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Delicately   /dˈɛləkətli/   Listen
Delicately

adverb
1.
In a delicate manner.  Synonyms: exquisitely, fine, finely.  "Her fine drawn body"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Delicately" Quotes from Famous Books



... self-denying thrift. The forest would supply them with the materials for shelter and fuel and to some extent with food and clothing. All the rest must depend upon their own exertions. There was a pleasure in facing and overcoming the perils and difficulties which they encountered, which those, more delicately reared who now live here can never know. Their individual helplessness in the face of appalling obstacles to be met, but bound them closer together in mutual helpfulness. Accordingly we find that their ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport

... old rowboat was the opposite type from the cold, pale specimen he had braced himself to meet in the Basin path. She would have been suitably environed in its changeless sombre firs. This girl, with her length of limb and graceful breadth of shoulder, had greater affinity with the white birches delicately fluttering their light bright greens as they leaned eagerly toward the water ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... the administration of the law. Therefore," and his voice was cold as marble, "it would be inadvisable to run him in for such picayune crimes as twisting lead pipe round young women and throwing them overboard, or otherwise delicately quieting tongues that might be made to wag against him. And now if you are going to lend ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... the seal; while the bear, to use their own expression, is 'stronger travel than all.' In Smith's Sound, where the use of raw meat seems almost inevitable from the modes of living of the people, walrus holds the first rank. Certainly this pachyderm (Cetacean?) whose finely condensed tissue and delicately permeating fat (oh! call it not blubber) assimilate it to the ox, is beyond all others, and is the best fuel a man can swallow." The gastronomic capabilities of the Esquimaux and of other northern races, and their fondness for fatty food, are exhibited ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... transplanted from its Scottish glen loses its modest charm and grows rank upon the prairies of the West even in its second year. The shamrock pines away in exile beyond the borders of its own Emerald Isle. Man, the most delicately touched of all to fine issues, is also the creature of his surroundings, even ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... either that the Foreign Office little knew the Balkans, or that it knew very well that the treaty was a farce and did not care.) The regicide gang was infuriated and plotted the assassination of their opponents who wished by legal means to settle the question. But, as was delicately expressed by The Times correspondent, "it is stated that the police authorities refused to afford facilities for the execution of the plot, which consequently failed." Pity indeed that the police of Serbia did not remain "conscientious objectors" to ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... is "nature" and "natural"—and not laisser-aller! Every artist knows how different from the state of letting himself go, is his "most natural" condition, the free arranging, locating, disposing, and constructing in the moments of "inspiration"—and how strictly and delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their very rigidness and precision, defy all formulation by means of ideas (even the most stable idea has, in comparison therewith, something floating, manifold, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... Chichester climbs over Bignor Hill, Stella Derrick raised her hand and halted. She was then nineteen and accounted lovely by others besides Henry Thresk, who on this morning rode at her side. She was delicately yet healthfully fashioned, with blue eyes under broad brows, raven hair and a face pale and crystal-clear. But her lips were red and the colour came ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... before cutting from the loaf, spread one slice with the mixture and press another over it. If biscuits are used, split and butter them. They should be small and very thin for this purpose and browned delicately. ...
— The Golden Age Cook Book • Henrietta Latham Dwight

... sweeping train and a jeweled tiara in her hair, she considered herself handsome enough to grace any man's home. It was indeed a beauty which she saw in the mirror—the face of a woman not yet thirty with the features regular and refined. The eyes were large and dark and the mouth and nose delicately moulded. The face seemed academically perfect, all but the expression. She had a cold, calculating look, and a cynic might have charged her with being heartless, of stopping at nothing to gain her ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... and hands were as cold, as the rocks upon which she was lying. Miss Vyvyan unfastened the child, and drew away the long sash, which had tied her to her mother's waist. As she did so, she observed the delicately formed features, which were so regular and proportionate that they might have been chiseled in marble, to represent some Greek goddess. She saw the masses of soft brown hair, and the long dark eyelashes, which dropped upon the cheek ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul

... Miss Priscilla, her basket of sewing upon her arm, as gentle, as unruffled, as placid as usual. And yet it is probable that she divined something from their very attitudes, for there was a light in her eyes, and her cheeks seemed more delicately pink than was their wont. Thus, as she came toward them, under the ancient apple-trees, despite her stick, and her white hair, she looked even younger, and more girlish ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... galvanometer, a very delicate and accurate scientific instrument, in his experiments. This instrument is so finely adjusted that the faintest current will cause a deflection of the registering needle, which is delicately swung on a tiny pivot. If the galvanometer be attached to a human nerve, and the end of the nerve be irritated, the needle ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... cast a squint up under their eyebrows, and watched the palanquin go by. It was made of delicately-woven striped grass, bound with bamboo threads, lacquered, and finished with curtains of gauze, made of dragon-fly wings, through which Lord Long-legs could peep. It was borne on the shoulders of four stalwart ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... few rare natures who make collections for the sheer love of the objects they collect, and if they can be persuaded to show them off at all it is always with so much tenderness and sympathy that even the feelings of a delicately wrought Buddha could not be bruised. But there were none of these natures numbered among the trustees of Saint Margaret's. And because it was purely a matter of charity and pride with them, and because they never had any time left over ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... but do not suffer it to burn or stick to the pan, for that would spoil the gravy. Then put in three quarts of boiling water; and when it boils up, skim it carefully, and wipe off with a clean cloth what sticks round the edge and inside of the stewpan, that the gravy may be delicately clean and clear. Let it stew gently by the side of the fire for about four hours, till reduced to two quarts of good gravy. Take care to skim it well, strain it through silk or muslin, and set it ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... and Peboan sank down and dissolved into tiny streams of water, that vanished under the brown leaves of the forest. Thus the Spirit of Winter departed, and where he had melted away, there the Indian children gathered the first blossoms, fragrant and delicately pink,—the modest ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... with the brand of Culman Terrace, and there is no need to say more. He was relieved to see that Mrs. Vernon was quite composed again. He had performed the first part of his mission, and now the second required tackling. And something warned him that he would have to tread very delicately; any suspicion of the word charity would be fatal to success. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... give out the prizes to the victors. Staid, formal Miss Lydia had requested to resign that queenly office to the royal old lady, and Arthur was pleased with this opportunity of gratifying his godmother's taste for stateliness. Old Mr. Donnithorne, the delicately clean, finely scented, withered old man, led out Miss Irwine, with his air of punctilious, acid politeness; Mr. Gawaine brought Miss Lydia, looking neutral and stiff in an elegant peach-blossom silk; and Mr. Irwine came last ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... two ago. I dreamed that somebody was dead. I don't know who, but it's not to the purpose. It was a private gentleman, and a particular friend; and I was greatly overcome when the news was broken to me (very delicately) by a gentleman in a cocked hat, top boots, and a sheet. Nothing else. "Good God!" I said, "is he dead?" "He is as dead, sir," rejoined the gentleman, "as a door-nail. But we must all die, Mr. Dickens; ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... his pony up another corkscrew path, that climbed to another doll's house bungalow. Here he spent a couple of hours, lounging in the drawing-room of one of the lesser lights in his firmament, flattering her by a delicately conveyed impression that he found her the only woman in the station worth talking to. And so, home to his own well-appointed house, where, two hours after an irreproachable dinner, he slept the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... compelled to do so. Even the laundryman seemed to have skipped his usual day; and twice in succession the morning paper had most annoyingly failed to appear. Certainly neither the boldest private inquiry nor the most delicately worded public advertisement had proved able to discover the whereabouts of "Molly Make-Believe," much less succeeded in bringing her back. But the Doctor, at least, could be summoned by ordinary telephone, and Cornelia and her mother would surely be moving North eventually, whether Stanton's ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... admiring with an artist's eye the effect of light, so faintly and delicately beautiful, on the broad expanse of the lawn. "Does the man live who could paint that?" he asked himself. His memory recalled the works of the greatest of all landscape painters—the English artists of fifty years since. ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... her machine in line with one of the four rows, checked her arrival and walked wearily over to her quarters. She had been out that morning since four, she had seen sights and heard sounds which a delicately nurtured young woman, who three years before had shuddered at the sight of a spider, could never in her wildest nightmare imagine would be brought to her sight or hearing. She was weary, body and soul, sick ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... pressed by the throng, he reeks no more of them, but keeps his eyes fixed, singling out that man only who struck him first and slew him not. Hereupon the son of Tyndareus laid aside his mantle, closely-woven, delicately-wrought, which one of the Lemnian maidens had given him as a pledge of hospitality; and the king threw down his dark cloak of double fold with its clasps and the knotted crook of mountain olive which he carried. Then straightway they looked and chose close by a spot ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... memory I carry away is of that lovely three-storied tower, the whole carved delicately as lace-work; the colour, deep terra-cotta; above it a ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... for the moment loomed up as the standard-bearer of the Republican party, historical interest centers upon the second act of the Philadelphia Convention. It shows us how strangely to human wisdom vibrate the delicately balanced scales of fate; or rather how inscrutable and yet how unerring are the far-reaching processes of divine providence. The principal candidate having been selected without contention or delay, the convention proceeded to a nomination for Vice-President. On the first informal ballot ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... battle with nature. In many ways, his was a stern country; a land of unremitting toil from which one desisted only long enough to eat and sleep, and he was one of the workers. Mrs. Gladwyne had been right—it was no place for this delicately nurtured girl with her ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... moustache and thin grey hair, the elderly man had a face young and almost delicate, like a young man's. His blue eyes twinkled with some inscrutable source of pleasure, his skin was fine and tender, his nose delicately arched. His grey hair being slightly ruffled, he had a debonnair look, as of a youth who ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence

... well-limbed and finely shaped; equal in size to the largest of Europeans. The women of superior rank are also above the middle stature of Europeans, but the inferior class are rather below it. The complexion of the former class is that which we call a brunette, and the skin is most delicately smooth and soft. The shape of the face is comely, the cheek bones are not high, neither are the eyes hollow, nor the brow prominent; the nose is a little, but not much, flattened; but their eyes, and more particularly those of the women, are full of expression, sometimes sparkling ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... identity with her a man must recognise for a wife passionately beloved. He had left her in a state of nervous collapse, an ignoble, querulous breakdown, due, he had to explain to himself, to her nature, delicately strung. There was nothing heroic about the way she had taken his downfall. But the exquisite music of her, he further tutored himself, was not set to martial strains. She was the loveliness of the twilight, of the evening star. And then, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... reassured. One angle of light fell upon the gallery. In passing, she caught a fly on the wing, and presented it delicately to a spider established in a corner of the roof. This spider was so bloated that, notwithstanding the distance, I saw it descend from round to round, then glide along a fine web, like a drop of venom, seize its prey from the hands of the old shrew, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... brink. A long, thin line of solid pan ice, ghostly white in the dusk beyond, was attached to the rocks of the Little Spotted Horse. It led all the way to Tickle-my-Ribs. Doctor Rolfe must make that line of solid ice. He must cross the wide lane of black, delicately frozen new ice that lay between and barred ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... few more obnoxious weeds in cultivated ground than sheep-sorrel, also an Old World plant; while our native wood-sorrel,—belonging, it is true, to a different family of plants,—with its white, delicately veined flowers, or the variety with yellow flowers, is quite harmless. The same is true of the mallow, the vetch or tare, and other plants. We have no native plant so indestructible as garden orpine, or live-forever, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... as well as present partialities give a peculiar magic. How delightful to let the fancy revel on the dainties of a confectioner—those pies with such white and flaky paste, their contents being a mystery, whether rich mince with whole plums intermixed, or piquant apple delicately rose-flavored; those cakes, heart-shaped or round, piled in a lofty pyramid; those sweet little circlets sweetly named kisses; those dark majestic masses fit to be bridal-loaves at the wedding of an heiress, mountains in size, their summits deeply snow-covered with ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... captains of the squadron to doubt their being upon deck when the signal is made to tack or wear in the night, and he requires all lieutenants then to be at their stations, except those who had the watch immediately preceding." Nor did he leave this delicately worded, but pointed, admonition, issued in the Mediterranean, to take care of itself. In after years, when he was nigh seventy, his secretary tells that on a cold and rainy November night off Brest, the signal to tack being made, he hurried ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... was right. The tall lithe girl had bloomed into full glory' and Valencia St. Just, though not delicately beautiful, was as splendid an Irish damsel as man need look upon, with a grand masque, aquiline features, luxuriant black hair, and—though it was the fag-end of the London season—the unrivalled Irish complexion, as of the fair dame ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... a person of the delicately organized and sensitive mental temperament, for a long period of time, to the hardships and privations of an occupation requiring exposure and severe muscular exertion is the height of cruelty and folly. A person ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... abomination of desolation? Said he not that the city and the sanctuary should be destroyed, that there should be a flood and that unto the end of the war desolations shall be determined? Desolations, Costobarus! And Laodice is but a child and delicately reared!" ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... The princess grew delicately pale as the men and women sprang to their feet. Every hand swept toward her, holding a glass. She had surrendered that morning. Not because she wished to be a queen, not because she cared to bring about an alliance between the two countries; no, it was because she was afraid and had ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... friend as Mr. Emilius? That she was right to avoid by any effort the castigation which was to have fallen upon her from the tongue of the learned serjeant, the reader who is not straight-laced will be disposed to admit. A lone woman, very young, and delicately organised! How could she have stood up against such treatment as was in store for her? And is it not the case that false pretexts against public demands are always held to be justifiable by the female mind? What lady will ever scruple to avoid her taxes? What woman ever understood her duty ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... not understand what you mean by 'success,'" said Mr. Knightley. "Success supposes endeavour. Your time has been properly and delicately spent, if you have been endeavouring for the last four years to bring about this marriage. A worthy employment for a young lady's mind! But if, which I rather imagine, your making the match, as you call it, means only your planning it, your saying to yourself one idle day, 'I think it ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... which Tennyson has written, there are few more musical or more delicately beautiful than The Bugle Song. It may be appreciated better perhaps if we have knowledge of its setting. It occurs in The Princess, and has no immediate connection with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... holiday, a villeggiatura,[480] a royal revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and beauty, power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed, establishes itself on the instant. These sunset clouds, these delicately emerging stars, with their private and ineffable glances, signify it and proffer it. I am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have early learned that they must work as enhancement and sequel to this original ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... him; and finally he had not the courage to do more about that money from Miss Vane than to say that from time to time he had sums intrusted him, and that if Lemuel had any pressing need of money he must borrow of him. He fancied he had managed that rather delicately, for Lemuel thanked him without severity, and said he should get along now, he guessed, but he was much obliged. Neither of them mentioned Miss Vane, and upon the whole the minister was not sure that he had got much nearer the boy, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... said Pen, as they marched along the mountain-slope like some one of old who "went delicately," for the way was stony, and Nature had not had time to commence the promised ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... who like a very delicately Smoked Bacon or Ham will appreciate the valuable new line recently added ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various

