"Delicacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of these children I should judge to be about twelve years, and the youngest about seven. They were all girls, and looked nice and clean, and their healthful appearance and natural delicacy gave them a ready welcome. They appeared as if they had been brought up to fear God and love their humble home and mother. I had often stopped my train and let them get off at their home, having found them at the station some three miles from ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... be some want of delicacy in asking his client to account for the sums of money he had ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... and after dinner partook of a bottle of the best port which the inn afforded. After a few glasses, we had a great deal of conversation; I again brought the subject of marriage and love, divine love, upon the carpet, but Francis almost immediately begged me to drop it; and on my having the delicacy to comply, he reverted to dog-fighting, on which he talked well and learnedly; amongst other things, he said that it was a princely sport of great antiquity, and quoted from Quintus Curtius to prove that the princes of India must have been of the fancy, they having, according to that ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... made her appearance. She found her, alike in person, manners and conversation, a coarse and ordinary woman, not more unlike her son in talents and acquired accomplishments, than dissimilar to her daughter in softness and natural delicacy. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... this work frequently for illustration, because it is the only one I know in which the engraver has worked with delicacy enough to give the real forms and touches of Turner. I can reason from these plates, (in questions of form only,) nearly as well as I could ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... and that he had acquired the power of ranging the country after dusk, and sometimes in broad day, in the form of a wolf. He had assured her that he had killed and devoured many dogs, but that he found their flesh less palatable than the flesh of little girls, which he regarded as a supreme delicacy. He had told her that this had been tasted by him not unfrequently, but he had specified only two instances: in one he had eaten as much as he could, and had thrown the rest to a wolf, which had come up during the repast. In the other instance he had bitten to death another little girl, ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... ceiling low; the frescos not elaborate, but of admirable simplicity and delicacy. The furniture comprised merely a few divans, chairs, and tripods, but all of the choicest wood or brass, and the most excellent upholstery. One or two carved wooden cupboards for books completed ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... rose, because, both being beautiful, you can eat the one and not the other. At any rate, Beddoes is among the roses: it is in his expression that his greatness lies. His verse is an instrument of many modulations, of exquisite delicacy, of strange suggestiveness, of amazing power. Playing on it, he can give utterance to the ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... startled to find himself without appetite, and pushing away his tough steak and fried potatoes, he arose and returned to the street. The problem before him required delicacy of handling, and he was not one to assume a tactful manner. The closer he came to the meeting the more difficult it became. He must see her without causing comment, and without Jack's aid he saw no way of doing ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the race of men, were the fittest for the purpose. At least, we do not find in the whole world any thing equally favorable and encouraging. Even to natural religion, if we assume that it arose earlier in the human mind, there pertains much of delicacy of sentiment; for it rests upon the conviction of an universal providence, which conducts the order of the world as a whole. A particular religion, revealed by Heaven to this or that people, carries with it the belief in a special providence, which the Divine Being vouchsafes ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... akimbo, regarded him. Mr. Heatherbloom repaid her gaze with interest; it was the cook, then, who acted as door tender of these regions subterranean. He feared by her expression that he had interrupted her in the preparation of some esculent delicacy, and with the fear was born a parenthetical inquiry; he wondered what that delicacy might be? But forbearing to inquire ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... The very manner in which Iras and Alexas whispered together, without heeding her presence, boded peril, for courtiers show such contempt only to those whom they know are threatened with the indifference or resentment of the sovereign. Barine, during her married life with a man devoid of all delicacy of feeling, and with a disposition as evil as his tongue was ready, had learned to endure many things which were hard to bear; yet when, after a remark from Iras evidently concerning her, she heard Alexas laugh, she was compelled to exert the utmost self-restraint to avoid telling her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... parents whom she had never been accustomed to withstand. But she quieted me with that singular earnestness of look and manner which had once before impressed me previous to our mutual explanation. Like vulgar thinkers generally, I was apt to confound weakness of frame and delicacy of organization with a want of courage and moral resources ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... uncertain touch which give us the feeble pictures and the lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas or in stone. A true artist, therefore, can hardly fail to have a sharp, well-defined mental physiognomy. Besides this, many young girls have a strange audacity blended with their instinctive delicacy. Even in physical daring many of them are a match for boys; whereas you will find few among mature women, and especially if they are mothers, who do not confess, and not unfrequently proclaim, their timidity. One of these young girls, as many ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the Kayans. Next morning Raja Besar and his stately wife, of Oma-Suling nobility, accompanied by the kapala of the kampong and others, paid me a visit, presenting me with a long sugarcane, a somewhat rare product in these parts and considered a great delicacy, one large papaya, white onions, and bananas. In return I gave one cake of chocolate, two French tins of meat, one tin of ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... the sincerity of this, and the Padre, Tillingite to the marrow, instantly concluded that Miss Mapp knew what (or who) was the cause of all this unique disturbance. And as she bent her head again over the chrysanthemums, and quite distinctly grew brick-red in the face, he felt that delicacy prevented his inquiring ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... it," she said, "Mary Bartley is a young lady incapable of misconduct; she is prudence, virtue, delicacy, and purity in person; the man she was with at that place was sure to be her husband, and who should that be but Walter, whom ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... and toast it over the coals, or melt it in a skillet and pour it hot over toast or biscuit. This gave the cheese a new and sweeter flavor. When spread on bread, either plain, or browned over the fire, the result, in combination, was a delicacy fit for a king, and equal to ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... here that we find how much we have gained, in delicacy of inclusion and rejection, by following these high and lonely tracks. All the materials of art, the littered quarries, so to speak, of its laborious effects have become, in fact, of new and absorbing interest. Forms, colours, words, sounds; ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... canonry as long as he enjoyed it, and to diminish a sense of obligation, he required the Doctor to return him another bond, subjecting himself to a similar division, in case a change of times should cause another revolution of incumbents. The delicacy of this proceeding, at a time so peculiarly unfavourable to the hopes of Loyalists, tended much to assist the Doctor's endeavours of making his family charitably disposed, and even Mrs. Mellicent went so far as to lament that ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... that he had to be assisted into a hansom. He still maintained, however, that Japanese chambers were worth making some sacrifice for; and when the other Arcadians saw his condition they had the delicacy not to contradict him. They thought ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... whether one likes or dislikes, the chances are that one dislikes. Who would think of asking himself if he liked beech-trees, or larches, or willows? A little later he stood lost in admiration of a line of willows all a-row in front of a stream; they seemed to him like girls curtseying, and the delicacy of the green and yellow buds induced him to meditate on the mysteries that ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... capacious shade from the noonday heat. It is a variety of the Valonia oak, with delicate, downy, pale-green leaves, much serrated, and contrasts beautifully with the dark green spires of the cypresses behind. The leaves at the time of my visit had but recently unfolded, and exhibited all the delicacy of tint and perfection of outline so characteristic of young foliage. The garden was in the first fresh flush of spring—that idyllic season which, in Italy more than in any other land, realises the glowing descriptions of the poets. Plucking a leafy twig from the branches and a gray ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... precious pages of a missal. Doves fluttered on the lowly roofs. Everywhere was the calling of birds and the smell of broken earth. The minister and Mary fell behind along the way. Kerrenhappuch Green, caught walking westward to the creek, his stale pockets bulged by bait, hid with a simple delicacy in the roadside bushes from Davie's face. Only the children hastening from school nodded to him as he passed them, nor hushed the loud clatter of their ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... now cast aside in a careless fold of soft drapery over her shoulders, and her face in its ethereal delicacy of feature and brilliant coloring looked almost too beautiful to be human. Dr. Dean did not reply for a moment; he was thinking what a singular resemblance there was between Armand Gervase and one of the figures on a certain Egyptian fresco in ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... with his conduct. By this means, I think I shall have done all that my attachment and duty prescribe. I rid the King of a faithless domestic, without ruining the individual." I did as Madame ordered me: her delicacy and address inspired me with admiration. She was not alarmed on account of the lady, seeing what her pretentions were. "She drives too quick," remarked Madame, "and will certainly be overturned on the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... prosecuted the perpetrators of the outrages—we, as members, my dear brethren, of Christ's Body, have to be guided by other considerations. While upon this subject of George Allen, I may say, with as much delicacy as is permissible to a faithful minister of God's holy Word, that I fear George has been—a—h'm—what shall I say?—at least led astray by an unhappy intimacy with a female residing in the metropolis who is an infidel. I have no doubt in my own mind that the knowledge of ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... personal merit in the meanest of mankind. [2] The Cupid of the ancients was, in general, a very sensual deity; and the amours of an empress, as they exact on her side the plainest advances, are seldom susceptible of much sentimental delicacy. Marcus was the only man in the empire who seemed ignorant or insensible of the irregularities of Faustina; which, according to the prejudices of every age, reflected some disgrace on the injured husband. He promoted several of her lovers to posts of honor ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Texas, it is said, it costs more to raise ten chickens than to bring up ten children. (Kennedy, Czarnkowski's translation, 1846, 115.) The independent breeding of fowl is advisable only where there are a great many rich consumers; for the reason that they are naturally a delicacy. Enormous production of pigeons in Cambridge, Huntington etc. (McCulloch, Statistical Account, I, 189.) In Paris the consumption of pork and fowl has gained somewhat since the Revolution. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... marked. The two outer ones (S S) we may neglect, for they are only protecting sheaths; that in the middle (I S) is the sting proper. This consists of two parts, (1) a strong gouge-like portion, and (2) a pair of darts of marvellous delicacy. These darts we cannot see in position because they lie on the other side of the gouge-like piece. But to the left you will notice a long sword-like blade, drawn separately, with a curiously crooked handle and a sharp barbed point. This is one of the pair of darts. Those who have had ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Celeste, who prided herself on her delicacy, "I never could eat more than would satisfy a mouse, and since my engagement," simpering, "I cannot swallow enough to ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... delicacy," was the reply. "I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... his father says: "In regard to the subject on which you ask our advice, we refer it, after the experience you have had, and with the advice you have often had from us, to your own judgment. Be not hasty in entering into any engagement; enquire with caution and delicacy; do everything that is honorable and gentlemanly respecting yourself and those concerned. 'Pause, ponder, sift.—Judge before friendship—then confide till death.' (Young.) Above all, commit the subject to God in ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... be said about these points, which Father Medina treats with as much skill as delicacy.... Not to go into certain details, wearisome beyond measure, I shall only say, that even now were it not for the direct intervention of the Spanish priest in the collection of the cedula or tribute, the treasury would lose some hundreds of thousands of pesos. Many are the parish ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... affairs have in general been well or ill conducted would be presumptuous in me to determine. Instances of bravery and good conduct in several of our officers have not, however, been wanting. Delicacy forbids me to mention that particular instance which has attracted the admiration of all the world and which has influenced the most illustrious monarch to confer a mark of his favor which can only be obtained by a long and honorable ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... said that exalted personage, 'are not for use, but for ornament. Her first object should be to preserve their delicacy of form and colour; her second to be always bien gantee. She should never lift anything heavier than her teacup; and she should rather endure some inconvenience from cold while waiting the attendance of her footman than she should so far derogate from feminine dignity as to ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... however, consider his pains wasted when once he was set down opposite to Resilda. She was taller than he had expected her to be, but he did not count height a fault so long as there was grace to carry it off, and grace she had in plenty. Her face had gained in delicacy and lost nothing of its brilliancy, or of its remarkable clearness of complexion. Her hair too if it was less rebellious, and more neatly coiled, had retained its glory of profusion, and her big black eyes, though to be sure they were grown ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... was as if the sounds which had just been filling their ears had suddenly merged themselves in the force of Savonarola's flashing glance, as he looked round him in the silence. Then he stretched out his hands, which, in their exquisite delicacy, seemed transfigured from an animal organ for grasping into vehicles of sensibility too acute to need any gross contact: hands that came like an appealing speech from that part of his soul which was masked by his strong passionate face, written on now with deeper ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... then some of them call when it's over to excuse themselves for not having come after accepting. It really makes you wish for a leisure class. It's only the drive and hurry of American life that make our men seem wanting in the convenances; and if they had the time, with their instinctive delicacy, they would be perfect: it would come from the heart: they're more truly polite now. Willis, just ...
