales, Incense at eve. 480 But temperate airs are thine, England; and as thy climate, so thy sons Partake the temper of thine isle; not rude, Nor soft, voluptuous, nor effeminate; Sincere, indeed, and hardy, as becomes Those who can lift their look elate, and say, We strike for injured freedom; and yet mild, And gentle, when the voice of charity Pleads like a voice from ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... It was of magnificent dimensions! The light chains hanging from the frescoed ceiling, the links of which were hardly perceptible, were of silver, manufactured in Venice; the lower part was of opal-tinted glass, exactly portraying some voluptuous couch, on which the beautiful Amphitrite might have reclined, as she hastened through beds of coral to crystal grot, starred with transparent stalactites. In the centre of this shell, were sockets, whence verged small hollow ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... appetite, and prolonged enjoyment was exhausting him. This, indeed, was one of the causes of the deep silent sadness of Orlando, who was compelled to witness the swift deterioration of his conquering race, whilst Sacco, the Italian of the South—served as it were by the climate, accustomed to the voluptuous atmosphere, the life of those sun-baked cities compounded of the dust of antiquity—bloomed there like the natural vegetation of a soil saturated with the crimes of history, and gradually grasped everything, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... recall thee not, as on that day, When in thy sumptuous rooms, so redolent Of all the fragrant flowers of the spring, Arrayed in robe of violet hue, thy form Angelic I beheld, as it reclined On dainty cushions languidly, and by An atmosphere voluptuous surrounded; When thou, a skilful Syren, didst imprint Upon thy children's round and rosy lips Resounding, fervent kisses, stretching forth Thy neck of snow, and with thy lovely hand, The little, unsuspecting innocents Didst ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... following elements: (1) The antisocial principles, and distempered sensibility of Rousseau—his discontent with the present constitution of society—his paradoxical morality, and his perpetual hankerings after some unattainable state of voluptuous virtue and perfection. (2) The simplicity and energy (horresco referens) of Kotzebue and Schiller. (3) The homeliness and harshness of some of Cowper's language and versification, interchanged occasionally with the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... had changed its sex. It was Horace Jewdwine who had found that out, counting it as the first of his many remarkable discoveries. Being (in spite of his conviction to the contrary) a Jewdwine rather than a Harden, he had felt a certain malignant but voluptuous satisfaction in drawing the attention of the Master of Lazarus to this curious lapse in the family tradition. Now in the opinion of the Master of Lazarus the feminine intellect was simply a contradiction ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... inquirer would shift his place Till he could see round the curtain that screened me from people below. "A handsome girl," he would murmur, upstaring, (and so I am). "But—too much sex in her build; fine eyes, but eyelids too heavy; A bosom too full for her age; in her lips too voluptuous a look." (It may be. But who put it there? Assuredly it was ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... woman. She had fascinated, she had stung me, and had returned to her proper shape, gliding from me after inflicting the mortal wound, and instilling deadly poison into every pore; but her form lost none of its original brightness by the change of character, but was all glittering, beauteous, voluptuous grace. Seed of the serpent or of the woman, she was divine! I felt that she was a witch, and had bewitched me. Fate had enclosed me round about. I was transformed too, no longer human (any more than she, to whom I had knit myself) my ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... Vienna." exclaimed the empress. "If the cardinal is so shocked at a slight breach of etiquette, he should be careful to conceal his own deformities under its sheltering veil. Innocence may sin against ceremony; but he, who leads a dissolute and voluptuous life, should make decorum a shield wherewith to cover ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... wonder of the schools, Of the sciences the centre. What I gained from all my studies Was one doubt, a doubt that never Left my wildered mind a moment, Ever troubling and perplexing. I Justina saw, and seeing, To her charms my soul surrendered, And for soft voluptuous Venus Left the wise and learn'd Minerva. Baffled by Justina's virtue, I, pursuing though rejected, And from one extreme to another Passing on as passion led me, To my guest, who from the sea Found my feet a port of shelter, For Justina pledged my soul, Since at once he charmed my senses And ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... are laid aside. There are rites in which "words are uttered by persons who, on other occasions, would think themselves disgraced by the use of them."