... of the sweet singers of Europe. It is a small, delicately formed, weak-winged little bird, about the size of our phoebe-bird. It weighs only a trifle more than a girl's love-letter. Where it breeds and rears its young, in Germany for example, a true sportsman would no more think of shooting ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... was listening to it now, as Canby discovered, after a lisping Japanese had announced him at the doorway of a cream-coloured Louis Sixteenth salon: an exquisite apartment, delicately personalized here and there by luxurious fragilities which would have done charmingly, on the stage, for a marquise's boudoir. Old Tinker, in evening dress, sat uncomfortably, sideways, upon the edge ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington

... perhaps a great blessing that I happened to be there; and as the ladies were both very tired and hungry, I was glad to be able to place my tent at their disposal and to offer them as good a dinner as it was possible to provide in the wilds. It is indeed wonderful what dangers and hardships these delicately nurtured ladies will face cheerfully in order to carry out their ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson

... of furtively underlying color and echoes of color. It was all vivid and beautiful and the girl standing there seemed to dominate its vividness and its beauty. But her eyes were grave, even when a shaft of the radiance struck her delicately blossoming cheeks and played upon the escaping locks with which ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... porch of light Rollo stepped, bearing a covered dish. The little breakfast-table and the laden side-table were set with vessels of rock-crystal and drinking-cups of silver gilt, and breakfast consisted of delicately-prepared sea-food, a pulpy fruit, thin wine and a paste of delicious powdered gums. These things Rollo served quite as if he were managing oatmeal and eggs and china. One would have said that he had been ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying expression, though the prevalent expression was sad; and the nose, slightly curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of the face delicately oval, completed a head which was finely placed upon the shoulders, and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... eyes downcast, face delicately flushed—listened until it pleased him to make an end, which he did with amazing lack ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... the once enormously popular composer, OFFENBACH, among whom I certainly include myself, will be much gratified by the delicately introduced reminiscences of the work of that master of opera bouffe which occasionally crop up during the performance of Maid Marian. If it be permissible for great Masters to repeat themselves, as notably more than one has done, may not little Masters exhibit the results of their ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various

... chamber of silvery metal, Bert and this giant, and the gentle vibration of delicately balanced machinery made itself felt in the structure. Of Joan and Tom there was ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent

... Although delicately put, this statement was in effect a repudiation of the party leadership of Edmunds and in the debate which ensued, not a single Senator came to his support. He stood alone in upholding the propriety of the Tenure of Office Act, arguing that without its restraint "the whole real power ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... strikes deeper. The root of it is that there is in you and in all your glittering kind no malice, no will to do harm nor to hurt anything, but just a bland and invincible and, upon the whole, a well-meaning stupidity, informing a bright and soft and delicately scented animal. So you work ruin among those men who serve ideals, not foreplanning ruin, not desiring to ruin anything, not even having sufficient wit to perceive the ruin when it is accomplished. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... thorns in the feet are a real plague to elephants in India and still more in the African jungles composed mainly of thorny plants. As, however, she felt sorry for the honest giant, without any thought, having squatted near his foot, she began to extract delicately at first the bigger splinters and afterwards the smaller, at which work she did not cease to babble and assure the elephant that she would not leave a single one. He understood excellently what she was concerned with, and bending his legs at the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... journey. 'I have only my faded silk dress to wear,' she sighed, and it seemed to her shabbier and more faded than ever, as it hung there in the morning light. 'If only I had a few days longer, I would weave myself a dress. I would weave it so delicately that when Geraint took me to the Queen, he would be proud of it,' she thought. For in her heart she was afraid that Geraint would be ashamed of the old faded silk, ...
— Stories of King Arthur's Knights - Told to the Children by Mary MacGregor • Mary MacGregor

... breakfast in one of the most cosy of the morning-rooms in their private suite in the Mansion House. A very smart manservant of quite aristocratic appearance solemnly poured out some most fragrant coffee, and removed many covers from a most delicately appetising breakfast-table, as a preliminary to removing his aristocratic presence from the room altogether. There could be no doubt that the Lady Mayoress was a singularly pretty and attractive lady, and despite her ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... it. And this is the mystic meaning of (Ps. xxxvi. 6), "O Lord, thou preservest man and beast." It is for this reason that we are commanded to have our slaughtering-knife without defect, for who knows if there be not a transmigrated soul in the animal? ... Therefore the slaughter must needs be delicately done and the mode critically examined, on account of that which is written (Lev. xix. 18), "Thou shalt love thy neighbor ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... only whiled away the greater part of fourteen years of almost utter physical helplessness, but has actually produced works which have met with high commendation. His groups and compositions are said to have been "most delicately worked and highly finished." The poor fellow had contemplated the preparation of some grand work for the International Exhibition, but the little of physical life remaining in him was lately extinguished by a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... is not to confess that the drama cannot do at all certain things which the novel does with unconscious ease. Is there no rich variety of self-analysis in 'Macbeth,' one may ask, and in 'Hamlet'? Did any novelist of the seventeenth century lay bare the palpitations of the female heart more delicately than Racine? Did any novelist of the eighteenth century reveal a subtler insight into the hidden recesses of feminine psychology than Marivaux? It may be true enough that, in the nineteenth century, prose-fiction has been more fortunate than the drama ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... disappointment in seeing what to her would have been almost a fortune melting into thin air, the fertile brain of Mrs. Sampson had given birth to what was nothing less than an inspiration, She had gone to see Alfred Irons, and delicately but firmly insinuated that it was high time she received substantial tokens of the gratitude of the Wachusett Syndicate, for her efforts in their behalf with the Hon. Thomas Greenfield. Mr. Irons had answered, as she had expected him to, that she had presented ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... she laid a cloth and set a savoury-looking dish upon the table. As I beheld her I felt as though my position was already much ameliorated, for the very sight of her carried great comfort. She was not more than twenty, rather above the middle height, active and strong, but yet most delicately featured; her lips were full and sweet; her eyes were of a deep hazel, and fringed with long and springing eyelashes; her hair was neatly braided from off her forehead; her complexion was simply exquisite; her figure as robust as was consistent with the most perfect ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... her hat and held it as one would a large basket. Her dark hair made a stiff aureole about her delicately cut face with its pointed chin, large brilliantly black eyes ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook

... my hands I tumbled down the pile of bales. In the one next to the bottom was a protuberance, and from this I drew forth a casket of silver, delicately chased and ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... a resting-place, and beside it was a little house where the children could stay. The interior lacked none of the requisites of living, not even the cooking utensils in the kitchen, and the family portraits in the tablinum, delicately painted by an artist on small ivory slabs. Everything was made to suit the size of children, but of the most ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... series, as examples of "quella vecchia maniera Greca, goffa e sproporzionata." My own judgment respecting them is,—and it is a judgment founded on knowledge which you may, if you choose, share with me, after working with me,—that no architecture on this grand scale, so delicately skilful in execution, or so daintily disposed in proportion, exists ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... quantity contained in this mild liquor is, had begun to tell on our brains. I had not their pottle-shaped stomach, made to hold unlimited quantities of meat and drink; but I was determined on this most important occasion not to deserve my host's contempt—to be compared, perhaps, to the small bird that delicately picks up six drops of water in its bill and is satisfied. I would measure my strength against his, and if necessary drink myself into ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... and delicately steered away from the topic. "Ah, that must be a monotonous calling, and you, with your love of books and literary tastes, would find it specially irksome. You must forgive me if I take an interest in your affairs, Mr Jeffreys. May I ask if you ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... true, to go incognito, But on a gala-day one may his orders show. The Garter does not deck my suit, But honored and at home is here the cloven foot. Perceiv'st thou yonder snail? It cometh, slow and steady; So delicately its feelers pry, That it hath scented me already: I cannot here disguise me, if I try. But come! we'll go from this fire to a newer: I am the go-between, and thou ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... a piece of gilt plate in the shape of the hull of a ship, in which the napkins for the king's table are kept. "But why the hull of a ship should be appropriated to the royal napkins?" was asked. Lord Masham confessed that this was beyond him, but he looked amazingly considerate—delicately rubbed his polished forehead with the second finger of the right hand, then regarded his ring, and turned it thrice slowly round, but the talismanic action produced nothing, and he received timely relief by a new turn given to the conversation, in which he was not, he thought, called ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... Court where he had never, in time of peace, found favour or even justice. [449] Lewis, who on this occasion was perhaps not altogether free from some emotions of jealousy, contrived, it was reported, to mingle with the praise which he bestowed on his lieutenant blame which, though delicately expressed, was perfectly intelligible. "In the battle," he said, "the Duke of Luxemburg behaved like Conde; and since the battle the Prince of Orange has ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... pearls. The forehead is high, too high perhaps for perfect beauty; but one would not have it otherwise, as it gives a touch of power and strength to what would otherwise be a softly feminine face. The brows are most delicately curved over heavy eyelids, and then come those wonderful eyes—so large, so dark, so full of over-mastering emotion, of rage and horror, contending with a pride of self-control which holds her from sheer frenzy! The cheeks are pale, the lips white ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... good order for battle, and then sank to the earth. Light waves of air registered delicately but clearly on those wonderful eardrums of Tayoga's. Faint though the sound was, he understood it. It was the careful tread of men. Tandakora and his warriors were on the way, called by the crow. He knew when they came within a hundred ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... man of about fifty made his appearance; his face indicated the absence of vulgarity, though a few purply tints delicately hinted that he had assisted at many an orgie of the rosy offspring of Jupiter and Semele. His dark vestments and white cravat induced me to set him down as a "professional gentleman"—nor was I far wrong in my conjecture. As I shall have, I trust, frequent occasion to speak ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... Harry and Lucy, that strange atmosphere of gravity and piety, when children were looked upon as a serious responsibility more than as a poetical accessory to life; not as mysterious and fairy-like creatures, to be delicately wooed and tenderly guided, but rather as little men and women, to be repressed and trained, and made as soon as possible to have a sense of responsibility too. Hugh used to look at the old books in later days, and wonder what the exact social ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... to him in terror, crying that one of the giants has told her he is come to fetch her. With her entrance we first hear the slender sweet phrase, delicately wandering upward, which after for a time denoting Freia, comes to mean for us just beauty. Wotan calms the maiden in distress, and asks, as one fancies, a little uneasily, "Have ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... of the candle end, with his sharp features, fluffy little moustache, and oval face, he looked at times delicately and gaily young, and then appeared quite old, decrepit, full of sorrow, pressing his folded ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... on one side, opening into the larger drawing-room, as he told her. This room into which she entered reminded her a little of Hamley—yellow- satin upholstery of seventy or a hundred years ago, all delicately kept and scrupulously clean; great Indian cabinets, and china jars, emitting spicy odours; a large blazing fire, before which her father stood in his morning dress, grave and thoughtful, as ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... was not clear to make out the shadows. But the appearing flowers were delicately painted. They stood out conspicuously on the glassy surface of the water as though they ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... the joy of a great deliverance, wantoned in a thousand forms. Art, taste, luxury, revived. Female beauty regained its empire—an empire strengthened by the remembrance of all the tender and all the sublime virtues which women, delicately bred and reputed frivolous, had displayed during the evil days. Refined manners, chivalrous sentiments, followed in the train of love. The dawn of the Arctic summer day after the Arctic winter night, the great unsealing of the waters, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... a bank of purple cloud and touched with long rosy beams the roof of Samuel the weaver's house. On the narrow parapet that bordered the roof walked a number of snowy pigeons, stepping delicately with heads raised and thrown back as if to enjoy the splendor and freshness of the ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips

... professed to found their new constitution, and which was at irreconcilable variance with every clause of that constitution. They annihilated in a single night privileges, many of which partook of the nature of property, and ought therefore to have been most delicately handled. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Dioscorides of Vienna (c. 500) and the Joshua Roll of the Vatican, which have both been lately published in perfect facsimile, are magnificent works. In the former the plants are drawn with an accuracy of observation which was to disappear for a thousand years. The latter shows a series of drawings delicately tinted in pinks and blues. Many of the compositions contain classical survivals, like ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... his idle tune with a white and sharpening face, and a gaze that never swerved, extended his delicately-shaped fingers to the rope, and held it in his left hand. At this moment the door-handle was suddenly turned outside, and the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... as the most important person present, in order to accompany him on his way. He would waylay cabinet ministers in streets, bishops (though himself not of their faith) in closes, and royal personages incognito. He would impede their progress, or walk delicately beside them, talking softly, respectfully, with that perfect propriety of diction and address which he had always ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay

... with its waving white hair, the strange expression with which he was being regarded. The little vehicle came to a standstill only a few feet away. Mr. Fentolin leaned forward. His features had lost their delicately benevolent aspect; ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... studied the special conditions which according to the old axiom make woman what she is. As nothing short of this can by any possibility enable us to understand the feminine nature, we must not find fault with some details not commonly thought adapted to the general reader. They are given delicately, but they are given, and suggest a certain reserve in introducing the book to the reading classes. Not only is woman an invalid, but the rhythmic character of her life, "as if scanned by Nature," is an element not to be neglected without total failure to read her in health and in disease. There ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... in her voice and glance which told how she would deserve the confidence. And, on the instant, a great yearning leaped warm into her heart. If she could help this people to the ruler they needed most; if she could somehow turn the scale, so delicately balanced! There would be a task worth doing; an achievement to be proud of all her life! And she trembled a little at the thought that to her, Susie Rushford, fate had given ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson

... born with the first warm breath of the spring. All the winter they lie hidden in the crevices of the stone, in the carving of little names, and with the first spring day they stand delicately and dry their yellow wings on the little graves. There are the honeycombs of friendly bees, and the shelters of many a timid earth-born speck of life no bigger than a dewdrop, mysteriously small. Radiant pin-points of existence have their palaces on the broad blades of the grasses, and ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne

... nor assert what you mean. But as the carpenter's acquaintance with wood might be considerably refined if he became a naturalist or liberalised if he became a carver, so a casual speaker's sense of what he means might be better focussed by dialectic and more delicately shaded by literary training. Meantime the vital act called intent, by which consciousness becomes cognitive and practical, would remain at heart an indescribable experience, a sense of spiritual life as radical and specific as ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... grateful. The great tub rolled about so in the Atlantic swell that the big ice-pans nearly came on deck. My dainty little lady took no notice of anything and picked her way among the pans like Agag "treading delicately." We had five hours' good push, however, to get into Battle Harbour. It was calm in the ice-field, only the heavy tide made it run and the little "alive" steamer with human skill beat the massive mountains of ice into ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... iron-spotted, as if the rain had been soaking through the spongy coffin, did the dress show beside the pure whiteness of those exquisite feet! Not a sign of the tomb was upon them. Small, living, delicately formed, Hugh, could he have forgot the face they bore above, might have envied the floor which in their nakedness they seemed to caress, so lingeringly did they move from it in ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... manner by which he always knew how to soften the strength of his expressions, made nearly the same declarations of his resolution, by which his mother had been so much surprised and offended. Lord Clonbrony seemed more embarrassed, but not so much displeased. When Lord Colambre adverted, as delicately as he could, to the selfishness of desiring from him the sacrifice of liberty for life, to say nothing of his affections, merely to enable his family to make a splendid figure in London, Lord Clonbrony exclaimed, 'That's all nonsense!—cursed nonsense! That's the way we are obliged to state the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... like variegated tulips, show; 'Tis to their changes half their charms they owe; Fine by defect, and delicately weak, Their happy ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... Peccaries have delicately moulded short legs, and their feet are small, the tracks looking peculiarly dainty in consequence. Hence, they do not swim well, though they take to the water if necessary. They feed on roots, prickly pears, nuts, insects, lizards, etc. They usually keep entirely separate from the ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... lines. As she washed her hands again and again in the cold water which hardened and reddened the skin, she looked at her handsome round arms and asked herself what her cousin did to make his hands so softly white, his nails so delicately curved. She put on new stockings and her prettiest shoes. She laced her corset straight, without skipping a single eyelet. And then, wishing for the first time in her life to appear to advantage, she felt the joy of having a new gown, well made, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... disuse. A coyote can scent the tracks left by a bird long hours past; the smell of fresh blood is hot in his nostril a full half-mile downwind while the nose of man could scarce detect it at a distance of two feet. His ears, attuned to receive the delicately shaded tone inflections of coyote converse, catch vibrations of sound far too fine to make the least impression on the ears of man. And it is through these sense impressions that animals are warned at distances which men believe impossible without ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... actually—six hundred of them with their valetaille, headed by your old friend M. de La Tour d'Azyr, and they were for slashing us—the members of the Third Estate—into ribbons so as to put an end to our insolence." He laughed delicately. "But, by God, we showed them that we, too, could take up arms. It was what you yourself advocated here in Nantes, last November. We fought them a pitched battle in the streets, under the leadership of your namesake Moreau, the provost, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... swamp. I saw it when I was down there this morning. Of course, it mayn't be intended to be a likeness of you, skipper, but it's got a pith helmet on, which the up-country nigger doesn't generally add to portraits of himself; and moreover, it's wearing a neat torpedo beard on the end of its chin, delicately ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... hidden in the imitation of most pleasing nature! What varied expression in his eyes! They were of the azure colour of the heavens, from which they seemed to derive their origin. His teeth, in form, in colour, in transparency, resembled pearls; but his cheeks were too delicately tinged with the hue of the pale rose. His neck, which he was in the habit of keeping uncovered as much as the usages of society permitted, seemed to have been formed in a mould, and was very white. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... baddix," announced my namesake, gravely judicial. Then, as if with intention to indicate delicately that the family afforded striking contrasts, he added, "I ain't a ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... however, as a patron of art and literature that Louis XIV gained much of his celebrity. Molire, who was at once a playwright and an actor, delighted the court with comedies in which he delicately satirized the foibles of his time. Corneille, who had gained renown by the great tragedy of The Cid in Richelieu's time, found a worthy successor in Racine, the most distinguished perhaps of French tragic poets. The charming letters of Madame de Svign are ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... manifest surprise or elation at the fulfilment of her forebodings. To be convicted of want of economy would have been so dreadful and disgraceful, that she deeply felt for poor Caroline, and dealt with her tenderly and delicately, even when the weekly household books were opened, and disclosed how much had been spent every week in items, the head and front of which were oft repeated in old nurse's ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... attendance, no carriages of the neighbouring gentry followed. Our hero was quite alone and unsupported; but when the ceremony was over, the want of respect shown to the memory of his father was more than atoned for by the kindness and consideration shown towards the son, who was warmly, yet delicately, welcomed as the future proprietor of ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... familiar to us in the countenance of the late John Tyler, our accidental President, was frequently met with. The women were still more distinguishable from our New England pattern. Soft, sallow, succulent, delicately finished about the mouth and firmly shaped about the chin, dark-eyed, full-throated, they looked as if they had been grown in a land of olives. There was a little toss in their movement, full of ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... history, hopes, and polity of the interesting strangers; if they can be so called who were already so well known to me. Dr. Reasono admitted that the request was natural and was entitled to respect; but he delicately suggested the necessity of sustaining the animal function by nutriment, intimating that the ladies had supped but in an indifferent way the evening before, and acknowledging that, philosopher as he was, he should go through ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... her destination, she found herself not only without immediate resources, but considerably in debt to one who had advanced money for her travelling expenses. With silent endurance she met the necessities of her situation. Her daughters, delicately reared, and hitherto carefully educated, were placed out to service, and Mrs. Ames sought for employment as a nurse. The younger child fell sick, and the hard earnings of the mother were all exhausted in the care of her; and though she ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... man's. However, Arsaces did not at all appreciate equality, and wanted to come down on horseback. As for Oroetes, he was so tender-footed that he could not stand, far less walk. That is the way with all the Medes —once they are off their horses, they go delicately on tiptoe as if they were treading on thorns. He threw himself down, and there he lay; nothing would induce him to get up; so the excellent Hermes had to pick him up and carry him to ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... only among the women. The men are clumsy, small and vulgar, rude in form and rough in vocal intonation. The women, on the contrary, have preserved the ancestral delicacy. The face is that of a cameo, the nose is straight, the chin very Greek, the ear delicately modelled; the eyes, admirably shaped, have in them a sort of Attic grace, transmitted from their mothers, and to be handed on ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... it into boots. We "crush its delicately fashioned feet into hideous leather instruments of torture." That is the sort of phrase that is hurled at us! The picture conjured up is that of some fiend in human shape, calling itself a father, seizing some helpless cherub ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... seconds met again at the foot of Lake Merced, about twelve miles from San Francisco. About eighty spectators, friends of the participants, were present. The distance was the usual ten paces. Both pistols had hair triggers, but Broderick's was more delicately set than Terry's, so much so that a jar might discharge it. Broderick's seconds were inexperienced men, and no one realized the importance of ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... religious principle seems to be peculiarly necessary; and unfortunately Shrewsbury had, in the act of shaking off the yoke of that superstition in which he had been brought up, liberated himself also from more salutary bands which might perhaps have braced his too delicately constituted mind into stedfastness and uprightness. Destitute of such support, he was, with great abilities, a weak man, and, though endowed with many amiable and attractive qualities, could not be called an honest ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... light, I saw that I was in the midst of elegance and luxury in a degree such as I had never seen; but not the elegance which makes one ill at ease. As I sank into a great chair, the subdued tone, the delicately sensuous harmony of my surroundings, drew from me a deep sigh of relief and comfort. How long the man was gone I do not know, but I was startled by a voice saying: "Come this way, if you please, sir," and I saw him standing by my chair. I had been asleep; ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... last fold of paper was removed there lay revealed a child's muslin slip. Clara lifted it and shook it gently until it was unfolded before their eyes. The lower half was delicately worked in a lacelike pattern, revealing an ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... attention to him whatsoever. She drew a spectacle-case from her small hand-bag and set upon her beetling nose a huge pair of horn-rimmed eye-glasses. She picked up the menu-card as though she were delicately removing a bug—supposing there to be any bug so presumptuous as to crawl upon her smart tan suit. She raised her chin and ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... poverty and want pressed upon him sorely. The failing health of his wife, to whom his tender devotion is beyond all praise, was a source of deep and constant anxiety. For a time he became an object of charity—a humiliation that was exceedingly galling to his delicately sensitive nature. To a sympathetic friend, who lent her kindly aid in this time of need, we owe a graphic but pathetic picture of Poe's home shortly before the death of his almost angelic wife: "There ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... built a little more heavily. His face, tanned red instead of brown, was of the blonde type and bore an aspect of refinement unusual in the woods. The blue eyes were thoughtful and the chin, curving rather delicately, indicated gentleness and a sense of humor, allied with firmness of purpose and great courage. His dress was similar in fashion to that of the older man, but was finer in quality. He was ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... to the desk of the astounded principal, he laid the points of his fingers delicately upon it, and, with a preparatory inclination of his head towards her, placed his other hand in his breast, and with an invocatory ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Ethie in some respects a spoiled child—[she wrote] but it is more my fault than hers. I have loved her so much, and petted her so much, that I have doubt if she knows what a harsh word or cross look means. She has been carefully and delicately brought up, but has repaid me well for all my pains by her tender love. Please, dear Mrs. Markham, be very, very kind to her, and you will greatly oblige, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... fallen rather back, showing the masses of her glorious hair, and all her flushed cheeks, and her eyes that shone with a strange lustre, though there were tears still on their long, trailing lashes. I saw the impersonation of material life, exuberant and vigorous, yet delicately lovely—the Lust ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... shadow of doubt crossed her thoughtful face as she glanced at his. He was so different from other young men of his age, so delicately nurtured, so very gentle; there was the radiance of maidenly innocence in his look, and she was afraid that he might be more like a girl than ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... about the matter at all," said the man in black; "but when you talk about perverting the meaning of the text, you speak ignorantly, Mr. Tinker; when he whom you call the Saviour gave his followers the sop, and bade them eat it, telling them it was his body, he delicately alluded to what it was incumbent upon them to do after his death, namely, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves unseen. Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns, while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault, with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands up to the nails, gave ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... instruments of ivory, and mother-of-pearl, with steel files, scissors, puffs, and brushes, with bottles, with little trays, with cosmetics, labelled and arranged methodically in groups and lines; and amid all this display, awkward and already shaky, an old man's hand, shrunken and long, delicately trimmed and polished about the nails like that of a Japanese painter, which faltered about among this ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... not tell all this to Uncle Julian. I am learning fast—though perhaps not quite what he expected me to learn. His Princess is most kind to me, and, indeed, so is everybody. There is a Prince, a rosy young man who walks delicately like a cat on wet grass, and they say that he would like to lay his Princedom at my feet. Which do you think I would rather be, Stair, a Princess with her chin in the air (Ho! Menial, fetch me my crown. No, the one ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... entered whilst she was speaking. He was a dignified gentleman, with delicately chiselled features and portly figure. His silky light brown hair curled naturally about his brow and set it off imposingly. His hands were white and small, with tapering fingers, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... from the impression she had received. She had imagined it more ethereal, more faint, more sexless, more angelic, as she had seen it in her thoughts. Divine it was, but womanly beyond Unorna's own. Dark, delicately aquiline, tall and noble, the purity it expressed was of earth and not of heaven. It was not transparent, for there was life in every feature; it was sad indeed almost beyond human sadness, but it was sad with the mortal sorrows of this world, not with the unfathomable ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... middle of helping the bacon and eggs, paused abruptly, and a delicately poached egg promptly slid off the spoon he was holding and plopped back upon the dish, disseminating a ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... the Arabs outside the walls, however, and the freshly arriving country people, this politeness was not so much exhibited. There was a certain tattooed girl, with black eyes and huge silver earrings, and a chin delicately picked out with blue, who formed one of a group of women outside the great convent, whose likeness I longed to carry off;— there was a woman with a little child, with wondering eyes, drawing water ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... companions were before him. Nothing daunted, Magua almost persuaded the Tortoises to surrender the girl. As the chief of the tribe hesitated how to act, Uncas stepped forward and bared his breast. A cry rose from all present, for there, delicately tatooed on the young Mohican's skin, was the emblem of a Tortoise. In him the tribe recognised the long-lost scion of the purest race of the Delawares, who, tradition said, still wandered far and unknown on the hills and through ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... his death, robbery was not among them. As already mentioned, there were no markings upon the man's linen, which appeared to be new, and no tailor's name upon his coat. In appearance he was young, short, smooth-cheeked, and delicately featured. One of his front teeth was conspicuously ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... admits no questioning of its sincerity. Nodier's modest tribute handsomely atones for his countrymen's misapprehensions of Shakespeare's tragic conceptions. None has phrased more delicately or more simply the sense of personal devotion, which is roused by close study ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... thought of the white freestone, the pillared portico, and the terrace full of flowers, Sir James smiling above them like a prince issuing from his enchantment in a rose-bush, with a handkerchief swiftly metamorphosed from the most delicately odorous petals—Sir James, who talked so agreeably, always about things which had common-sense in them, and not about learning! Celia had those light young feminine tastes which grave and weatherworn gentlemen sometimes prefer in a wife; but happily Mr. Casaubon's bias ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... twos or threes of these simple but elegant Saffron flowers; no other should be placed near—their simplicity forms their charm. It will be seen that the robust but soft-coloured flower of the meadows harmonises finely with the more delicately grown moss. In other ways this fine autumnal flower may be used with pleasing effect in a cut state, and it blends well with the more choice exotics. This is more than can be said of many hardy flowers, and it is fortunate that ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... and more anatomical than the ham; a glazed tongue, real tongue-shape, none of your tinned round mysteries; a dish of sausages; two handsome fish, a little blue, perhaps; a joint of beef, ribs I think, very red as to the lean and very white in the fat parts; a pork pie, delicately bronzed like a traveller in Central Africa. For sweets I had shapes, shapes of beauty, a jelly and a cream; a Swiss roll too, and a plum pudding; asparagus there was also and a cauliflower, and a dish of the greenest peas in all this grey world. This was my banquet ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... Now that she was successfully landed upon the desired level and needed its support no longer, would she kick it aside entirely, with one flick of her slippered foot? As for their marriage: what had it really been? A delicately hand-wrought bond? A machine-made manacle? Indeed, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... correct hitherto, and so cold to the prince in her husband's presence, I have my suspicions that, if in his absence, proper means were taken, if her pride were roused by apt suggestions, if it were delicately pointed out to her that she is shamefully neglected, that she is a cipher in her own house, that her husband presumes too much upon her sweetness of temper, that his inconstancy is wondered at by all who have eyes, and that a little retaliation might become ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... the pieces, fingering it delicately and inspecting with a critical eye the flat base on which it stood, and ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... twenty-two years of age at the time; tall, of an athletic slenderness, and exceedingly graceful in his movements, he was acknowledged to be the handsomest man of his age. His face was long and pale, his brow lofty, his nose delicately aquiline. He had long auburn hair, and his hazel eyes, large, quick in their movements, and singularly searching in their glance, were alive with the genius of the soul behind them. He inherited from his father the stupendous health and vigour ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... in the dim passage to greet me, fully dressed, to reproach me with my tardiness. He is a mite of a fellow, but he is as wide awake and shiny as though he were a part of the morning and had been wrought delicately out of the dawn's first ray. Indeed, I choose to fancy that the sun, being off hurriedly on broader business, has made him his agent for the premises. Particularly he assists in this passage at my bedroom door where ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... for a boy's topcoat, cunningly cut in new lines of seam and revers, with a pocket, a bit of braid, a line of buttons laid in as delicately as the factors in any other good composition. Mis' Winslow inevitably recognized its utility, exclaimed, ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... enough of such coins, besides a fair number of earlier ones, many of which are beautiful, whereas these nineteenth century ones are so beastly ugly, ain't they? We have a piece of Edward III., with the king in a ship, and little leopards and fleurs- de-lys all along the gunwale, so delicately worked. You see," he said, with something of a smirk, "I am fond of working in gold and fine metals; this buckle here is ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... little to my taste as might be that of rouging the venerable cheeks of one's grandmother. But the hand that renovates is always more sacrilegious than that which destroys. In fine, we gathered up our household goods, drank a farewell cup of tea in our pleasant little breakfast-room—delicately fragrant tea, an unpurchasable luxury, one of the many angel gifts that had fallen like dew upon us—and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might next ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... enough on occasion, but she was not indiscreet. She could convey her mind delicately if need be, and was ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... man, with a mass of black hair, dark, expressive eyes, delicately chiselled nose and chin, and wavy, fair moustache." This is the reporter's description of Frank Cavilla as he stood in court, this dreary month of September, "dressed in a much worn grey suit, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... wrist-joint, forged of steel and silver by a smith of Damascus, well balanced, slender, with deep blood-channels scored on each side to within four fingers of the thrice-hardened point, that could prick as delicately as a needle or pierce fine mail like a spike driven by a sledge-hammer. The tunic fell in folds to the knee, and the close- fitted cloth hose were of a rich dark brown. Sir Arnold wore short riding-boots of dark purple leather, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... had once called her a pug-nosed puppet; but I, as her chronicler, deny that she was pug-nosed,—and all the world who knew her soon came to understand that she was no puppet. In figure she was small, but not so small as she looked to be. Her feet and hands were delicately fine, and there was a softness about her whole person, an apparent compressibility, which seemed to indicate that she might go into very small compass. Into what compass and how compressed, there were very many ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... Ustane also, to whom I had discovered he had grown considerably attached. Indeed, he overwhelmed me with questions about the poor girl, which I did not dare to answer, for after Leo's first awakening She had sent for me, and again warned me solemnly that I was to reveal nothing of the story to him, delicately hinting that if I did it would be the worse for me. She also, for the second time, cautioned me not to tell Leo anything more than I was obliged about herself, saying that she would reveal herself to him in her ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... down, he saw that from one of the horse's delicately finished shoes, a nail was missing, and its hole left empty. It was a ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... Waves which had for weeks been tangled masses of white caps and had thrashed with frantic anger the bases of the towering pillars dropped to the dainty ripples of a summer breeze. There was no crash, no roar, no splashing spray, driven on by a gale that snorted and snapped. So delicately and silently did the waters kiss the shore that sparrows and wrens and a flock of wandering doves walked to the very edge and filled their crops with the pure white sand. Then this, the best great work of any race ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... Rice, ecclesiastical lawyers in holy orders, with various subordinates. Legh and Leyton, the two principal commissioners, were young, impetuous men, likely to execute their work rather thoroughly than delicately; but, to judge by the surviving evidence, they were as upright and plain-dealing as they were assuredly able and efficient. It is pretended by some writers that the inquiry was set on foot with ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... some improvements since you were here last, sir," said Polton, who was delicately lubricating the steel guides. "We've fitted these steel runners instead of the blackleaded wooden ones that we used to have. And we've made two scales instead of one. Hallo! That's the downstairs bell. Shall I ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... found herself. Not even her mother's great saloon, which she had always thought so magnificent, was to be compared with it. It was not very large, but it was more like Fairyland than anything she had ever dreamt of. The loveliest flowers were trained against the walls, here and there fountains of delicately scented waters refreshed the air, the floor was covered with carpets of the richest hues and the softest texture. There were birds singing among the flowers, gold and silver fish sporting in the marble basins—it was a perfect fairy's bower. The Princess sat up and looked about her. There was ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth

... proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... forthpushingly at the front, but at times, with truer art, glowing like a red constellation from the remoter bays of the lawn; and there, taller yet, the evergreen Magnolia fuscata, full of its waxen, cream-tinted, inch-long flowers smelling delicately like the banana. He found the sweet olive, of refined leaf and minute axillary flowers yielding their ravishing tonic odor with the reserve of the violet; the pittosporum; the box; the myrtle; the camphor-tree with its neat foliage answering fragrantly the ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... in 1843 been intimately acquainted with a lady whose son is now valet to M. Thiers' first cousin, or if he had been seen in a church, and it were clearly proved that he was there with any other intention than that of delicately picking the pockets of the faithful, then I could understand your indignation. But the idea of arresting a man because he has appropriated the booty of the traitors, is too absurd; if you go on acting in that way people will think you are ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... was left powerless. He puffed and grew dizzy as Bill Wrenn danced delicately about him, for he could do nothing without back-street tactics. He did bloody the nose of Bill and pummel his ribs, but many cigarettes and much whisky told, and he was ready to laugh foolishly and make peace when, at the end of the sixth round, he felt Bill's neat little fist ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... fields. He was not rich, but much respected by his neighbours for an honest, upright life. His wife was as old as himself. They had been always easy-living people, and had no child but one only daughter. Menie was a delicately pretty girl, a little spoiled, perhaps, in her station, for both father and mother made a queen of her at home. She was never allowed to do any rough work, was always dressed, and her neighbours said, kept in the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various

... brush carefully again, and as soon as the paint was dry went carefully over the letter part with gum, so delicately that the red colour was not disturbed nor the ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn

... Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.—that gave a wealth of variety to reviving popular literature. Majestic cathedrals with pointed arch and flying buttress, with lofty spire and delicate tracery, wonderful wood carvings, illuminated manuscripts, quaint gargoyles, myriad statues of saints and martyrs, delicately colored paintings of surpassing beauty—all betokened the great Christian, or Gothic, art of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... clear than any atmosphere Simpson had ever known, still dropped its pale streaming fires across the waves, where the islands—a hundred, surely, rather than fifty—floated like the fairy barques of some enchanted fleet. Fringed with pines, whose crests fingered most delicately the sky, they almost seemed to move upwards as the light faded—about to weigh anchor and navigate the pathways of the heavens instead of the currents of their native and ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood

... great distance, and is then inexpressibly charming, as it only fulfills its design in the sentiment of remoteness. It is plaintive, but not dismal in its sound, and at times it is scarcely possible to refrain from tears. My companion, who otherwise was not a very delicately organised person, said quite unexpectedly: E singolare come quel canto intenerisce, e molto piu ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... Lady Blanche then murmured some few words indistinctly, in a very sweet voice, but showed no indication of feeling, except, as Helen gave one glance, she thought she saw a slight colour, like the inside of a shell, delicately beautiful; but it might be only the reflection from the crimson silk curtain near which she stood: it was gone, and the picture put down; and in a lively tone from the comtesse "Au revoir," and exit, a graceful bend from the silent ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth



Words linked to "Delicately" :   finely, fine, delicate, exquisitely



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