— A Likely Story • William Dean Howells
... and over this brilliant doublet his hair and beard fell full halfway to the ground, in waving curls, so exquisitely delicate that Gluck could hardly tell where they ended; they seemed to melt into air. The features of the face, however, were by no means finished with the same delicacy; they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and intractable disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had finished his self-examination, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... even to-day there the thing defies her—a coal-box, with a broad smile that shows its black teeth, thick and squat, filling a snug corner and swaggering in unmanly triumph over the outrage upon her delicacy that it commits. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... conversation of his good-natured, dissolute brother. His melancholy and touching reply to Sir Charles Littleton, who expressed to him his shame that his son was with the Prince of Orange:—"Alas! Sir Charles! why ashamed? Are not my daughters with him?" was an instance of that readiness and delicacy which are qualities peculiarly appropriate to royalty. His exclamation at the battle of La Hogue, when he beheld the English sailors scrambling up the sides of the French ships from their boats—"None but my brave English could do this!" ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... placed himself at the disposal of the circle in which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing the murder of the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... up, with a delicacy I approved, as if they intuitively knew that we ought to be left to ourselves. I sent Bombay with them to give them the news they also wanted so much to know about the affairs at Unyanyembe. Sayd bin Majid was the father of the gallant young man whom I saw at Masangi, and ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... organs, as well as the intestinal canal, should be frequently and regularly evacuated. Some most distressing and frequently incurable complaints are caused by false customs and false delicacy in this particular. Teachers should be particularly careful, and regard this suggestion in reference ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... suspended on a silken thread from a glass rod or other non-conducting support in a similar manner to the pith ball, the tourmaline will be found to have become an excellent magnet. By testing this continually as it cools there will soon be perceived a point which is of extreme delicacy of temperature, where the magnetic properties are almost in abeyance. But as the tourmaline cools yet further, though but a fraction of a degree, the magnetic properties change; the positive pole becomes the negative, the negative having ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... Wilcox was right or wrong in her conjecture, the Tyson baby had shown infinite delicacy in retiring from a world where he had caused so many complications. He had done mischief enough in his short life, and I believe to the last Tyson owed the little beggar a grudge. He had spoiled the complexion of the loveliest woman in Leicestershire. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... effective poem on a subject as hackneyed as the highway; it is as deep as truth itself, yet light as the movement of a dance. We had almost forgotten, what the world will never forget, the matchless softness and transparent delicacy of "Near the Lake." Those lines, of themselves, unconsciously, court "the soft promoter of the poet's strain," and almost seem about to break into music. It is agreeable to find that, instead of being seduced into a false style by the excessive ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... night. Lamps were fashioned out of sardine-tins, with bits of surgical bandage for wicks; but as the oil consisted of seal-oil rendered down from the blubber, the remaining fibrous tissue being issued very sparingly at lunch, by the by, and being considered a great delicacy, they were more a means of conserving the scanty store of matches than ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... decorations. An eye-witness says of the ball: "The room was ornamented in an exceeding splendid manner, and the judicious arrangement of the various decorations exhibited a sight beautiful beyond expression, and showed the great taste and delicacy of M. de Zoteux, one of Viosmenil's aides. A superb collation was served, and the ceremonies of the evening were conducted with so much propriety and elegance that they gave the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... to ask, Mr. Bragg, if you feel no local attachments yourself," enquired the baronet, throwing as much delicacy into the tones of his voice, as a question that he felt ought to be an insult to a man's heart, would allow—"if one tree is not more pleasant than another; the house you were born in more beautiful than a house ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... not write half so good a song for the purpose. Finding that the entire dinner-table struck in, with voices of every pitch between rolling thunder and the squeak of a cartwheel, and that the strain was not of such delicacy as to be much hurt by the harshest of them, I determined to lend my own assistance in swelling the triumphant roar. It seemed but a proper courtesy to the first Lady in the land, whose guest, in the largest sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly, my first tuneful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... regimen; belly timber, staff of life; bread, bread and cheese. comestibles, eatables, victuals, edibles, ingesta; grub, grubstake, prog[obs3], meat; bread, bread stuffs; cerealia[obs3]; cereals; viands, cates[obs3], delicacy, dainty, creature comforts, contents of the larder, fleshpots; festal board; ambrosia; good cheer, good living. beef, bisquit[obs3], bun; cornstarch [U.S.]; cookie, cooky [U.S.]; cracker, doughnut; fatling[obs3]; hardtack, hoecake [U.S.], hominy [U.S.]; mutton, pilot bread; pork; roti[obs3], rusk, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... weight laid upon it. In the place of honor was the big gobbler, brown as a berry and done to a turn. For those who preferred other meat there was a huge round of venison and an artistically ornamented ham. These formed the backbone of the feast, but with and around them were every vegetable and delicacy that a Southern garden could provide, and tasteful dishes which it took all the ingenuity of a trained mistress of the kitchen to prepare. This was the season to test the genius of the dusky Southern cooks, and they had exhausted their art and skill for that day's feast. On the ample sideboard, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... delicacy, a simple bashfulness," said the father, coming to her assistance. "I know it well. Had you a mother living, I would bid you confide these sentiments of your heart to her, and to her only; but, having no other parent, make me your confidant. Trust me, you shall not find a woman's heart more open ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Achilles Tatius. Though far inferior, both in the delineation of the characters and the contrivance of the story, to the Ethiopics, (from which, indeed, many of the incidents are obviously borrowed,) and not altogether free from passages offensive to delicacy, "Clitophon and Leucippe" is well entitled to a separate notice, not only from the grace of its style and diction, and the curious matter with which the narrative is interspersed, but from its presenting one of the few pictures, which have come down to these times, of the social and domestic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... retreat are also operations by no means devoid of interest. If the stream is narrow and there are permanent bridges over it, the operation is nothing more than the passage of a defile; but when the river is wide and is to be crossed upon a temporary military bridge, it is a maneuver of extreme delicacy. Among the precautions to be taken, a very important one is to get the parks well advanced, so that they may be out of the way of the army; for this purpose it is well for the army to halt a half-day's march from the river. The rear-guard should also keep at more than the usual distance from the ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... Billee, who, by common consent seemed to be the spokesman, "we can answer the first part of your question but not the last. All we know is we arrived here to find you—er—stretched out like you was takin' a sleep." Billee had a certain delicacy about mentioning death, now that the ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... recently risen from the bed of confinement and the delicacy of her appearance added to her attractions. A table was spread for a public entertainment, around which all the dignitaries of the realm were assembled—dukes who could lead thousands of troops into the field, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... and strong in flavor. Spices were the very thing to add zest to such a diet, and without them the epicure of the sixteenth century would have been truly miserable. Ale and wine, as well as meats, were spiced, and pepper was eaten separately as a delicacy. No wonder that, although the rich alone could buy it, the Venetians were able annually to dispose of 420,000 pounds of pepper, which they purchased from the sultan of Egypt, to whom it was brought, after a hazardous journey, from the pepper ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... her letter. Jeff rubbed his fingers before he touched the delicate and perfumed missive. Its delicacy seemed to bewilder him. He said: in a rough but kindly way: "Hope to die if I don't," and passed it on to Gaspe Toujours, who did not find it necessary to speak. His comrade had answered for him. Late Carscallen held it inquisitively for a moment, and then his jaws opened and shut ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... delicacy of constitution. Indeed, unless the atmosphere I breathe is rendered slightly narcotic by the smoke of Cabanas and slightly stimulating by the savor of heeltaps,—excuse the technical term,—I find myself debilitated to a degree. The open air is extremely offensive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... not an easy question to answer—without entering into particulars which Emily's delicacy of feeling warned her to avoid. "I must know a little more of Miss de Sor," she said, ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... pages. Nor would it suit the manner of this medley to hunt the Lombardi through palaces and churches, pointing out their singularities of violet and yellow panellings in marble, the dignity of their wide-opened arches, or the delicacy of their shallow chiselled traceries in cream-white Istrian stone. It is enough to indicate the goal of many a pleasant pilgrimage: warrior angels of Vivarini and Basaiti hidden in a dark chapel ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... fold or line of care disfigured the reposeful modeling of his face. It was full and untanned; and the upper part emerged, massively quiet, out of the downward flow of silvery hair, with the striking delicacy of its clear complexion and the powerful width of the forehead. The first cast of his glance fell on you candid and swift, like a boy's; but because of the ragged snowy thatch of the eyebrows the affability of his attention acquired ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... of following her sister. She watched her open the wicket and walk across the meadows towards the Lawler domain. There was a bypath there leading to the highroad, but the delicacy of their position in relation to the owners prevented the Bartons from ever making use of it. Nor did Alice fail to notice that about the same time, Barnes, on the pretence of arranging the room for the evening, would ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... Belle around inside the dreary three-room cottage she wanted to ask if this would have been her home if Emmett had not been drowned, but she felt a delicacy about asking such a question. She couldn't imagine Belle in such a setting, but after she had followed her around a while longer she realized that the house wouldn't stay dreary with such a mistress. In almost no time the place was put to rights, ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... or that there is a great deal of sickness about among the animals in that locality. Whatever the cause, the result is the same—namely, that one has to go down on one's knees for a cupful of milk, which is but poor, thin stuff at its best, and that Irish salt butter out of a tub is a costly delicacy. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... dropped on all-fours and went like a tarantula till I distinguished two horses walking slowly abreast, jammed together; the riders presenting an indistinct outline of two individuals rolled into one; and it was from this amalgamation that the low, pigeon-like murmurs proceeded. An instinct of delicacy prompted me to pause, and let the Siamese twins pass in peace; but, unfortunately, I happened to be straight in the way, and just as I started to creep aside, one of the horses extended his neck, and, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... With the greatest delicacy he shifted his ground to the windows again, and asked if he could look at one of them. On Neville's opening it, he immediately sprang out, as if he were going aloft with a whole watch in an emergency, and were setting ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... short stories, the tale was of extreme delicacy in both sentiment and design. It was a little fanciful, a little elaborate, but of an ephemeral poetry. It was all "atmosphere," and its success depended upon the minutest precision of phrasing and the nicest harmony between idea and word. There was much ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... The garden is exquisitely laid out, with a view to setting off the unspeakable charms of that "dream of loveliness embodied in white marble." The Taj has well been described as a work "conceived by Titans and finished by jewellers." The grandeur of the conception and the wonderful delicacy of the workmanship cannot fail to impress even the most unlearned in the architectural art. Much has been written, and all in unstinted praise, of this incomparable edifice; and yet, like the writer, every visitor comes to its presence, feels the ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... skin and the flesh the Cave-men prized the head as a trophy and also as a means of gaining control over the animals by sympathetic magic. All the skulls were broken, probably for the sake of removing the brains, which are usually considered a delicacy among ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... considerable hesitancy, not because the facts are untrue, but because its statistical nature has not been officially investigated. Nevertheless, the facts are known; stern, inflexible facts. For true historical accuracy, as well as for purposes of humanity, they must be given; that delicacy would be false, misleading and palliative which would refrain from tearing away the veil and from exposing ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... themselves. But to secure their reception, they borrowed from comedy all its drollery, wildness, grossness, and licentiousness. This amusement they added to their dances, and they produced what are now called farces, or burlettas. These farces had not the regularity or delicacy of comedies; they were only a succession of single scenes, contrived to raise laughter, formed or unravelled without order, and without connexion. They had no other end but to make the people laugh. Now and then there might be good sentences, like ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... she liked. And, looking back on the old days which she had half forgotten, Laura remembered that she had always felt the same freedom from constraint in Hyde's company: she had found it pleasant fourteen years ago, when she was young and had no reserves except a natural delicacy of mind, and it was pleasant still, but strange, after the isolating adventure of her marriage. Perhaps she would not now have felt it so strongly, if he had not been her husband's cousin as ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... have given to the liberal Arts, not only shows the Delicacy of Your Taste, but will be a Means to Establish them in this Climate, and Italy will no longer boast of being the Seat of Politeness, whilst the Sons of Art flourish under ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... was supplied from the corn planted and harvested by Robertson on his previous visit, and from the deer, buffalo, or wild turkey brought down by the unerring riflemen among them. On deer and wild turkey they had regaled before, but buffalo-meat was a delicacy with which they were not acquainted, and, its rich, juicy, tender steak once tasted, all other meat lost its flavor. None of them had ever even seen the animal, and we may imagine the wonder with which they first beheld the vast herds that almost darkened the valley. Lolling in the shade ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... deadly foes we have to free institutions. I obtained a copy of this introduction. It will serve, at least, to show you, dear Aunty, what a variety of topics we have to excite our minds here in College. You can exercise your discretion about letting uncle read it, as it is on a subject of some delicacy. The writer says,— ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... minutes before seven, when the doctor and his daughter appeared at the head of their caravan. Two handsome figures, well mounted and clad with taste as well as suitability, they looked as gallantly unfitted for the road as armored knights in a modern battlefield. Good looks, physical delicacy, and becoming clothes had as yet no recognized place on the trail. The Gillespies were boldly and blithely bringing them, and unlike most innovators, romance came with them. Nobody had gone out of Independence ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... to a man complementary to her in character—not "opposite," as is so often said. Opposition implies antagonism, which would be the ruin of home life. The term complementary implies similarity in the main elements of character with adaptable differences. Good qualities, such as strength and delicacy, may complement each other, but not evil and good qualities, such as brutality and tenderness. As Scott says in the quotation at the head of this chapter, a tender wife may suit the taste of a churlish husband, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... to say whether the worthy Baron was most delighted with the restitution of his family property or with the delicacy and generosity that left him unfettered to pursue his purpose in disposing of it after his death, and which avoided as much as possible even the appearance of laying him under pecuniary obligation. When his first pause of joy and astonishment ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... vegetables just before being served. For instance, if a liberal dusting of finely minced parsley be added to peeled, boiled potatoes, immediately after draining, this vegetable will seem like a new dish of unusual delicacy. The potatoes may be either served whole or mashed with a little ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... that his zeal for the sacred cause would grow cold. It is true that Edmee had won Patience's heart, and that, in offering him a little cottage belonging to her father situated in a picturesque ravine near the park gate, she had gone to work with such grace and delicacy that not even his techy pride could feel wounded. In fact, it was to conclude these important negotiations that the abbe had betaken himself to Gazeau Tower with Marcasse on that very evening when Edmee and myself sought shelter there. The terrible ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... know was the main secret of his appeal for women. They, as the natural possessors of the power, feel a singular kinship with a man who also possesses it, a gift as rarely found among his sex as that delicacy which largely depends on it, and which is the other sure clue to a woman's love. She is so little used, poor flower, to be understood, and to meet with other regard than ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... affects this gentleman, because I think I know him to have been a most faithful and useful servant of the public, and every way deserving of the character given him by Dr Franklin and Mr Adams; and as Dr Franklin, from being his uncle, feels a delicacy in writing so fully about him, I therefore pray that this gentleman's accounts may be put into a train for ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... salutation have sometimes very different characters, and it is no uninteresting speculation to examine their shades. Many display a refinement of delicacy, while others are remarkable for their simplicity, or for their sensibility. In general, however, they are frequently the same in the infancy of nations, and in more polished societies. Respect, humility, fear, and esteem, are expressed much in a similar manner, for these are the natural ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Mr. Brett, it is impossible for us to do anything at the present moment. We must inquire; we must verify; we must consult others. You will see that the negotiations you have undertaken require on our part some display of the extreme delicacy and tact in which you have given us so admirable a lesson. Suppose, now, we agree to meet here again to-morrow at the same hour. Am I to understand that what has transpired this morning remains, we will not say a secret, but a myth, a mere idle phantasy ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... two nearest and dearest relations of the man whom he thought to be now no more, he would have prepared himself for the difficult task which he would have had to undertake, and no one would have been better able to go through it with feeling, delicacy, and firmness; but such was not the case. The sudden apparition of the wife and sister of his friend seemed to him to be supernatural; and though he at once made up his mind to give no false hope, he could not so quickly ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... copyist. No, you must not believe the base gossip that you may hear. I do copying work for him simply in order to please myself, as well as that he may notice me—a thing that always gives me pleasure. I appreciate the delicacy of his position. He is a good—a very ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... they cried in chorus; and after helping to cut off the marrow-bones of the great beast to carry home, for a roast, the marrow being esteemed a delicacy; the heavy skin was mounted before Mr Rogers, and a couple of marrow-bones a-piece proving a load, they rode slowly for the camp, Mr Rogers listening to the account of his boys' mishaps, both showing traces of having ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... any of the looms throughout the wide domains of the Empire. No human mind or hand had ever designed or worked out the various hues and shades of such marvellous colours as those which flashed before their eyes, and which possessed a delicacy and beauty such as none of the great artists of the past had ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... says," continued Lascelles with that hesitating, almost mystic delicacy with which most gentlemen approach a subject upon which their wives talk openly, "that it may be owing to Jenny's peculiar state of health just now, you know, and that if—all went well, you know, and there should ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... with all its echoes. Imagination is a brighter and bolder Beauty, with large lamping eyes of uncertain colour, as if fluctuating with rainbow light, and with features fine as those which Grecian genius gave to the Muses in the Parian Marble, yet in their daring delicacy defined like the face of Apollo. As for Hope—divinest of the divine—Collins, in one long line of light, has painted the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... refusal which Rosamond immediately gave. Both Mrs. Percy and Caroline were inclined to think that Rosamond had not only a high opinion of Mr. Gresham, but that she had felt a preference for him which she had never before shown for any other person; and they thought that, perhaps, some refinement of delicacy about accepting his large fortune, or some fear that his want of high birth, and what are called good connexions, would be objected to by her father and mother, might be the cause of this refusal. Mrs. Percy felt extremely ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... the dead is not increasing. Priests have what is, in some respects, a natural objection to urge upon their people perseverance in this old Catholic practice of piety and gratitude. It is one which can be easily understood. Yet, largely owing to this nice delicacy, they are, after their own deaths, forgotten by many bound to them through spiritual gratitude. One of the most experienced priests in New York tells us that for five priests that have died in his house he has not known ten Masses ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... deep delicacy he had put the whole matter as a hardship to her mother alone. He had saved her any pain of confession or denial. "Yes, it is my doing," he now said. "Shall we ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... who, from motives of delicacy or policy, do not speak out—averse to saying anything that ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... the affair was not brought before the Court. But perhaps it was suppressed out of delicacy for Fionn, for if Goll could be accused of ostentation, Fionn was open to the uglier charge of jealousy. It was, nevertheless, Goll's forward and impish temper which commenced the brawl, and the verdict ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... she had not only been the foster-sister but also the familiar friend, have been conveyed to the place of execution in a covered carriage, and thus have been in some degree screened from the public gaze; but no such delicacy was observed. The criminal's cart, with its ghastly faggot for a seat, was her ordained conveyance; but her step did not falter as she stepped into the vehicle which had been previously tenanted by the vilest and most degraded culprits. Never had there been seen so dense a crowd in the Place ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... which one's conclusions regarding it are often so doubtfully founded. Egotism in the religious form is perhaps more tolerated than in any other; but it is not on that account less perilous to the egotist himself. There need be, however, less delicacy in speaking of one's beliefs than of one's feelings; and I trust I need not hesitate to say, that I was led to see at this time, through the instrumentality of my friend, that my theologic system had previously wanted a central object, to which the heart, as certainly as the intellect, could ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... boy is," said the doctor, firmly. "In our medical association there's one fellow who is on the way to be a famous surgeon. He's fine, Jane, the most plucky, persistent man, with the eye, and the nerve, and the hand, and the delicacy and steadiness of the surgeon born in him, and confirmed by training. Some of his operations are perfectly beautiful, beautiful! He'll be famous over the whole world yet. His mother was an Irish charwoman, and she and he had a terrible tug to ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... are all of one make: he succeeded best in the heads of the old and the holy, and impressed on them, in spite of the barbarism of his times, a bold sublimity, which few have since surpassed. Critics object to the fierceness of his eyes, the want of delicacy in the noses of his figures, and the absence of perspective in his compositions; but they admit that his coloring is bright and vigorous, his conceptions grand and vast, and that he loved the daring and the splendid. Nevertheless, a touch of the mechanical Greek School, and ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... research ... of such extreme delicacy ... vibration ... temperature control ... one one-hundredth of one ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... the first generation since the War. His parents, he indicates, were slaves, and his early home was upon the "Highland Rim" of Tennessee, amid the poverty of a freedman father's little farm. These things well weighed, the refined love of nature, the purity of sentiment, the large philosophy, the delicacy of expression which his poems display, are sufficiently marvelous. One must, perhaps, deny him the title of "poet" in these days when verse writers are many. His ear for rhythm is fatally defective, while, so far ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... will eat it in about four months' time in the form of roasting ears," answered Sam, smacking his lips, which had a streak of the mud delicacy across them at right angles. "But go on up and tell Mammy to put your name in her dinner-pot and buy the Byrd to get you anything you need or want to the half of our kingdom. I'll be there in ten shakes of ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... railway stations, where the trains stop for refreshments, when a prisoner goes up or down in charge of a policeman, a native delicacy prevents the local loafers from seeming to notice him; but at the last moment there is always some hand to thrust in a clay pipe and cake of tobacco, and maybe a bag ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... induced a man just in front of her to come upon the stage to "assist" him in one of his "experiments," and the girl trembled lest at any moment he might demand a similar favor of her, for though she was reckless enough as a general thing, she had sufficient delicacy to dread being made conspicuous in ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... had served in the War of Independence, opened a door to numerous abuses and impositions. To remedy this the act of May 1st, 1820, exacted proofs of absolute indigence, which many really in want were unable and all susceptible of that delicacy which is allied to many virtues must be deeply reluctant to give. The result has been that some among the least deserving have been retained, and some in whom the requisites both of worth and want were combined have been stricken from the list. As the numbers of these venerable relics ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... THE KING. Your delicacy of mind does you credit. I am glad to find that you are not lacking in that supreme attribute ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... that arch overhead with such superb loftiness. But in all the world there is no cathedral whose marble or onyx columns can vie with those straight, clean, brown tree-boles that teem with the sap and blood of life. There is no fresco that can rival the delicacy of lace-work they have festooned between you and the far skies. No tiles, no mosaic or inlaid marbles, are as fascinating as the bare, russet, fragrant floor outspreading about their feet. They are the acme of Nature's architecture, and in building them she has ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... condition they were rich in the constant vision of beauty which one sight of seemed to us more than we merited. Perhaps the facade of the college and that of the neighboring Church of San Pablo may be elsewhere surpassed in the sort of sumptuous delicacy of that Gothic which gets its name of plateresque from the silversmithing spirit of its designs; but I doubt it. The wonderfulness of it is that it is not mechanical or monotonous like the stucco fretting of the Moorish decoration which people rave over in ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... happened. I quite understand," she added, caressingly, "how very painful it would be for you to go directly to him. Will you allow me to be your intermediary? That you and he must meet is quite certain; may I smooth away the worst difficulties? I could explain to him your character, your natural delicacy, your conscientiousness. I could make him understand that he has to meet a person quite on his own level—an educated man of honourable feeling. After that, an interview between you would be comparatively easy. I should be really ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... diplomatic service of the Czar, and for several years was attached to the legations at Vienna, London, and Paris. Created a Baron before his twenty-fifth birthday for the wonderful ability displayed in the conduct of negotiations of supreme importance and delicacy with the House of Hapsburg, he became a pet of Gortchakoff's, and was given every opportunity for the exercise of his genius in diplomacy. It was even said in well-informed circles at St. Petersburg that the guiding ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... lady friend of ours who had been 'unfortunate,' and who desired nursing, medical attention, and above all, secrecy. Mrs.—— listened to our statement in a matter of fact way, as though our story was 'as familiar as household words,' and then, it must be confessed, kindly enough, with more delicacy and feeling (or show of it) than we would have, a priori, given her credit for, explained to us the modus operandi to be pursued. No patients were received at the office in Third Avenue; they were all sent to another branch of the establishment in——street, presided over ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... for tact and delicacy is tremendous; and yet those who have found themselves opposed to him have never been long in realising that there was a most redoubtable mailed fist under the velvet glove. Altogether a remarkable man, whose memoirs would make absorbing reading, could he be persuaded ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... principal topic of your letter is to me a point of great delicacy indeed—insomuch that I can scarcely, without some impropriety, touch upon it.... You are among the small number of those who know my invincible attachment to domestic life, and that my sincerest wish is to continue in the enjoyment of it solely ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... truthful as she was, had not attempted to charge even this man with a crime that had never been committed. Her demeanour throughout had been commendably frank and open; she had made no endeavour to throw the blame on others. There were frequent instances before the court of this delicacy of feeling on the part of the accused, as, for instance, the fact that she had wrapped up the body of the child as well as she could, and put it away decently, as the Lensmand ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... this order, as usual, buttoned his pee-jacket tighter than ever, and saw his young superior—the transcendental delicacy of the day is causing the difference in rank to be termed "senior and junior"—but Hazard saw his superior go below, with a feeling allied to envy, so heavy were his eye-lids with the want of rest. Stimson ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... address myself to your delicacy of feelings and generosity of heart—do not attempt to see me again, or change my resolution. I must choose between you and my father; and if I see you again I may not have the courage to do my duty as a son. My father's fate lies in your hands, and I ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... language, breathing through their words as they whisper or chant them. They are swathed like barbaric idols, in splendid robes without grace; they dance with fans, with fingers, running, hopping, lifting their feet, if they lift them, with the heavy delicacy of the elephant; they sing in discords, striking or plucking a few hoarse notes on stringed instruments, and beating on untuned drums. Neither they nor their clothes have beauty, to the limited Western taste; they have strangeness, the charm of something which seems to us capricious, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... States, and a conscientious determination to support it, until it shall be altered by the judgments and wishes of the people, expressed in the mode prescribed in it; if a respectful attention to the constitution of the individual States, and a constant caution and delicacy towards the State governments; if an equal and impartial regard to the rights, interests, honor, and happiness of all the States in the Union, without preference or regard to a northern or southern, eastern or western position, their ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... her. Mrs Brand's husband was a sailor. He commanded a small coasting sloop, of which Ruby had been the mate for several years. As we have said, Ruby had been prevailed on to remain at home for some months in order to please his mother, whose delicacy of health was such that his refusal would have injured her seriously; at least the doctor said so, ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... Thus, we indulge our propensities, and they indulge theirs. Which are the happiest beings, might be made a question—but I am led to decide in favour of the arts and comforts of civilized life. These people appear to possess the natural feebleness and delicacy of man, without the power of shielding themselves from the accidents of nature. Their darling object appears to be, to enjoy practical personal liberty. They possess less, and they enjoy fewer, luxuries than others; but they escape slavery in all the Protean shapes by which it ensnares the rest of ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... does the above stanza place this great master of poetical imagery and harmony! what varied sweetness of numbers! what delicacy of judgment and expression! how characteristically does Hope prolong her strain, repeat her soothing closes, call upon her associate Echo for the same purposes, and display every pleasing grace peculiar ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... philosophy and religion; but, amongst men of little mark there have been found some, such as Petronius and Tigellinus at Rome, condemned to despatch themselves, who have, as it were, rocked death asleep with the delicacy of their preparations; they have made it slip and steal away in the height of their accustomed diversions amongst girls and good fellows; not a word of consolation, no mention of making a will, no ambitious affectation ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of Good Hope, that never-failing source of rare and beautiful plants, we are indebted for most of our Ixias, and among others for the present species, which though not of that value, nor possessing the delicacy or fragrance of the blossoms of some others, is a very desirable plant, not only as an object of curiosity, from the transparency of the base of the corolla, but as it adds much to the brilliancy of a collection, is easily obtained, and ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... weary. To the right in a broad shaft of cloudy gold the angels are ascending and descending. The picture is remarkable for its mingling the merits of Ribera's first and second manner. It is a Caravaggio in its strength and breadth of light and shade, and a Correggio in its delicacy of sentiment and refined beauty of coloring. He was not often so fortunate in his Parmese efforts. They are usually marked by a timidity and an attempt at prettiness inconceivable in the haughty and impulsive master ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... the very greatest difficulty that it has been possible to obtain any intelligible information regarding the Khasi monoliths. Whether through feelings of delicacy in revealing the secrets of their religious system to a foreigner, or through ignorance or apathy (there being but few Khasis nowadays who observe the ancient ritual), it has been no easy task to extract information from people about these ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... off them for a moment during his lecture. The same men were in my audience last night, but they saw that he was there. "Will they be there again to-night?" He hesitated; then said no, he thought they would rather take a rest and chance the poison. This lunatic has no delicacy. But he was not uninteresting. He told me a lot of things. He said he had "saved so many lecturers in twenty years, that they put him in the asylum." I think he has less refinement than any lunatic ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and delicacy of thought and expression, no part of Life Immovable can be compared with the smoothly flowing stanzas of "The Palm Tree." There is no ruggedness in the meter, no violence in the stream of images. ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... ubiquity as the father of Christendom, and, like the cuckoo, is so often heard but never seen, that I suspect most people regard him also as an abstract idea. Where, indeed, a public character is in the habit of giving dinners, "with every delicacy of the season," the case is very different: every person is satisfied that he is no abstract idea; and, therefore, there can be no impropriety in murdering him; only that his murder will fall into the class of assassinations, which I have ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... written with delicacy. If your heart tells you to praise, praise; if your heart tells you to condemn, condemn with care. Remember that your condemnation may put the play off the boards or at least hurt its success, and there must be sufficient reason for such radical action. ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... to the youngest soldiers in the army, that Colonel Hane had for some time suffered the severest privations of poverty, which he had vainly endeavoured to conceal. That his last hours were soothed by the possession of the necessaries of life, was owing to the delicacy with which Dr Howe and Mr Bracebridge contrived to make the assistance they supplied as soothing to his mind, as it was indispensable for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... in a tremendous hurry; "by no means! She has no delicacy. And she doesn't deserve to see me. And there's a violence and uncertainty about her movements which is annoying beyond anything you can imagine. No, I don't want to see her! I'll let her go unpunished for the present. Perhaps it's punishment enough for her to be ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... externals. There still remains the woman herself. Woman, any woman, is marvelous enough, Covington. When you think of all they stand for, the fineness of them compared with our man grossness, that wonderful power of creation in them, their exquisite delicacy, combined with the big-souled capacity for sacrifice and suffering that dwarfs any of our petty burdens into insignificance—God knows, a man should bow his knee before the least of them. But when to all those general attributes of the sex you add that something more ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... for ever, and does battle with its kind against the common foe. There moved before my sight three women: one, sweet and unsubstantial, wistful and mute and very young, not of the earth earthy; one, lissom, grave, with gracious body and warm abstracted eyes, all delicacy, strength, reserve; the other and last, daring, cold, beautiful, with irresistible charm, silent and compelling. And these are the three women who have influenced my life, who fought in me then for mastery; one from out the unchangeable past, the others in the tangible and delible ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it may be, has none the less awakened jealousy. The nature of my services being above all possibility of suspicion, calumny has sought another quarter at which to strike, and at this moment it is my delicacy ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... as for that you must judge if she peeps out. She's behind the whole thing; but she's of a delicacy and ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... be a circumstance in my life, which describes my nature, it is that which I am going to relate. The forcible manner in which I at this moment recollect the object of my book, will here make me hold in contempt the false delicacy which would prevent me from fulfilling it. Whoever you may be who are desirous of knowing a man, have the courage to read the two or three following pages, and you will become fully acquainted with ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the day, and how we enjoyed the mischief that we were making amongst the agents of The Boroughmongers. It was calculated that Mr. Davis and his friends did not spend less than two thousand pounds a day, while we fared sumptuously, and partook of every delicacy of the season, at an expense not exceeding twenty-five shillings a day between us; this being the extent of my expenses, when I came to pay my bill at the end of the sixteen days that I was at the Talbot. I shall never forget how he used to laugh and enjoy the fun; and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... they were fulfilling a divine decree. Enlightened Moslems, accordingly, have often been more Epicurean than Stoical; and if they have felt themselves (not without some reason) superior to Christians in delicacy, in savoir vivre, in kinship with all natural powers, this sense of superiority has been quite rationalistic and purely human. Their religion contributed to it only because it was simpler, freer ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... bit; there was a cloth over it, and I like it all the better for the marks of Totty's little feet, bless 'em!" and Christie cuddled the culprit with one hand while she revealed the damaged delicacy with the other, wondering inwardly what evil star was always in the ascendant when Mrs. Wilkins ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... nerved to self-control, he might have answered with another wail of anguish. His mind filled up the gap of words, that the delicacy of Tynn would not speak. "He may ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... by delight as to be quite unable to "fly roun'." Indeed, she could hardly stand. When I walked up to shake hands with her, she bashfully looked at me out of the "tail of her eye," as Ben says. Her delicacy was quite shocked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various |