[1933] The Phalgun festival in northern India commemorates Krishna's voluptuous amusements. The rites are indecent.[1934] The mythological stories about the gods have to be converted by interpretation or special pleas into something which modern mores can tolerate.[1935] Songs, dances, pantomimes, and mythological dramas ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... old age, depression and Rosalind, yet knowing too how soon she herself would be smouldering with irritation; Gilbert, spare and cynical, writer of plays and literary editor of the Weekly Critic, and with him his wife Rosalind, whom Mrs. Hilary had long since judged as a voluptuous rake who led men on and made up unseemly stories and her lovely face, but who insisted on coming to The Gulls with Gilbert to see his adorable mother. Rosalind, who was always taking up things—art, or religion, or spiritualism, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... anew to the sense of indolent luxury and voluptuous ease his surroundings engendered,—and presently the aroma of rising incense mingled itself with the scent of the strewn rose-petals,—the pages had replenished the incense-burner, and now, these duties done so far, they brought each a broad, long stalked palm-leaf, and placing ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... part of the blue mantle, which formed a veil, was spread a mass of ruddy, gleaming hair; the snowy pallor of the face was warmed to the tint of ivory, and the lips deepened to scarlet and writhed in a voluptuous smile; the dark eyes glowed languidly; the lilies faded away, and the pale hands were held out ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... wall of the Acropolis, and gaze on the Parthenon, robed in the rich colors by which time has added an almost voluptuous beauty to its perfect proportions—to behold between its columns the blue mountains of the Morea, and the bluer seas of Egina and Salamis, with acanthus-covered or icy-wedded fragments of majestic friezes, and mighty capitals at your feet—the sky of Greece, flooded by the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... effeminate, yielding, pleasure-seeking favorite of the empress—you saw him devoted only to amusement and enjoyment, and you said to yourself: 'That is the man I need. As I cannot myself be made regent, let it be him! I will govern through him; and while this voluptuous devotee of pleasure gives himself up to the intoxication of enjoyments, I will rule in his stead.' Well, Mr. Field-Marshal, were not ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... a government victory, and consequently he was elected. I was glad to find the man unpopular among democrats of Paris, for his life, like his books, has many pages in it that were better not read. At that time he was living very quietly in a village just out of Paris, and though surrounded with voluptuous luxuries, he was in his life strictly virtuous. He was the same afterward, and being very wealthy, gave a great deal to the poor. His novels are everywhere read ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... enjoyed, too, the picturesqueness of the various things she met, the flocks of cattle, the birds taking their flight, and even the sound of the horses' feet splashing in the water. She enjoyed everything, in a kind of voluptuous reverie which was no longer instinctive, but ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... her to pass a furious night In varied vices and voluptuous art! Well did she train thy wife, who fools thee quite, And clasps, with ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... hater, but, unlike Fox, he had not a heart to love. He was fond of books and of wine and of women; he was a great drinker of wine, even for those days of deep drink. Beneath all the apparent energy and daring of his character there lay a voluptuous love of ease and languor. He was not a lazy man, but his inclination was always to be an indolent man. He leaped up to sudden political action when the call came, like Sardanapalus leaping up to the inevitable fight; but, like Sardanapalus, he would have been always ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... other participants in the Gluck-Piccinni feud there is not much to say. Sacchini was a man of notoriously luxurious and voluptuous life, but I do not find that he married. Salieri—whom Gluck assisted in the most generous manner, even to the extent of having one of Salieri's operas produced under his own name, and declaring the true author when it was a success—was married, and had many daughters, who lavished ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... by the vilest passions, commanded by some reckless adventurer, and paying a species of allegiance to any power that either endangered them, or afforded them the hopes of plunder. Bloodthirsty and voluptuous alike, they were viewed with equal terror by the Frank pilgrim, the Syriac villager, the Armenian merchant, and the Saracen hadji—whose ransom and whose spoil enriched their chambers, with all that the licentious tastes of East and West united could desire. ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... twittering talk, had no more effect upon her prey than on a stone image. No; although she hung over him, tapped him with too eloquent fingers, whispered jokes in his ear, and filled his nostrils with an exquisite and voluptuous perfume, she was powerless! ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Arabians[FN427] and Abyssinians; and 'Obayd ibn Tahir[FN428] had given him two hundred white girls and a like number of Abyssinian and native girls. Among these slave-borns was a girl of Bassorah, hight Mahbubah, the Beloved, who was of surpassing beauty and loveliness, elegance and voluptuous grace. Moreover, she played upon the lute and was skilled in singing and making verses and wrote a beautiful hand; so that Al-Mutawakkil fell passionately in love with her and could not endure from her a single hour. But when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... to tell you, I had shewn to the acute, discerning, and sagacious merchant Wombwell. It was written by Madame de Maigny, the Lady of the Chevalier de Maigny, of the regiment d'Artois, one of the Gentlemen with whom I had eat that voluptuous supper in company at Pont St. Esprit; but, as Mr. Wombwell shrewdly observed, my name was not even mentioned in that letter, it was the bearer only who was recommended; and how could that Lady, any more than Mr. Wombwell, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... only an artist. As we have noted, his novels have, as their end, one of the greatest contradictions of human life,—the synthesis of the voluptuous representations of the religion of classical antiquity and the moral principles of Christianity. It is, therefore, natural to ask whether he has in any way approached his goal and just where he sees the salvation of humanity, the present situation ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... whose wild pulse is thrilled by the adventurous interests of the huntsman and the wanderer, can beat in unison with the gentlest truth of deep devotion, is shown in "When other Friends are round Thee." "I love the Night" has the voluptuous elegance of the Spanish models. Were we to meet the lines "Oh, think of me!" in an anthology, we should suppose they were Suckling's—so admirably is the tone of feeling kept down to the limit of probable sincerity—which is a characteristic that the cavalier style of courting ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... 'share a March morning' with her, there is, at the mere contact of the sun, this outburst: 'Come and share my exquisite March morning with me: this sumptuous blaze of gold and sapphire sky; these scarlet lilies that adorn the sunshine; the voluptuous scents of neem and champak and serisha that beat upon the languid air with their implacable sweetness; the thousand little gold and blue and silver breasted birds bursting with the shrill ecstasy of life in nesting time. All is hot ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... "Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath'd earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains, misty topt! Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with blue! Earth of ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... cigarette. Her tall, slim figure looked even taller and slimmer in the tight-fitting black satin evening dress. Her features faintly suggested her relationship to Norman. She was a handsome woman, with a voluptuous discontented mouth. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... corruptors of Israel; or as, in the true spirit of the ancient prophets of his race, he rebukes Herod under the roof of that monarch's palace. No greater hero could a musician wish for as a source of inspiration, or as a means of exciting interest. Next to John stands the weak and voluptuous King,—a contrast as marked in character as in outward circumstance. The impulsive temperament of Herod is well brought out. One instant he resents John's boldness, and significantly exclaims, 'If I command to kill, they kill;' ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... of those calm noonday scenes which impress upon us their own bright and voluptuous tranquillity. There stood the old herdsman leaning on his staff, and the quiet cattle knee-deep in the gliding waters. Never did stream more smooth and sheen than was at that hour the surface of the Moselle mirror the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wild Oriental dream? Could it all be real—the glittering fires, the gayly-costumed crowds, the illuminated barge, the voluptuous strains of music? Might it not be some gorgeous freak of the emperor, such as the sultan in the Arabian Nights enjoyed at the expense of the poor traveler? Surely there could be nothing real like it since the days of ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... them, his head in its velvet cap, thrown back against the cushions, his lips smiling dreamily. His eye strayed over the voluptuous figure at his side—the snowy tunic and the ruby-red bodice and skirt. He knew the figure well, the red-gold hair and wondrous eyes. But a new look had come into ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... brave men". They see the large ball-room with its glass chandeliers, the costumes of handsome ladies, the scarlet uniforms and the decorations of the officers and the nobility. But can they realize the next imagery, that of sound, "and when music arose with its voluptuous swell"? Do they hear the squeaking of one or two fiddles or do they hear the voluminous sound of regimental bands? Do they notice the varying metre from the stately iambic to the sudden "voluptuous swell" of the foot of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Maudie—a portly, voluptuous-looking brunette—left her escort and went directly to the space by the piano. Here she was soon dancing with one of the coloured girls who had ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... neo-classicism, so "decadence" was a reaction against the hard, marmoreal forms of the "Parnasse," and in its train there came inevitably a general attack on poetic traditions. This movement was hailed with joy by the young men of Latin America, who are by nature more emotional and who live in a more voluptuous environment than their cousins in Spain; for they had come to chafe at the coldness of contemporary Spanish poetry, at its lack of color and its "petrified metrical forms." With the success of the movement there was for a time a reign of license, ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... would have presented him with his nephew! How different a figure did the same prince make in a reign of dissimilar complexion! The philosophic warrior, who could relax himself into the ornament of a refined court, was thought a savage mechanic, when courtiers were only voluptuous wits. Let me transcribe a picture of Prince Rupert, drawn by a man who was far from having the least portion of wit in that age, who was superior to its indelicacy, and who yet was so overborne by its prejudices, that he had the complaisance to ridicule virtue, merit, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... strange smile, dazzling yet enigmatical—and something wild and voluptuous seemed to stir in Gervase's pulses as he touched the small hand, loaded with quaint Egyptian gems, which she ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... perspective of the whole is kept steadily in view. No part is disproportionate or inappropriate. The arresting overture describing the swift and sudden approach of the Red Death, the gay, thoughtless security of Prince Prospero and his guests within the barricaded abbey, the voluptuous masquerade held in a suite of seven rooms of seven hues, the disconcerting chime of the ebony clock that momentarily stills the grotesque figures of the dancers, prepare us for the dramatic climax, the entry of the audacious guest, the Red Death, and his struggle with Prince Prospero. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... impatience.] O! contemptible!—a trifling, quaint, haughty, voluptuous, servile tool,—the mere lackey of party and corruption; who, for the prostitution of near thirty years and the ruin of a noble fortune, has had the despicable satisfaction, and the infamous honour—of being kicked up and kicked down—kicked in and kicked out,— just as the insolence, compassion, ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... John, speaking of the Norman princess Emma, who married the English Ethelred, says, after admitting her great personal beauty, that "her mental qualities were very far from corresponding with the charms of her person. Like all other Normans, she was greedy of gold, ambitious, selfish, voluptuous, and in an eminent degree prone to treachery."[I] This may stand for a portrait of the whole Norman race. Nor does it detract from their aristocratical spirit that they were ever fond of money, or from their chivalrous spirit that they were faithless when they supposed treachery would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... age, but so powerful of frame and so scrupulous in dress that he might have conveyed an impression of more youth. His face, though handsome in a high-bred way, was puffed and of an unhealthy yellow. But the eyes were as keen as the mouth was voluptuous, and in his carefully dressed black hair there ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... conscience, was perverted. The fountains of education were poisoned. Degenerate Grecian masters were inspiring their Roman pupils with a relish for a false science, a frivolous literature, a vitiated eloquence, an Epicurean creed, and a voluptuous life. ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... is a poem called "Lucretius on Life and Death," and was partly suggested by the vogue acquired by Fitzgerald's rendering of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The doctrine of Omar is, as everybody knows, a doctrine of voluptuous pessimism. There is no life other than this. Let us kiss and drink while it lasts. The doctrine of Lucretius is to a certain extent similar, but is sterner and more intellectual in its form. I accordingly selected from his great scientific ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... it stood in an alcove on the side of the room furthest from where she was. It was long, low, and gilded; plum-coloured curtains rose in voluptuous folds till they were joined near the ceiling by a pair ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... voluptuous woman," thought Brett. "A woman easily swayed, but never to be compelled, the ready-made ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... led them to create, and through which they meekly expressed the genuine and unique art within their soul: their myths, songs, dances, and their discoveries in the department of language, in order to distil therefrom a voluptuous antidote against the fatigue and boredom of its existence— modern art. How this society came into being, how it learned to draw new strength for itself from the seemingly antagonistic spheres of power, and ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... stereotyped. Liszt tells of the capricious life infused into its courtly measures by the Polish aristocracy. It is at once the symbol of war and love, a vivid pageant of martial splendor, a weaving, cadenced, voluptuous dance, the pursuit of shy, coquettish woman ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... sorts of voluptuous men, and of their death and defection; and of the continuance of ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... saw a small cluster of stars blinking, voluptuous, immeasurably overhead. Their pittance of light, as his eyesight cleared, showed a ladder rising flat against the wall. He reached up, grasped the bamboo rungs, hoisted with an acrobatic wrench, and ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... coveted—and still his excited fancy at once gave shape to what Rosa's dreamy babbling had stirred up within him. The child was enraptured with the dear Virgin who smiles at the innocent, but he adorned her with all the voluptuous charms which she—his eyes glittered as they hung on the woman ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... illness, Hatty. I can't move when I'm in bed. Robin has to get up and turn me a dozen times in one night.... Robin's a perfect saint. He does everything for me." Prissie's voice and her face softened and thickened with voluptuous content. ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... seen lobster, and a rare treat seemed to be in store for him. He breathed in what atmosphere there was in the dining-room, and waited for his bird. At last it was brought in. Mr. Visscher took one hasty look at the great scarlet mass of voluptuous limbs and oceanic nippers, and sighed. The lobster was as large as a door mat, and had a very angry and inflamed appearance. Visscher ordered in a powerful cocktail to give him courage, and then he tried to carve off some of ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... "hands threw the pearl away;" my own lips gave, sealed the sentence, that robbed me for ever, ay, for ever, of a heart—a treasure, it had been heaven to possess. SHE IS MINE NO LONGER—yet a pleasure it is, a melancholy pleasure, how I love it, to recall those moments of refined, of voluptuous enjoyment, my sole remaining happiness, that they were, my bitterest pang, that they are not—moments, when amid the busy circle—scarce could the eagle glance of surrounding observation control the bursting emotions of the soul, or, oh, more blest—moments ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... vague desire, Ere comes the nature destined to unbind Its virgin zone, and all its deeps inspire,— 70 Low stirrings in the leaves, before the wind Wake all the green strings of the forest lyre, Faint heatings in the calyx, ere the rose Its warm voluptuous breast doth ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... in tears swim ever; But by thy father's arm, by Odin's honour, Haste, hide thy tears and thee in shades of alder! Haste to the still, the peace-accustom'd valley, Where lazy herdsmen dance amid the clover. There wet each leaf which soft the west wind kisses, Each plant which breathes around voluptuous odours, With tears! There sigh and moan, and the tired peasant Shall hear thee, and, behind his ploughshare resting, Shall wonder at ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... free with the good name of an English citizen, the restraint of a prison cell is imposed upon the audacious libeller. Sometimes when a book offends against the public morals, and contains the outpourings of a voluptuous imagination, its author is condemned to lament in confinement over his indecorous pages. The world knows that Vizetelly, the publisher, was imprisoned for translating and publishing some of Zola's novels. Nana and L'Assommoir were indeed fatal ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... cabinets stand busts of old orators, interspersed with voluptuous vases and bronzes, antique or Italian, and airy statuettes in marble or alabaster of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... a privilege it is to be human! How much that is wonderful leaps to the eye-how the presence of beauty causes. the heart to throb with a voluptuous ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky |
