"Beholder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not this figure show forth! I discern in it the end of that Christian art which paints the soul and inspires the beholder with an ardent desire for heaven. Future painters will not restrain themselves as does this one to portraying on the side of a wall or on a wooden panel the cursed matter of which our bodies are formed; they will celebrate ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... of contemporary studio life that Hawthorne rather than Story created the "Cleopatra," and one ingenious spirit suggests that as Mr. Story put nothing of expression or significance into his statues, the beholder could read into them anything he pleased; finding an empty mould, so to speak, into which to pour whatever image or embodiment he might conjure up from the infinite realm of imagination. One of the latest ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... we can, by means of it, achieve feats not otherwise feasible. How else could we have raised to its sublime height that stupendous bridge which spans the Menai Straits, and which is the wonder of the beholder, as it is the boast of the designer? It stands where it does by the help of some mechanism indeed, but the true giant that lifted it on his shoulders and bore it to its airy elevation was the incompressible ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... into valleys, from Lake Champlain to Lake Ontario. The air was cold but full of magic sun-fire. All things were aglow—the frosty roadway, the white fields, the hoary forest, and the mind of the beholder. Trove halted, looking off at the far hills. Then he heard a step behind him and, as he turned, saw a tall man approaching at a quick pace. The latter had no overcoat. A knit muffler covered his throat, and a satchel hung from a strap ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... provide a more convenient resting-place for twin-glasses, than the ridge of Miss Thusa's nose, which rose with a sudden, majestic elevation, suggesting the idea of unexpectedness in the mind of the beholder. Every thing was harsh about her face, except the eyes, which had a soft, solemn, misty look, a look of prophecy, mingled with kindness and compassion, as if she pitied the evils her far-reaching vision beheld, but which she had not the power to ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... he had bearded a tyrant in his hour of blood; when a whole white population fled, he alone stood to his duty; and his behaviour under domestic sorrow with which the public has no concern filled the beholder with sympathy and admiration. A poor little smiling laborious man he looked; and you would have thought he had nothing in him but that of which indeed he ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ornithological coxcomb. The red-bird, the yellowbird, the indigo-bird, the oriole, the cardinal grosbeak, and others, all birds of brilliant plumage and musical ability, seem quite unconscious of self, and neither by tone nor act challenge the admiration of the beholder. ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... meaning enough. They must be a very aged or very stupid sort of revenants if their palingenetic substance does not thrill at the first nightly vision of Broadway, of that fairy flare of electric lights, advertising whiskeys and actresses and beers, and luring the beholder into a hundred hotels and theatres and restaurants. It is now past the hour of roof-gardens with their songs and dances, but the vaudeville is in full bloom, and the play-houses are blossoming in the bills of their new comedies and operas ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... which, turned to a silver hue, flowed down his marble neck in his shroud,—and a winning address, which, though slightly and insensibly tinged with hauteur on a first acquaintance, grew urgent and cordial, fascinated every beholder; while his intellectual faculties, which even thus early his habitual study of the severer sciences had sharpened, and which impelled him to venture fearlessly even with experts on vexed questions in law and morals, and his truly ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... was, as we have said, an elegant mansion—one of those imposing edifices, with fresh paint outside, and splendid furniture within, which impress the beholder with the idea of a family in ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... something quite different from ordinary beauty. Its seat was in her eyes, which many thought not at all beautiful, for they were like those gems called aquamarine, of a puzzling tint varying from blue to green, lustrous and lapping the beholder with their gentle lambency, except when passion moved her, when I have seen them glow with a menacing light as though they might shoot forth green flames. But now she was all loveliness. The vicissitudes of her tragic life had left no ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... a lifeless result, still continued; and the idea of a living creative Nature was in no wise awakened by it. Thus these ideal forms also could be animated by no positive insight into their nature; and if the forms of the Actual were dead for the dead beholder, these were not less so. Were no independent production of the Actual possible, neither would there be of the Ideal. The object of the imitation was changed; the imitation remained. In the place of Nature were substituted the sublime works of Antiquity, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... motion, and to follow it requires an intensity of concentration and an accuracy of memory which can be acquired, but for which, like most good things, we have to work. We all know the adage that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and that any work of art must be recreated in the imagination of the participant. The difficulty of this process of recreation, as applied to music, is that we have, derived from our ordinary daily experiences, so little to help us. Anyone can begin, at least, to ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... the river Phasis, in Colchis, Asia Minor, whence it was first brought to Europe by the Argonauts. The pheasant is one of the most beautiful of all fowls, and can only be rivalled by the peacock. The shifting hues upon his neck, and the brilliant scarlet and black around his head, strike every beholder with admiration. Pheasants are very good to eat, but sportsmen are not allowed to shoot them until the 1st of October, in order that they may have time to rear their young. In ancient times the pheasant was held in reverence by the heathen, and it was only ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... would shine forth in Mrs. Major-General Flareup's cockaded one, with a worsted shoulder-knot, and a much over-daubed light drab livery coat, with crimson inexpressibles, so tight as to astonish a beholder how he ever got into them. Humiliation, however, has its limits as well as other things; and Peter having been invited to descend from his box—alas! a regular country patent leather one, and invest himself in a Quaker-collared blue coat, with a red vest, and a pair of blue ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... undemonstrative father would naturally grow,—shy, sensitive, timid, and extremely grave. Her dress, thanks to Aunt Keery and the minister's wife, (who looked after her for her mother's sake,) was always well provided and neat, but no way calculated to cultivate her taste or to gratify the beholder. A district school provided her with such education as it could give; and the library, that was her resort at all hours of the day, furthered her knowledge in a singular and varied way, since its lightest contents were histories of all kinds and sorts, unless one may call the English Classics ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... fear: Where Memnon's statue magic strings inspire With vocal sounds, that emulate the lyre; And Thebes, such, Fate, are thy disastrous turns! Now prostrate o'er her pompous ruins mourns; A monkey-god, prodigious to be told! Strikes the beholder's eye with burnish'd gold: To godship here blue Triton's scaly herd, The river-progeny is there preferr'd: Through towns Diana's power neglected lies, Where to her dogs aspiring temples rise: And should you leeks or onions eat, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... feelings, that Niagara is indeed a wonder of the world, and not the less wonderful, because time and thought must be employed in comprehending it. Casting aside all preconceived notions, and preparation to be dire-struck or delighted, the beholder must stand beside it in the simplicity of his heart, suffering the mighty scene to work its own impression. Night after night, I dreamed of it, and was gladdened every morning by the consciousness of a growing capacity to enjoy it. Yet I will not pretend to the ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... fundamental difference between the trumpet and the bugle as regards the harmonic series. But although, to the casual beholder, these instruments may present a general similarity, there are other important structural distinctions. The tube of the trumpet is cylindrical, widening only at the bell, whereas that of the bugle, as stated above, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... if to give greater height than the columns alone would afford. Such in its main features was the Church of "St. Martin of the Golden Heaven", when Theodoric worshipped under its gorgeous roof. But its chief adornment, the feature which makes more impression on the beholder than anything else in Ravenna, was added after Theodoric's death, yet not so long after but that it may be suitably alluded to here as a specimen of the style of decoration which his eyes must have been wont to look upon. About the year 560, after the downfall of the ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... explanation in terms of natural causation, this must be furnished at the hands of the psychologist. It may be possible for him to show, more satisfactorily than hitherto, that all beauty, whenever and wherever it occurs, is literally "in the eyes of the beholder"; or that objectively considered, there is no such thing as beauty. It may be—and in my opinion it probably is—purely an affair of the percipient mind itself, depending on the association of ideas with pleasure-giving objects. This association may well lead to a liking for such objects, ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... scene that possessed the beholder with singular fascination, and in its effect of universal lunacy, it might well have seemed the last phase of a world presently to be destroyed. They who were in it, but not of it, as they fancied—though there was no reason for this—looked on it amazed, and at last their own ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... my uncle's residence afforded of the surrounding country was very pleasing to the beholder. Whatever way the eye turned, it rested upon well-cultivated farms, on which were erected comfortable and, in many ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... of nuptial rites, And crowns with honour Love and his delights, Of Athens was a youth, so sweet a face, That many thought him of the female race; Such quickening brightness did his clear eyes dart, Warm went their beams to his beholder's heart, In such pure leagues his beauties were combin'd, That there your nuptial contracts first were sign'd; For as proportion, white and crimson, meet In beauty's mixture, all right clear and sweet, The eye responsible, the golden hair, And none is held, without the other, fair; All spring ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... flourish in May, in likewise, every heart that is in any manner a lover spingeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds." . . . But all this must come, must spend itself, must pass him by, as a flaming pageant dies away from a beholder who is forbidden to kindle his own torch and claim his share of its innocent revels. He too had laid his plans to celebrate his marriage at the full tide of the Earth's joy, and these plans had ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... Thebes he had a splendid edifice constructed-which to this day delights the beholder by the symmetry of its proportions in memory of the hour when he escaped death as by a miracle; on its pylon he caused the battle of Kadesh to be represented in beautiful pictures in relief, and there, as well as on the architrave of the great banqueting—hall, he had the history inscribed of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... elegant, and its interior striking more from its immense size than the beauty of the proportion in which it is formed. In spite of all these circumstances, however, the Cathedral of Notre Dame produces a deep impression on the mind of the beholder; its towers rise to a stupendous height above all the buildings which surround them; while the stone of every other edifice is of a light colour, they alone are black with the smoke of centuries; and exhibit a venerable aspect of ancient greatness in the midst of the brilliancy of modern decoration ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... restrain'd Thy lips from lies, and speeches feign'd; Who made the Hearing, without wrong Did rescue thine from Siren's song. He let thee see the ways of men, Which thou with pencil, not with pen, Careful Beholder, down did'st note, And all their motley actions quote, Thyself unstain'd the while. From look Or gesture reading, more than book, In letter'd pride thou took'st no part, Contented with the Silent Art, Thyself as silent. Might I be As speechless, deaf, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Woodcliff Lake to supply water to many thousands of homes and the quietude of its shores and water breathes a kind of cleanliness and purity, which imparts to the lake a character quite its own. An unique feature of it is the causeway which bisects it, forming twin lakes, as it seems to the nearby beholder. But from a distant elevation this straight clean roadway across the very center of the lake stands out in bold relief, having none of the appearance of a bridge nor yet of a dam. From this causeway people are permitted to fish ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... day, when the young wanderer had started off to visit his friend, the farmer. But this cap very vividly and very pathetically suggested its owner. The holes in it were of every shape and size. The buttons besought the beholder to vote for suffrage, to buy liberty bonds, to join the Red Cross, to eat at Jim's Lunch Room, to use only Tyler's fresh cocoanut bars, to give a thought to Ireland. There was a Camp-fire Girls' badge, a Harding pin, a Cox pin, a Debs pin ... Hervey ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Its roomy porch was supported by pillars of the same stone. The bluish tint of balsam firs stood out against the darker foliage of the evergreens that surrounded it, and such trees as cut off the superb view from the piazza had been removed, leaving vistas which were an exaltation to the beholder. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... an undeniably good servant, and a cleanly one, striking the beholder as a creature born to unlimited caps and spotless aprons, is undoubtedly obtuse. She presents her back hair and heels—that would not have disgraced an elephant—to Miss Massereene's call, and goes on calmly with her occupation of shaking out and hanging up to dry the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... nearly flat in the new and wealthy quarter, the hilly portions, where the poorer classes live, are covered with brick or wooden huts of gaudy tints that astonish rather than charm the beholder. ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... force all normally constituted minds to the same series and combinations of perceptive acts; a fact which explains why the artist can transmit the shapes existing in his own mind to the mind of a beholder or hearer by combining certain objective stimulations, say those of pigments on paper or of sound vibrations in time, so as to provoke perceptive activities similar to those which would, ceteris paribus, have been provoked in himself if that shape had not ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... this, that I Sleeping, shall be colder, And in waking presently, Brighter to beholder! Differing in this beside (Sleeper, have you heard me? Do you move, and open wide Eyes of wonder toward me?)— That while I draw you withal From your slumber, solely,— Me, from mine, an angel shall, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... his attention to be directed to the immeasurable superiority of this glorious verse: the high poetic animation, the eagles' visits, the lovely looks of female beauty, the exhilarating gladness and joy affecting the beholder, all manifest the genius of the master bard. I shall receive it as a favour if any of your correspondents will furnish a complete copy of the original poem, and contrast it with what ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... own,—by the inflammatory character—which unremitting dissipation has imparted to the inhaling apparatus of his unclassical features,—by the filthy splendor of his linen, which a low-buttoning waistcoat, gorgeous and dirty likewise, unbosoms disadvantageously to the gaze of the beholder,—by the invariable "diamond" pin, of gift-book style, with which the juncture of the first-mentioned integument is effected, if not adorned,—and, above all, by the massive guards and guy-chains with which his watch is hitched on to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... most glorious are, Rejecteth no beholder, And your sweet beauty past compare, Made my poor eyes the bolder. Where beauty moves, and wit delights And signs of kindness bind me, There, oh! there, where'er I go I leave my ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... to be the first sculptor of the age, and his works are still greatly admired—for their exquisite finishing, and for their near resemblance to real life. They are certainly very attractive, and may be contemplated a considerable time with delight; but they never impose upon the beholder, and never raise in his mind any of those sublime ideas which he invariably experiences while contemplating the works of the ancients, or the modern productions of Michael Angelo Buonarotti. Canova, in fact, though he possessed the grace, the elegance, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... sort of mystic meaning no doubt, although I did not understand it; but what I did understand was that the whole arrangement was designed to produce a sort of mesmerism in the beholder. ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... Greece a tale of Athos would make out, Cut from the continent and sailed about; Seas bid with navies, chariots passing o'er The channel on a bridge from shore to shore; Rivers, whose depths no sharp beholder sees, Drunk, at an army's dinner, to the lees; With a long legend of romantic things, Which, in his cups, the browsy poet sings. —Tenth Satire. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... again a calm succeeded. All listened in breathless silence, and again the wished-for sound which spoke of the proximity of human society and Christian worship, came pealing across the desolate wastes, deserted of everything having life, and impressing the fancy of the beholder as does the desolation of long-forgotten cities, or the shattered marbles of the ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... a motionless beholder of the shifting spectacle; and not foreseeing when or how it would terminate, I determined, towards the middle of March, to repair to Nismes, and pass some weeks with my mother, whom I had not seen for a considerable time. I have still before my eyes the aspect of Paris, particularly ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of thrilling interest. To the apiarian the prospect of an increase of stocks is sufficient to create some interest, even when the phenomenon of swarming would fail to awaken it. But to the naturalist this season has charms that the indifferent beholder can never realize. ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... may there see the Salamander, several sorts of Barnacles, of Solan-Geese, the Bird of Paradise, such sorts of Snakes, and such Birds'-nests, and of so various forms, and so wonderfully made, as may beget wonder and amusement in any beholder; and so many hundred of other rarities in that collection, as will make the other wonders I spake of, the less incredible; for, you may note, that the waters are Nature's store-house, in which she locks ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... of using a fan. A clumsy woman makes an implement of this plaything, flourishing it to emphasize her talk, or, what is worse, pointing with it like an instructor before a blackboard. But in graceful hands it is unobtrusive, a mere bit of decoration that teases and fascinates the beholder's eye. ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... nose is rather salient, considering that it is half as long as her entire body), present a beauty and grace of form and movement quite unsurpassed by her dipterous allies. She draws near and softly alights upon the hand of the charmed beholder, subdues her trumpeting notes, folds her wings noiselessly upon her back, daintily sets down one foot after the other, and with an eagerness chastened by the most refined delicacy for the feelings of her victim, and with the ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... columns wrought in polished granite, with wonderful beauty of ornamentation, with architraves and roofs vast in size and exquisite in adjustment, which by their proportions tax the imagination, and lead the beholder to ask whether all ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... admired him, 'but full of nobility and fine feeling, and highly cultivated.' It must have been difficult to describe a face which was subject to such frequent changes of expression, but its forcefulness must have been apparent to every beholder. The eyes were black and bright, and they had a way of dilating when the composer was buried in thought so as to impart to his face an expression of being inspired. Gloomily abstracted as he would ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... River rises in romantic chasms, terrible to the picturesque beholder, at the roots of the Riesengebirge; overlooked by the Hohe-Kamms, and highest summits of that chain. "Out of eleven wells," says gentle Dulness, "EILF or ELF QUELLEN, whence its name, Elbe for ELF." Sure enough, it starts out of various wells; [Description, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and peacemaking a thing it is to be silent concerning others, and not carelessly to believe all reports, nor to hand them on further; how good also to lay one's self open to few, to seek ever to have Thee as the beholder of the heart; not to be carried about with every wind of words, but to desire that all things inward and outward be done according to the good pleasure of Thy will! How safe for the preserving of heavenly grace to fly from human approval, and not to ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... of fiddles, perhaps in the balcony of the stage." Such is the fate of criticism without knowledge! And now, to close our Masques, let me apply the forcible style of Ben Jonson himself: "The glory of all these solemnities had perished like a blaze, and gone out in the beholder's eyes; so short-lived are the bodies of all things in comparison ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... canvas touches of none but the seven colours juxtaposed [Claude Monet has added black and white] and leave the individual rays of each of these colours to blend at a certain distance, so as to act like sunlight upon the eye of the beholder." This is called dissociation of tones; and here is a new convention; why banish all save the spectrum? We paint nature, not ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... forehead peculiarly high, noble, and bold—thin and compressed lips—a mild, clear, blue eye—a large and prominent chin, and a general expression of countenance in which fearlessness and courage sat enthroned, and which told the beholder at a glance, what he had been, and was ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... an old inventory as being of "gould wire worke, sett with slight stones, and two little bells." A diadem is described by William of Malmsbury, "so precious with jewels, that the splendour... threw sparks of light so strongly on the beholder, that the more steadfastly any person endeavoured to gaze, so much the more he was dazzled, and compelled to avert the eyes!" In 1382 a circlet crown was purchased for Queen Anne of Bohemia, being set with a large sapphire, a balas, and four ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... particularly fortunate in her environment while at school to possess such qualities after knowing as she has known for twenty-two years that her beauty is dazzling to the eye of even the chance beholder. ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... be distinctly seen that Ercildoun lay directly in its pathway, and I was almost horrified to think of such a destructive power moving through a village, for it seemed to a beholder as though no structure erected by human hands could, for a moment, stand before it, and it seems marvellous, considering the destruction done at this place, that not a single human life was lost, and only one in its whole line ...
— A Full Description of the Great Tornado in Chester County, Pa. • Richard Darlington
... subdued gleam. The silvery effulgence of the moon, the sombre and deserted look of the buildings around, and the general stillness that pervades every object, save the scene of action, might inspire the mind of a Rembrandt, or introduce to the mere casual beholder feelings at once new ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... possession of the females; male salmons have been observed fighting all day long; male stag-beetles sometimes bear wounds from the mandibles of other males; the males of certain other insects have been frequently seen fighting for a particular female who sits by, an apparently unconcerned beholder of the struggle, and then retires with the conqueror. The war is, perhaps, severest between the males of the polygamous animals, and these seem oftenest provided with special weapons. The males of carnivorous animals are already well armed, though to them special ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... pearls and diamonds which threw out all the beautiful tints of the rainbow. She was white, perhaps too much so, and whenever she raised her downcast eyes there shone forth a spotless soul. When she smiled so as to show her small white teeth the beholder realized that the rose is only a flower and ivory but the elephant's tusk. From out the filmy pina draperies around her white and shapely neck there blinked, as the Tagalogs say, the bright eyes of a collar of diamonds. One man ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... got up, gaunt and staring, he appealed to the beholder as the most helpless thing which the Creator had clothed in the semblance of ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... heads of the apostles; and in his attempt to give meekness to the countenance of Jesus, he sank into insipience. He had the prudence, therefore, to leave the face unfinished, that the imagination of the beholder might not be disappointed by an imperfect image, but form one in his mind more appropriate to his feelings and to the subject. The ruin of this picture, the report of which I understand is true, has deprived the world ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... women—presented a spectacle the like of which we never before witnessed. A glance at the "good old lady" who presided with so much dignity and propriety, and through the list to the youngest engaged in the cause, was enough to impress the unprejudiced beholder with the idea that there must be something in the movement.... The audience was large and more impressive than has marked any convention ever held here.... We feel in a mood to dip lightly into a discussion of the Woman's Rights question.... Our sober second thought dictates that a three days' ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... though black and of piercing lustre, have a cast which I cannot well explain. It lessens without destroying their lustre and their force to charm; but all personal defects are outweighed by her heart and her intellect. There is the secret of her power to entrance the soul of the listener and beholder. It is not only when she sings that her utterance is musical. It is not only when the occasion is urgent and the topic momentous that her eloquence is rich and ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... standing, a short distance apart from them was a strikingly handsome man, who, from his air of superiority, Lane at once knew to be the commander. His perfectly poised and graceful attitude, and thorough composure, as he removed a cigar from his mouth and motioned an order to the helmsman, struck the beholder ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... lovingly on her damask cheek, and when raised, revealed a depth and brilliancy which does not often fall to the lot of mortals; a mouth not too small, whose beautifully shaped lips, when parted, disclosed to the beholder teeth of ivory whiteness, small and most evenly set, dazzling indeed was the effect of those pearly treasures; tall, slight, and elegantly formed, with a bearing aristocratic and queenly in the extreme; what wonder that she was the sunshine ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... symbolize to the beholder many subtleties of soul-beauty which by no other method could gain expression. Those subtleties may not, probably do not, exist in the possessor of the face. The power of such a countenance lies not so much in what it actually represents, as in the suggestion it holds out to another. So often ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... even that of expression, does not really do itself justice. How many lovely and lovable faces there are, for instance, among the working classes, which, if they had but the advantages which ladies possess, might create delight, respect, chivalrous worship in the beholder—but are now never appreciated, because they have not the same fair means of displaying themselves which even the savage girl of the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... of the child that Tangle stood dumb before him. He had no smile, but the love in his large gray eyes was deep as the centre. And with the repose there lay on his face a shimmer as of moonlight, which seemed as if any moment it might break into such a ravishing smile as would cause the beholder to weep himself to death. But the smile never came, and the moonlight lay there unbroken. For the heart of the child was too deep for any smile to reach from it ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... procession of church officials in their beautiful robes, who carry the Bambino about the church for the worshipers to behold and kiss its robes or its toe. The larger the church the more beautiful the sight generally, although to a Protestant beholder the smaller churches with their enforced simplicity often prove more satisfactory ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... of shields, animal heads, colonnettes and other devices between and above these windows. The council-house or town-hall has a beautiful colonnade supporting arches, and a quaint nondescript creature whose abyss-like maw opens wide and gapes horribly at the beholder each time the clock strikes. A bas-relief in the hall represents a curious incident in the civic history of the town, the successful struggle of Burgomaster Gryn with a lion, the show and pet of some treacherous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... knife and heavy rifle, and the expression of his brow and chin indicated an unusual degree of firmness and determination, yet there was an openness and blandness in the expression of his features which won the confidence of the beholder, and instantly dispelled every apprehension of violence. All of the emigrants had either seen or heard of him before, for his name was not only repeated by every tongue in the territory, but was familiar in every State in the Union, and not ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... man, of an erect figure and carriage, a fair complexion, and a most attractive countenance. "He had," his biographer tells us, "a soft, tremulous voice, very pleasing to the hearer, and laughing gray eyes that appeared to fascinate the beholder," except in his rare moments of anger, when their fiery glance would curdle the blood of those who had roused his wrath. He was above all the heroes of Ohio history, both in his virtues and his vices, the type of the Indian fighter. He was ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... is not one of reproach that others are not as himself, but of pity and desire; and whose hand would rather be stretched forth to lift up the fallen than to smite the offender. To complete this expression, and inspire the beholder with perfect confidence, the left hand rests upon a little child, who stands with familiar reverence at his knee, and looking up into his face seems to say, 'No evil can come to ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... masks, of all shapes, forms and appearances; some horrible, some odd, some commonplace, and some fantastical, and altogether, a medley of strange, undecipherable, yet impressive combination of devices, well calculated to excite a feeling of awe, and, with the timid, of terror, in the mind of the beholder. Into this singular assemblage Hurd was ushered, a wilderness of confused images before him. He was taken through a course introductory to the more serious parts of the formula of induction into the order, which were intended to increase the first bewildered impressions on entering the ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... Phaenomenon more, which may, if care be used, exhibit to the beholder, as it has divers times to me, an exceeding pleasant, and not less instructive Spectacle; And that is, if curiosity and diligence be used, you may so split this admirable Substance, that you may have pretty large Plates (in companion of those smaller ones which ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... justly made odious. To the arguments of abuse I will after answer; only thus much now is to be said, that the comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be; so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one. Now, as in geometry, the oblique must be known as well as the right, and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even; so in the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil to perceive the ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... I was a married woman once, mind. An' I tell you 'beauty doth lie in the eye o' the beholder', my dear, an' the two eyes as is a-goin' t' behold you this night is goin' t' behold so much beauty as ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... scene from the wild and wonderful in Nature. Its romantic luxuriance must win the attention of the artist, and the admiration of the less wistful beholder; while the philosophic mind, unaccustomed to vulgar wonder, may seek in its formation the cause of some of the most important changes of the earth's surface. Our esteemed friend and correspondent Vyvyan, is probably familiar with the locality of Lydford: his fancy might people it with pixies, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... meeting was Mr. S., a very handsome old gentleman, of venerable and powerful appearance. He had snowy hair and a long white beard, but from under shaggy eyebrows there blazed out great black eyes which warned the beholder that the snow was an ornament and not a sign of decrepitude. The eve of my baptism at length drew near; it was fixed for October 12, almost exactly three weeks after my tenth birthday. I was dressed in old clothes, and a suit of smarter things was ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... Jacobin as ever pent a free mutinous spirit in a muslin frock and sash. Not malignant by nature, her language was not so bitter as it was racy, and the expressive little face gave a piquancy to every phrase which held a beholder's interest captive. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... walls ramble along like running things alive. Like giant stairways the terraces lead up and down the mountain side, and, whether the levels are empty, dirt-colored areas, fresh, green-carpeted stairs, or patches of ripening, yellow grain, the beholder is struck with the beauty of the artificial landscape and marvels at the industry ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... of the men, and the unkempt locks of the women—produce further revolting sensations. It is not till past mid-day that the noise of labour ceases, and that the toilette is put into a complete state for the captivation of the beholder. By four or five o'clock the streets become half thinned. On a Sunday, every body rushes into the country. The tradesman has his little villa, and the gentleman and man of fortune his more capacious ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... task was in hand. I will not say that it is as difficult to describe aright that rush of waters as it is to paint it well. But I doubt whether it is not quite as difficult to write a description that shall interest the reader as it is to paint a picture of them that shall be pleasant to the beholder. My friend the artist was at any rate not afraid to make the attempt, and I also ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... became covered with a warm mist, that oozed from the soil; the brownish vapor scarcely allowed the beholder to distinguish objects, and so, fearing collision with some unexpected mountain-peak, the doctor, about five o'clock, gave ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... whirling motion, circling as it flew, The mass he hurl'd. As by the bolt of Heav'n Uprooted, prostrate lies some forest oak; The sulph'rous vapour taints the air; appall'd, Bereft of strength, the near beholder stands, And awestruck hears the thunder-peal of Jove; So in the dust the might of Hector lay: Dropp'd from his hand the spear; the shield and helm Fell with him; loud his polished armour rang. On rush'd, with joyous shout, the sons of Greece, In hope to seize ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... reading or sewing, it's right To sit, if you can, with your back to the light; And then, it is patent to every beholder, The light will ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... begin to droop, and hang their withered leaves and blossoms, and nothing soon remains but the bare twigs, while the dark forest, on which no art or care was ever bestowed, and which towered up towards heaven long before human remembrance, bears every blast unshaken, and fills the solitary beholder with ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... top to top, and sending thousands of forked tongues a hundred feet or more athwart the midnight darkness, lighting up with lurid gloom and glare the surrounding scenery of lake and mountains, fills the beholder with mingled feelings of awe and astonishment. I never before saw anything so terribly beautiful. It was marvelous to witness the flash-like rapidity with which the flames would mount the loftiest trees. The roaring, ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... and are arrested; and so onwards to the extremity; and thus the shoot winds round its support. When the shoot follows the sun in its revolving course, it winds round the support from right to left, the support being supposed to stand in front of the beholder; when the shoot revolves in an opposite direction, the line of winding is reversed. As each internode loses from age its power of revolving, it likewise loses its power of spirally twining. If a man swings a rope round his head, and the end hits a ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... American rockers, and an elaborate business table; spirits and soda-water (with the mark of Schweppe, no less) stood ready on a butler's tray, and in one corner, behind a half-drawn curtain, I spied a camp-bed and a capacious tub. Such a room in Barbizon astonished the beholder, like the glories of the cave of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... band of sunlight which followed her through the door became the young wife well. It illuminated her as her presence illuminated the heath. In her movements, in her gaze, she reminded the beholder of the feathered creatures who lived around her home. All similes and allegories concerning her began and ended with birds. There was as much variety in her motions as in their flight. When she was musing she was a kestrel, which hangs ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... good within our grip is sublime. To each the image rises. An army, a host of faces keen with knowledge, calm with contentment, eager with honest ambition looks up. Men, women, boys, girls—humanity gazes at the beholder. The eye does not glimpse the last face, far out beyond the faint horizon of the panorama. . . ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... two ancient stately towers of some Gothic potentate rearing their heads above the surrounding trees. What with their situation and their shape together, they strike the beholder with an idea of antiquated grandeur which he will never forget. He may travel far and near and see nothing like them. On looking at them through a glass the summit of the southern one appeared crowned with bushes. The one ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... beautiful hair which had so charmed her husband, was changed into a {145} venomous snake; her once gentle, love-inspiring eyes now became blood-shot, furious orbs, which excited fear and disgust in the mind of the beholder; whilst her former roseate hue and milk-white skin assumed a loathsome greenish tinge. Seeing herself thus transformed into so repulsive an object, Medusa fled from her home, never to return. Wandering about, abhorred, dreaded, and shunned by all the world, she now developed into a character, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... bearing which is a compound of strength and ease; effortless, quiet, graceful, and dignified. Though in part the result of a certain symmetry of joints and practised activity in the use of them, this sort of bearing refers itself also, and yet more surely, to the character, and makes upon the beholder the impression again of strength and ease in the mental action. It is not common; it struck Dolly in the first five steps he made into the room and in the manner of his greeting his betrothed. Out of delicate consideration, I suppose, for the company in which ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... absorption into ourselves within, but as a great spectacle without us, the spectacle of a great visible manifestation of GOD. It is a sight, a picture, a representation, that constitutes the heavenly state, not mere thought and contemplation. The glorified saint of Scripture is especially a beholder; he gazes, he looks, he fixes his eyes upon something before him; he does not merely ruminate within, but his whole mind is carried out towards and upon a great representation. And thus Heaven specially appears in Scripture as the sphere of perfected sight, where the faculty ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... sight worth seeing, that of the Lycosa dragging her treasure after her, never leaving it, day or night, sleeping or waking, and defending it with a courage that strikes the beholder with awe. If I try to take the bag from her, she presses it to her breast in despair, hangs on to my pincers, bites them with her poison-fangs. I can hear the daggers grating on the steel. No, she would not allow herself to be robbed of the wallet with impunity, if my fingers ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... hundred years ago, whose lineaments once seen can never be forgotten. The long pointed features, narrow eye, and smirk of the one, so suggestive of merciless treachery; the bill-hook nose, large teeth, and bold eye of the other suggesting arrogance to the point of ferocity, haunt the beholder afterwards ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Tacks made of rubber, matches that explode or refuse to light, exploding cigars or cigarettes, fountain-pens that smear ink over the fingers immediately they are put to use, "electric" bells with pins secreted in their push buttons, and boutonnieres that squirt water into the face of the beholder, ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... built up by these deposits are exquisite specimens of Nature's work and are filled with water of wonderful transparency; while the variety of forms of these receptacles and their charming colors fascinate the beholder. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... swanlike chest, and her almost too exuberant bust. This instrument for the distorted, with its bright crimson leather, thus pressed into the service of the beautiful, had a most singular and exciting effect upon the beholder. I have often thought of this girl in my maturer years, and confess that no dress that I ever beheld gave a more piquant interest to the wearer, than those straps and irons. The jade never wore them at home: perhaps ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... The ladies were quite lost in the spacious habits provided for them. Likewise, they were curiously swathed in shawls and scarfs of various make and texture, and might be considered representatives of any age, past, present, or future, to which the beholder might take a fancy. Mr. Stellato had been got into the only article of male attire which the establishment afforded. This was an ancient dressing-gown, very small in the arms, and narrow in the back: it had belonged to Twynintuft ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... this bodily grace is to prepossess the beholder. First impressions are received through the eye. Before a word is spoken, the pose and carriage convey a significant announcement of character ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... adjoining room opened, and Miss McLeod entered. An old woman, of course, and a fashionable woman, but with a young-old face and figure. Not the graceful airiness of youth, so often painful in its desire to impress the beholder with what it is not, but an old age to which all the good things of life, rightly used, have contributed, and brought about a delightful result. She was of medium height, and possibly had not been handsome in her palmy days; but she challenged one's respect for a true and honorable womanhood, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... glaring red brick with white stone corners. These colors and their contrast relieve the stately mass of some of that grimness which characterizes the castles of antiquity; but enough remains to strike some awe into the beholder. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Shortland) 'it is always ominous to see the figure of an absent person. If the figure is very shadowy, and its face is not seen, death, although he may ere long be expected, has not seized his prey. If the face of the absent person is seen, the omen forewarns the beholder that he ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Angelico maintains his assertion of the authority of abstract imagination, which, depriving his subject of all material or actual being, contemplates it as retaining qualities eternal only—adorned by incorporeal splendor. The eyes of the beholder are supernaturally unsealed: and to this miraculous vision whatever is of the earth vanishes, and all things are seen endowed with an harmonious glory—the garments falling with strange, visionary grace, glowing with indefinite gold—the walls of the chamber dazzling as of a heavenly ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... half hour every evening and let the gladness in her young heart go forth to mingle itself with gladness of nature around her. The universal mother and friend, thus looked directly down upon, seems to assume a smile more directly responsive to the thoughts and emotions in the beholder's mind than when viewed from the general level. The little girl may have had but the faintest intimation of such an interchange; yet, depend upon it, had it not existed, she never would have troubled herself to clamber up the hill, excepting ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... whole fortune of Tomlinson vanish in a night, even as the golden palace seen in the mirage of a desert sunset may fade before the eyes of the beholder, and ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... linger for hours, if time permits, and as the changing lights bring into prominence different mural features, or the moving clouds cast their revealing shadows on first one, then another, of the temples and towers, the reverent beholder feels that he is on holy ground. It is indeed superlative in color, in shadow, in form, in majesty, in variety and in ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... Whittington and Robert Herrick, he hurried out of it. He turned into St. Paul's Churchyard, eager to see the Cathedral, but as he did so, his heart fell. The Eastern end of the Cathedral does not impress the beholder. John ought to have seen St. Paul's first from Ludgate Hill, but, coming on it from Cheapside, he could not get a proper view of it. He had expected to turn a corner and see before him, immense and wonderful, the great church, rich in tradition and dignity, rearing itself high ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... engaged in these acts of courtesy, his graceful manner, expressive features, and dignity of deportment, made a singular contrast with the coarseness and meanness of his dress. Montrose possessed that sort of form and face, in which the beholder, at the first glance, sees nothing extraordinary, but of which the interest becomes more impressive the longer we gaze upon them. His stature was very little above the middle size, but in person he ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... which may be named. His soul is a moral paradise full of charming flowers, shining in every variety of color, under the blue dome of the skies, drinking in the refreshing dews of heaven and the warming beams of the sun, sending its sweet fragrance around, and filling the beholder with rapturous delight. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the grass growing in the bricked court, the pond green with duckweed, and the absence of all living things, cows, horses, pigs, turkeys, geese, or chickens—and still more of those talking, as well as living things, women and children—all impressed on the beholder that strange sensation of melancholy which few can have failed to experience at the sight of an uninhabited human habitation. The one solitary inmate failed to relieve the pressing sense of solitude. Nothing but the ringing sound of female voices, the pleasant ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... islands of all sizes and of all forms, gently rising out of the limpid rippling stream, or boldly standing forth from the deep blue water, presenting a rugged, rocky moss-clad front to the wonderstruck beholder. On the 20th of July, some cruisers from Sackett's Harbour, succeeded in surprising and capturing, at daybreak, a brigade of batteaux laden with provisions, under convoy of a gun-boat. They made off with their prize to Goose Creek, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger |
