"Exquisite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that one might have sat upon it or tossed it from this chair to that without doing it injury. Here were fine alabaster vases, and in one of these we were startled to find a liquid, like honey or syrup, still unsolidified by time. Boxes of exquisite workmanship stood in various parts of the room, some resting on delicately wrought legs. Now the eye was directed to a wicker trunk fitted with trays and partitions, and ventilated with little apertures, since the scents were doubtless ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... motioned his ebon guide forward once more. It was the Hon. Morison Baynes—the fastidious—the exquisite. His face and hands were scratched and smeared with dried blood from the wounds he had come by in thorn and thicket. His clothes were tatters. But through the blood and the dirt and the rags a new Baynes shone forth—a handsomer ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dwelling-place, lying away from the white road, at the point where it began to decline somewhat steeply to the marsh-land below. The building of pale red and yellow marble, mellowed by age, which he saw beyond the gates, was indeed but the exquisite [19] fragment of a once large and sumptuous villa. Two centuries of the play of the sea-wind were in the velvet of the mosses which lay along its inaccessible ledges and angles. Here and there the marble plates had slipped from their places, where the delicate weeds had forced their ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... of the character has, perhaps, been slightly overestimated. To describe Lodge's Rosalynde as "a colorless being, incapable of entering into the spirit of her part"[1] is really too severe a condemnation. Of course Lodge's heroine does lack the exquisite charm of saucy playfulness coupled with gentle womanliness that makes Shakespeare's Rosalind perhaps the most popular heroine of English comedy. Yet Lodge furnished to Shakespeare far more than a name for his heroine. In the dialogue between Ganymede (Rosalynde) and Aliena there is a good deal ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... courtesy, the tact, the exquisite, yet simple English of this man was my education. Every hour of his delicious humor, his wise advice, his ready sympathy sent me away in mingled exaltation and despair—despair of my own blunt and common diction, exaltation over his continued ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... I am sure you would say she's exquisite. What need of many words? I fell in love with her. By good luck there was at our house a certain Eunuch, whom my brother had purchased for Thais, and he had not as yet been sent to her. On this occasion, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... arrived at last. Mrs. Castleton's rooms were lighted to perfection, and she herself dressed with exquisite taste, looking the fitting priestess of the elegant shrine over which she presided. Emma, with her brothers, came early—and one glance satisfied Mrs. Castleton. The simplicity and elegance of Emma's toilette were not to be out-done even ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... must do more than merely refer to this exquisite work of art; it must be described, however inadequate may be the effort to express ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... or two points occur to you for elucidation," he said, feeling vaguely a liar, and generally guilty. But when, on the departure of the dunce, Winifred held out her arms, everything fell from him but the sense of the exquisite moment. Their lips met for the first time, but only for an instant. He had scarcely time to realise that this wonderful thing had happened before the mobile creature had darted to his book-shelves and was examining a ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... reflection:—"How many greedy epicures would think themselves happy, amidst such a variety of delicate viands as I now carry! But to me this bitter, prickly thistle is more savory and relishing than the most exquisite and sumptuous banquet." ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... at once in the front rank of poets. About the same time, whether before or after remains uncertain, is to be placed his incomparable volume of epistles, which in grace, ease, good sense and wit mark as high a level as the odes do in terseness, melody, and exquisite finish. These two works are Horace's great achievement. The remainder of his writings demand but brief notice. They are the "Carmen Seculare;" a fourth book of odes, with all the perfection of style of the others, but ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... remarked that hers was not the governess air. She had long felt very virtuous for having spent almost nothing on her clothes, eking out her former wardrobe to the utmost; and the loose, dove-coloured jacket over her black silk skirt betrayed Parisian make, as did the exquisite rose, once worn in her hair, and now enlivening the white ribbon and black lace of the cheap straw bonnet, far back upon the rippling hair turned back from her temples, and falling in profuse ringlets. It was her ordinary unpremeditated appearance, but she perceived that ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exhibited of it (Anecdotes, p. 196) it is much to be wished that the world could see the whole. Indeed I can speak from my own knowledge; for having had the pleasure to read it, I found it to be a piece of exquisite satire conveyed in a strain of pointed vivacity and humour, and in a manner of which no other instance is to be found in Johnson's writings. After describing the ridiculous and ruinous career of a wild spendthrift he consoles him ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... what I have frequently observed before, that a man who is but reasonably afraid of an altercation with an alien has a most poignant dread of the operations of foreign law. The doctor's voice was flute-like in its exquisite politeness, as ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air Youth here has End by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows come from. Even more he liked an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men, which boggled ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... commented the other, regarding the black-clothed figure beside him. A thin veil was pinned to her hat in such a way as to cover the shortness of the soft curls. Her figure was erect, her coloring exquisite, her eyes innocent. She seemed to him like a jewel which had been set in base metal, carelessly guarded, and was now in danger of sinking into the mud of the highway. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... groups slowly ascending the mountain. These, for the most part, were the families of landed-gentry from the steppes—as could be guessed at once from the threadbare, old-fashioned frock-coats of the husbands and the exquisite attire of the wives and daughters. Evidently they already had all the young men of the watering-place at their fingers' ends, because they looked at me with a tender curiosity. The Petersburg cut of my coat misled them; but ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... railroad depots, England has certainly stolen a march upon us, the large city stations in that rail-bound country being perfect Crystal Palaces in size and elegance, while those for the more rural places are often the most exquisite little villas, unapproachable in neatness and taste. In some parts of the Continent, the Swiss style has been pressed into ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Jesuits, he naturally committed the work to them. Three fathers and two lay brothers of this order were sent to Canada in 1625, and others subsequently joined them. Whatever were the fruits of their labors, many of them perished in their heroic undertaking, manfully suffering the exquisite pains of ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... things that grow to beauty as you look at them—to exquisite beauty; and you are one of them," he had said to her. "And there are men," she had answered, "who grow to flattery as you listen to them—to impudent flattery; and you are one of them." "I thought you plain the first day I saw you. That's not ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... of the great Shwe Dagon pagoda in Rangoon, but there are many others almost equally beautiful, if not so large: the exquisite Shwe Tsan Daw at Prome, the Arracan near Mandalay, while in old Pagan, Pegu, Moulmein, and a host of other places, are temples which one might well think could not be surpassed for beauty. I have told you that these ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... by some authorities that Parrhasius was the most celebrated, as he is said to have "raised the art of painting to perfection in all that is exalted and essential;" uniting in his works "the classic invention of Polygnotus, the magic tone of Apollodorus, and the exquisite design of Zeuxis." He was a native of Ephesus, but became a citizen of Athens, where he won many victories over his contemporaries. One of these is recorded by Pliny as having been achieved in a public contest with Zeuxis. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... him that, poor as he was, he was not poor enough to take Mr. Locket's money. He looked at the opposed courses with the self-possession of a man who has chosen, but this self- possession was in itself the most exquisite of excitements. It was really a high revulsion and a sort of noble pity. He seemed indeed to have his finger upon the pulse of history and to be in the secret of the gods. He had them all in his hand, the tablets and the scales and the torch. He couldn't keep a character ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... had stepped out of his litter, and a way being made for him in the crowd by his men, he had strolled up to the rostrum, and mounting its first gradient he leaned with studied grace against the block of white marble, giving to the common herd below the pleasing spectacle of a young exquisite, rich and well-favoured—his handsome person carefully perfumed and bedecked after the morning bath, his crisp fair hair daintily curled, his body clad in a tunic of soft white wool splendidly worked in purple stripes, the insignia ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... The Japanese woman can be known only in her own country,—the Japanese woman as prepared and perfected by the old-time education for that strange society in which the charm of her moral being,—her delicacy, her supreme unselfishness, her childlike piety and trust, her exquisite tactful perception of all ways and means to make happiness about her,—can be comprehended and valued.... Even if she cannot be called handsome according to western standards, the Japanese woman must be confessed pretty,—pretty like a comely child; and if she be seldom graceful in the occidental ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... you have genius and the modesty of genius. A true artist, who seeks to interpret Nature in its purest and most exquisite relations, who penetrates the deepest temples of the woods and the silent sanctuaries of the mountains, must be a true, pure, and good man. He must be a happy man,—happy in a sweet and natural way. A man whose life is passed in a daily delight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... easily understood, for in certain savage lands the necklace formed, and still forms, the chief feature in feminine attire. In this little treatise, however, we cannot deal with anything so primitive or so early; we must not even take time to consider the exquisite Greek and Roman jewelry. Amongst the earliest mediaeval jewels we will study the ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... chivalrous nature was gratified by the notice of a Crimean hero, and he infinitely admired the dignity and courtesy of Lady Merrifield, and the grace and ease of her daughters, finding himself in a new world of exquisite charm ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... paddled on board the barque for the purpose of bringing Sir Edgar and the whole of his party on shore, in order that they might indulge in a run on the beautiful sandy strand of the basin, and enjoy a nearer view of the entrancing loveliness of this exquisite gem ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... when it is low or high, clear or muffled, sad or cheery. The thin, quavering sensation of an old voice differs in my touch from the sensation of a young voice. A Southerner's drawl is quite unlike the Yankee twang. Sometimes the flow and ebb of a voice is so enchanting that my fingers quiver with exquisite pleasure, even if I do not understand ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... alluvial level plains and vallies bearing mounds, teocalli and pyramids. Its high interior altitudes, in the tropical regions, are covered with the ruins of temples and cities—and even in the temperate latitudes of the north, its barrows and mounds are now found to yield objects of exquisite sculpture, and many of its forests, beyond the Alleghanies, exhibit the regularity of antique garden beds and furrows,[2] amid the heaviest forest trees. Objects of art and implements of war, and even of science, are turned up by the plough. These are silent witnesses. With ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... the faithful Jeanette supported this child by her own industry. She was an exquisite laundress, and she throve where the Duke and Duchess would have starved. As the boy grew up she kept him as far as possible from common companions, treated him with as much deference as if he had succeeded to the family honours, and filled his head with traditions of the deserts ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the only one that she could see. The house was full. It was a plain little church, very neat, but very plain compared with what Daisy was accustomed to. So were the people. These were not rich people, not any of them, she thought. At least there were no costly bonnets nor exquisite lace shawls nor embroidered muslin dresses among them; and many persons that she saw looked absolutely poor. Daisy however did not see this at first; for the service began almost as soon ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... that this friend of hers was the loveliest girl she had ever seen. Certainly her beauty was superb, of the Spanish-Irish type that is world-famous,—black hair that clustered in soft ringlets about the forehead, black brows very straight and delicate, skin of olive and rose, features so exquisite as to make one marvel, long-lashed eyes that were neither black nor ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... in the midst of a curved bank where the copsewood had no doubt been recently cut away, and which was a perfect marvel of primroses, their profuse bunches standing out of their wrinkled leaves at every hazel root or hollow among the exquisite moss, varied by the pearly stars of the wind-flower, purple orchis spikes springing from black-spotted leaves, and deep-grey crested dog- violets. On one side was a perfect grove of the broad-leaved, waxen- belled Solomon's ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Victor and Jimmy, who live with their widowed mother in an outer suburb of London. That there is art, very subtle and delicate art, in the telling of it goes without saying. The characters of the brothers are realized with exquisite care. Victor, the elder, uncertain, violently sensitive and emotional, seeking always from life what he is never destined (at least so far as the present story carries him) to attain; Jimmy, placid, shallow, avoiding ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... heaven deliver us from those buckram individuals who imagine that Nature is as narrow and rigid as their own contracted selves, and who would seek to array her in their own exquisite bottle-green bifurcations and a gilet a la mode! These characters always put us in mind of the statues of Louis XIV, in which he is represented as Jupiter or Hercules, nude, with the exception of the lion's hide thrown ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... adjacent dressing-room, brilliantly illuminated by electric light, the Princess dressed with the aid of Nadine, proud and happy to be the sole assistant of her beloved mistress. The toilet was a triumph: silk of an exquisite blue, draped with silk muslin incrusted with pointe de Venise and bands of ermine: a costly masterpiece of the dressmaker's art. It enhanced the brilliant beauty of Sonia Danidoff, and threw ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... single palace on Benicia Street, and our little box of pine and paper would hardly have passed for a palace on the stage, where these things are often contrived with great simplicity; but as we had made a little Italy together, she touched it with the exquisite politeness of her race, and it became for the instant a lordly mansion, standing on the Chiaja, or the Via Nuovissima, or ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... the greenest valleys, a storm came up; storm clouds dark and threatening, the most imposing I have ever seen. In a short while the storm passed over and the last rays of the setting sun shone on three mountain peaks across the river and valley. It is impossible to imagine a more exquisite display of colors. I think it must have been like the light that shines on a happy mother's face when she holds her love-child in her arms. And then a rainbow encircled the illuminated mountains, like a beautiful filmy halo about the head of ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... My nose is the most impertinent nose in the universe, MON CHER MYLORD [Queen-Dowager snuff, SPANIOL from the fountain-head, of Marischal's providing; quality exquisite, but difficult to get transmitted in the Storms of War]; I am ashamed of the trouble it costs you! I beg many pardons;—and should be quite abashed, did I not know how you compassionate the weak points of your friends, and that, for a long time past, you have a singular indulgence for my nose. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Dostoievski but the serene Turgenev who is under a curse. For only think! Every gift has been heaped on his cradle: absolute sanity and the deepest sensibility, the clearest vision and the quickest responsiveness, penetrating insight and unfailing generosity of judgment, an exquisite perception of the visible world and an unerring instinct for the significant, for the essential in the life of men and women, the clearest mind, the warmest heart, the largest sympathy—and all that in perfect measure. There's enough there to ruin the prospects of any writer. For you know ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... there- fore Nature it self beyng well framed, and afterward by arte [Sidenote: Arte furthe- reth nature.] and order of science, instructed and adorned, must be singular- lie furthered, helped, and aided to all excellencie, to exquisite [Sidenote: Logike.] inuencion, and profounde knowledge, bothe in Logike and [Sidenote: Rhetorike.] Rhetorike. In the one, as a Oratour to pleate with all facili- tee, and copiouslie to dilate any matter or sentence: in the other to grounde profunde and subtill ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... difference in their attitude to kings, that those knightly Irishmen of old, driven homeless over-sea, appeared as exiles suppliant for shelter before the face of the Grand Monarch, and he, no doubt with exquisite French grace, gave back to them all they had lost except what was lost forever, salving so far as he could the injustice suffered by each. But to-day when might, for its turn, is in the hands of democracies, the men whose fathers built the Statue of Liberty have left their country to ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... gravitation. Elusive fascinations of thought were liberated with the shining crystalline aerial pulsation; some mysterious attraction dwelt down long vistas amongst the bare trees; their fine fibrous grace of branch and twig was accented by the snow, which lay upon them with exquisite lightness, despite the aggregated bulk, not the densely packed effect which the boughs would show to-morrow. The crags were crowned; their grim faces looked frowningly out like a warrior's from beneath a wreath. Nowhere could the brown ground be seen; already the pine boughs ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... round, he again descended to the cabin, reappearing in less than half a minute with the weapons. The colonel buckled on his sword with far greater satisfaction than a dandy tries on a new coat, and after carefully loading and priming his pistols, which were of exquisite workmanship, he placed them, with a look of satisfaction, in his belt. Not a word, however, did he say while thus employed. The first ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... science has had his way, has fulfilled his aim, and is discontented with the limits within which he has fulfilled it. He would extend those limits; and at first it seems as if those limits are to be extended. But the exquisite pathos which humanises what is fantastic in The Wild Duck passes, in Rosmersholm, in which the problems of Love's Comedy are worked out to their logical conclusion, into a form, not of genuine tragedy, but of mental ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... especially affected both by the most acknowledged exquisites of that day, and, it must be owned, also, by the most egregious parvenus. For it is noticeable that it is your parvenu who always comes nearest in fashion (so far as externals are concerned) to your genuine exquisite. It is your parvenu who is most particular as to the cut of his coat, and the precision of his equipage, and the minutiae of his menage. Those between the parvenu and the exquisite, who know their own consequence, and have something solid to rest ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... can be taken into another room and be brought back again after it has been made "more comfortable." It is trying to a young mother who is proud of her baby's looks, to go to no end of trouble to get exquisite clothes for it, and ask all her friends in, and then have it look exactly like a tragedy mask carved in a beet! And you can scarcely expect a self-respecting baby who is hauled and mauled and taken to a strange place and handed to a strange person who pours cold water on it—not to protest. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... privileges, she was a mere figurehead—a good mother looking after her family. However, she was not idle; without taking part in the intrigues, she was studying them—planning her future tactics; in all relations she was diplomatic, her conversation ever displaying exquisite tact. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... indignation, as he turned at the foot of the staircase on hearing these apologies. He felt that the family dignity was struck at by an assassin's hand. He had a sense of his dignity, which was of the most exquisite nature. He could detect a design upon it when nobody else had any perception of the fact. His life was made an agony by the number of fine scalpels that he felt to be incessantly engaged in dissecting ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... great Madonnas, the Virgin and Children are of surpassing loveliness. It is finished in such a soft, melting style that to see it in its exquisite coloring, one could easily imagine it vanishing imperceptibly into the blaze of some splendid sunset. While we are talking of Raphael's color it may be interesting to call your attention to a very remarkable fact about his paintings. He lays the color on the canvas ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... and carefully studies and gathers up all the details and facts available. He adds much that the two previous writers had not included. One can easily understand his spending several days with Mary, the now aged mother of Jesus, in John's home in Jerusalem, and from her lips gleaning the exquisite account of the nativity of her divinely conceived Son. He largely omits names of places, for they would be unknown and not of value or interest. When needed, he gives ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... demanding attention, seems to me useless and ridiculous, ... The most noteworthy instance of what I say is seen in the celebrated English novelist, Richardson, who, in spite of his admirable genius and exquisite sensibility and perspicuity, added to the fact of his being the father of the modern Novel, is scarcely read nowadays, at least in Latin countries. Given the indisputable beauties of his works, this can only ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... to refer to the pineapple pattern, No. 60 cotton, collarette which Mrs. Jackson had crocheted between beers in the good old Dance Hall days as an "exquisite effect in point lace," certainly Mrs. Jackson was not the ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... situation. If they meant by such a situation, one so public, it must be also recollected that it was a situation of excessive agitation; but, if they alluded to the horrors of the moment, no situation more naturally opens the heart to affection and confiding love than the recoil from scenes of exquisite terror. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... install you in these lovely rooms; I arrange with the people here that you be treated with every attention and supplied with every luxury. The weather, after this, will mend; it will be sure to be exquisite. You'll both be as free as air and you can roam all over the place and have tremendous larks. You shall have a carriage to drive you; the whole house shall be at your call. You'll have a magnificent position." He paused, he looked from one of his companions to the other ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... mighty crowd had paused to listen to them. Glory loved the chimes, and so did grandpa; and it was their habit on every festival when they were to be rung to come and hear them. Always the child was so moved by these exquisite peals that when they ceased she felt as if she had been in another world, and it was so now. To hear every tone better, she had clasped her hands and closed her eyes and uplifted her rapt face; and so ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... wrapping a layer of tissue-paper, and under that a further envelope of linen, lightly stitched together. A knife blade quickly separated the stitches, and the linen was carefully unfolded. It displayed a beautifully trimmed evening dress of pale blue satin, with a dressing-gown of some exquisite white fabric armed with lace. The men gazed at it in silence, and then the one single expression broke ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... wife into general society without fear of its becoming so. His former mistresses could scarcely recognize the bride they had thought so childish in the elegant, witty, and gentle countess, who now appeared in society with the exquisite manners of the highest female aristocracy. Mesdames d'Espard, de Manerville, and Lady Dudley, with others less known, felt the serpent waking up in the depths of their hearts; they heard the low hissings of ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... a practical man, face to face with the discrepancies of nature and the hiatuses of theory. After the machine is finished, and the steam turned on, the next is to drive it; and experience and an exquisite sympathy must teach him where a weight should be applied or a nut loosened. With the civil engineer, more properly so called (if anything can be proper with this awkward coinage), the obligation starts with the beginning. He is always the practical ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... then the most exquisite pang he had ever felt before at his wife's hands shot through him. For as she recognized him she made a wild but impotent attempt to dash past him, and then as suddenly ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... Madeleine. Possibly there may have been times when I have not been well pleased to see one so dear, invariably, though most inexplicably, eclipsed. Bertha may shine forth in her most resplendent jewels,—her most costly and exquisite Parisian toilet; Madeleine has only to enter, in a simple muslin dress, a flower, or a knot of ribbons in her hair, and she draws all eyes ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Never did I weary of reading to him; never did I weary of conducting him where he wished to go: of doing for him what he wished to be done. And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most exquisite, even though sad—because he claimed these services without painful shame or damping humiliation. He loved me so truly, that he knew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance: he felt I loved him so fondly, that to yield that attendance was to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the child's life up to the moment when Ursula Drew made her appearance on the scene. But now a new element was introduced; for Maude's third home was a stately palace, filled with beautiful carvings, and delicate tracery, and exquisite colours, all which, lowest of the low as she was, she enjoyed with an intensity till then unknown to herself, and certainly not shared by any other in her sphere. That sense of the beautiful, which, trained in different directions, makes men poets, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... the service of the dainty was certainly achieved in a manner far from artificial. It would appear that the two fortunate mortals, to whose happy lot it fell to enjoy a meal in which health and appetite lent so keen a relish to the exquisite food of the American deserts, were far from being insensible ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... organs of sense are confined to a small part of the body, as the nostrils, ear, or eye, whilst the sense of touch is diffused over the whole skin, but exists with a more exquisite degree of delicacy at the extremities of the fingers and thumbs, and in the lips. The sense of touch is thus very commodiously disposed for the purpose of encompassing smaller bodies, and for adapting itself to the inequalities of larger ones. The figure of small bodies seems to be learnt by ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... it back, and get the value in money. I hear that Isaacs sold it again and made another profit; but that's like those traders." The disingenuous candor of Teresa's manner was in exquisite contrast to Dunn. He rose and grasped her hand so heartily she was forced to ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... anything like a great entertainment; after which, he dismissed them with an invitation to come to sup with him on the same night. At the appointed hour his guests arrived; they were received on stately couches; the tables were decked with a variety of plate, and were loaded with the most exquisite dainties. The guests were struck with the sumptuousness and profusion of the entertainment, and considering how impossible it was for any man to have made such preparations in so short a time, were persuaded that his ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... prepared. By this process most delicious perfumes might be obtained from the flowers of the Acacia tortuosa, Pancratium carribeum, Plumeria alba, Plumeria rubra, and innumerable other flowers, of the most exquisite fragrance, which abound within the tropics, blooming unregarded, and wasting their odors ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... arranged and placed upon a bracket against the wall. It was spring, and in the jar was a cluster of pale wood-anemones with some sprays of bramble newly leafed. Hetty's eyes brightened at the sight of these flowers, and noted keenly every exquisite outline and delicate hue of the group. It seemed to her at the moment that she had never seen anything so beautiful before. Mechanically she took up her pencil and began to imitate on a piece of paper the waving line of the bramble wreath, and the ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... on the neck of land by the Lost Soul, at the one end, where sat the luxurious Dannie Callaway, by no will of his own, was the glitter of silver, the flash and glow of delicate china, a flower or more from our garden, exquisite napery, the bounties of the kindly earth, whatever the cost; but at the other (the napery abruptly ceasing at the centre of the table because of the wear and tear that might chance) was set out, upon coarse ware, even ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... Nothing else. No ecstasies about the sculptures of Jean Goujon and Carpeaux, or about the marvellous harmony of the East facade! But a flick of the cane towards the half-hidden moulding! And George had felt with a thrill what an exquisite curve and what an original curve and what a modest curve that curve was. Suddenly and magically his eyes had been opened. Or it might have been that a deceitful mist had rolled away and the real Louvre been revealed in its esoteric and ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... had come upon him so unexpectedly, had assured him that he could not see her often without riveting the chains of his love more hopelessly about him. Her exquisite beauty, her artless, impulsive manner, the glance of her beautiful eyes, all moved him as he had never been moved before, and warned him that danger to both lay in indulging himself in the ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... them. But when they showed him that they trusted him, and, unsolicited, climbed upon him and laid their cheeks against his, then the loveliest expression came over his face, and you knew that the great heart, which the other day ceased to beat, throbbed with an exquisite bliss, akin ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... would cry. "You are exquisite this morning! Your eyes are like stars on the sea. Come, then, angelic Rock, Rocher des Anges, and waltz with your Ste. Valerie!" And he would take Abby by the waist, and try to waltz with her, till she reached for the broomstick. I have told you, Melody, that Abby was ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... upon the lovely sea-treasures, their beauty passed into her heart and mind, and she began to copy, spray by spray, the coral-foliage, the leaves of the sea-grasses, and the curves of the sea-shells, until after a time, in the meshes of her fish-nets, she had imprisoned forms of exquisite beauty, and one saw there reproduced, in dainty and artistic grouping, what her very soul had loved and fed upon. Her fish-nets became works ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... ingeniously contrived to express the vastness of Lord Bateman's family mansion than this remarkable passage. The proud young porter had to thread courts, corridors, galleries, and staircases innumerable, before he could penetrate to those exquisite apartments in which Lord Bateman was wont to solace his leisure hours, with the most refined pleasures of his time. We behold him hastening to the presence of his lord: the repetition of the word "avay" causes us ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... Jean Cousin and other masters of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries; Limoges enamels of the period of the Renaissance, by Leonard and Courtoise; Roman and Greek antiquities in bronze and sculpture; Oriental and European china, of the choicest forms and colours; exquisite and matchless Missals, painted by Raphael and Julio Clovo; magnificent specimens of Cinque-Cento Armour; Miniatures, illustrative of the most interesting periods of history; a valuable collection of Drawings and ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... were stable, The cells, too, and refectory, I ween: An exquisite small chapel had been able Still unimpaired to decorate the scene The rest had been reform'd, replaced, or sunk, And spoke more of the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... girls with eyes full of liquid light, with dainty bonnets nestling on their soft hair; their faces were like petals of flowers; the curves of their chins were more beautiful than chalices of lilies; their dresses, soft, shapely, of exquisite tones and texture, draped their perfect bodies. Their slender fingers held gold-and-pearl opera glasses. The young men who sat beside them wore the latest fashions in clothing cut from the finest fabrics. Heavy men of brutal bulk slouched beside their dainty daughters, the purple blotches on ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... (equal to 2.50 miles) between south and south-west, we saluted the pleasant aspect of with a general cheer. Northwards lay Point Ipizarala, southways Nyonye, both looking like tree-clumps rising from the waves. I could not sufficiently admire, and I shall never forget the exquisite loveliness of land and sea; the graceful curve of the beach, a hundred feet broad, fining imperceptibly away till lost in the convexity of waters. The morning sun, half way to the zenith, burned bright in a cloudless sky, whilst in the east and west distant banks of purple ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... that of every flower on your own window-sill the words of Christ stand literally true—that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these: and bow your hearts and souls before the magnificent prodigality, the exquisite perfection of His work, who can be, as often as He will, greatest in that which is least, because to His infinity nothing is great, and nothing small; who hath created all things, and for His pleasure they are, and were created; who rejoices for ever in His ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... 'Very; exquisite, really; the blending of the tones is so perfect. I wish I knew what to think about these things. I can't make up my mind about them. Sometimes I think it's all right to make them and buy them; sometimes ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... marched at the word of command, Necklaces, bracelets and rings, Tiny gold watches, all studded with gems, And hundreds of exquisite things. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... departure he had sent the following brilliant document to the Emperor-elect as a reply to an attempt to entrap him to Peking, a document the meaning of which was clear to every educated man. Its exquisite irony mixed with its bluntness told all that was necessary to tell—and forecasted the inevitable ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... because after the capture of the wood, three dead Germans were found there in mysterious, lifelike attitudes. The names of trenches on the French front often reflect that deep, native instinct to poetry possessed by simple peoples—the instinct that created the English ballads and the exquisite mediaeval French legends of the saints. Other trench names were symbolic, or patriotic, or political; we had the "Trench of the Great Revenge," the "Trench of France," the "Trench of Aristide" (meaning ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... Perhaps his innate sense and worship of beauty, the artist in the man, which was the real thing making him great in his daily work, triumphed apart from any other consideration. The music of life was in his veins. Soft and stately, Elisabeth, standing a little apart, was looking in upon them, an exquisite figure with a background of dark ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to fill my veins with fire, to people the walls with dragons, and to plunge me knee-deep in the carpet, left me. Those dreadful, filmed green eyes acted somewhat like a cold douche. I knew, without removing my gaze from the still face, that the walls no longer lived, but were merely draped in exquisite Chinese dragon tapestry. The rich carpet beneath my feet ceased to be as a jungle and became a normal carpet—extraordinarily rich, but merely a carpet. But the sense of vastness nevertheless remained, with the uncomfortable knowledge that the things upon the table and overflowing ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... flocking to seek the fruits of the new learning in well-filled libraries and bustling schools. We may judge how bright the prospect seemed by the tone of Alcuin's letters to Charles the Great. He tells the Emperor of certain 'exquisite books' which he had studied under Egbert at York. The schools of the North are compared to 'a garden enclosed' and to the beds of spices: he asks that some of the young men may be sent over to procure books, so that in Tours as well as at York they may gather ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... taught by the Incas concerning the soul, but this much we do know, that they looked to the sun, their recognized lord and protector, as he who would care for them at death, and admit them to his palaces. There—not, indeed, exquisite joys—but a life of unruffled placidity, void of labor, vacant of strong emotions, a sort of material Nirvana, awaited them.[244-3] For these reasons, they, with most other American nations, interred the corpse ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... which was published in 1804, when the writer's age was twenty-nine. It was written at Inverary Castle, dedicated to the Earl of Moira, and received as one of the most perfect little romances of its kind, "highly characteristic of the exquisite contrivance, bold colouring, and profound mystery of the German school." In 1805 Lewis recast it into a melodrama, ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... "The exquisite of the family, and the braggart of the orchard, is the Kingbird, a bully that loves to strip the feathers off its more timid neighbors like the Bluebird, that feeds on the stingless bees of the hive, the drones, and ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... sunset light, sang the song she had sung to many a brilliant audience on many a noted concert-platform—sang it as even she had never sung before, while Aunty Nan lay and listened beatifically, and downstairs even Mrs. William held her breath, entranced by the exquisite melody that floated through the ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... them, and one would not have been very wrong in that surmise. The tragic fate of John, the Baptist; the unholy, unnatural passion of a depraved soul for the dead lips of a man who had spurned her while he lived; the exquisite music of Strauss; the superb scenery and stage-setting; the rich and gorgeous costumes—all remained unseen and unheard by these two, one intent upon reestablishing himself in the esteem of Patricia Langdon, the other disturbed by emotions she could not have named, which she would ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... which especially distinguish the Elizabethan lyrics are fluency, sweetness, melody, and an enthusiastic joy in life, all spontaneous, direct, and exquisite. Uniting the genuineness of the popular ballad with the finer sense of conscious artistic poetry, these poems possess a charm different, though in an only half definable way, from that of any other lyrics. In subjects they display the usual ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... beauty. All things in nature regard use as an end. To flowers are assigned a high and important use, and exquisite beauty of form and color is at the same time given to them; and with these our senses are delighted. They are, in more respects than one, good gifts from ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... raven hair. She came floating rather than walking down the mountain path; and her first few words, when Paul rushed forward and knelt to kiss her feet, and the half playful, half fond air with which she repelled him, seemed to me the most exquisite of all performances. I observed, too, that her style had more nature in it than that of Talma. I had till then forgotten that he was an actor; but, placed beside her, I could have almost instinctively pronounced that Paul was a Frenchman and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... thirty sixth Year. The Minister before this, was under no Apprehension that she would fail in her Aim at Zeokinizul's Heart. The artificial Charms with which she concealed the Loss, or want of natural ones, the exquisite Neatness and Elegancy of her Dress, with the Gracefulness of her Deportment, rendered the Conquest certain. Besides, it was no Novelty for a Kofiran King to keep a Mistress older than himself, and some have been ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... needs it, and must have it, or it will remain a blind force in the world, the lever of demagogues who preach social anarchy and misname it progress. There is no culture so high, no taste so fastidious, no grace of learning so delicate, no refinement of art so exquisite, that it cannot at this hour find full play for itself in the broadest fields of humanity; since it is all needed to soften the attritions of common life, and guide to nobler aspirations the strong materialistic influences of our ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... mother's eye the struggle going on in the mind of her daughter, but determined not to interfere, but let her decide for herself, unbiased by her mother's wishes or opinions. And when she saw the better feeling triumph, a tear of exquisite pleasure dimmed her eye, for in that trifling circumstance she saw the many trials and temptations of after life prefigured, and hoped they would end as that did, in the victory of the noble and generous ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... not acquainted with, he bones the lamb as he would do a fowl, leaving-the skin on, however, which forms a brown crust all over the animal; when it is cut in beautiful slices, in the same way as an enormous sausage, a rose-colored gravy pours forth, which is as agreeable to the eye as it is exquisite to the palate." And Porthos ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... good mangoes in Queensland, but only a few that are really first-class, and of the latter I have yet to meet the man or woman, who is a fruit-eater, who does not appreciate their exquisite flavour, and who does not consider them worthy to rank with any of the finest fruits. By many a really fine mango is considered to be the king of fruits, and I am not at all certain that they are not right, but, at the same time, a really bad mango ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... unknown. The faith which demanded absolute purity of life, included the beginning of that cleanliness which is "next to godliness," if not an inherent part of godliness itself, and fine linen on bed and table had become more and more a necessity. The dainty, exquisite neatness that in the past has been inseparable from the idea of New England, began with these Puritan dames, who set their floating home in such order as they could, and who seized the last opportunity at Yarmouth of going on shore, not only for refreshment, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... almost always finds the consoling word to say and the right tone to take with her wounded soldiers. That profound solidarity which is one of the results of conscription flowers, in war-time, in an exquisite and ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... the thing itself is forgotten. This has been remarkably the case with our court Masques, respecting which our most eminent writers long ventured on so many false opinions, with a perfect ignorance of the nature of these compositions, which combined all that was exquisite in the imitative arts of poetry, painting, music, song, dancing, and machinery, at a period when our public theatre was in its rude infancy. Convinced of the miserable state of our represented drama, and not then possessing ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... could be as gentle with a child as only a woman can. His hymns soar to heaven and his coarse jests trail in the mire. He was touched with profound melancholy and yet he had a wholesome, ready laugh. His words are now brutal invectives and again blossom with the most exquisite flowers of the soul—poetry, music, idyllic humor, tenderness. He was subtle and simple; superstitious and wise; limited in his cultural sympathies, but very great in what ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... there lived a maiden whose name was Arachne. She could weave the most beautiful fabrics that people had ever seen. She chose the most exquisite colors. They were the colors that were found in the flowers, the green of the trees and grass, and the varied, dainty tints and shades from the blue sky and its ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... noble proprietor. Here also are several fine busts by Nollekens, and a valuable collection of pictures by Sir Godfrey Kneller, Sir Joshua Reynolds, &c. two fine landscapes by Salvator Rosa, and a collection of exquisite miniatures. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... cachectic condition, with listlessness and debility and disinclination for movement. Very commonly the child ceases to move one of his lower limbs—pseudo-paralysis—and screams if it is touched; a swelling is found over one of the bones, usually the femur, accompanied by exquisite tenderness; the skin is tense and shiny, and there may be some oedema. These symptoms are due to a sub-periosteal haemorrhage, and associated with this there may be crepitus from separation of an epiphysis, rarely from fracture of the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... placed in the end of the sixteenth century a group by Vincenzo Danti, said to be his best work, the Beheading of St. John Baptist; and under are the gates of Andrea Pisano carved in twenty bronze panels with the story of St. John and certain virtues: and around the gate Ghiberti has twined an exquisite pattern of leaves and fruits and birds, it is strange to find Ghiberti's work thus completing that of Andrea Pisano, who, as it is said, had Giotto to help him, till we understand that originally these southern gates ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... were most exquisite. Madeira, for instance, never can be drunk in perfection anywhere out of the Tropics. You may have the wine as good at home, although I doubt it, but then you have not the climate to drink it in—I would say the same of most of the delicate French ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... will remember, and will thank me for recalling it to mind, an exquisite passage, too long to be quoted, in which, speaking as a Catholic to his late Anglican associates, he reminds them how he once participated in their pleasures and shared their hopes, and ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... thought to her future. Cowperwood had been most liberal. "She is young," he once said to Mrs. Carter, with an air of disinterested liberality, when they were talking about Berenice and her future. "She is an exquisite. Let her have her day. If she marries well she can pay you back, or me. But give her all she needs now." And he signed checks with the air of a gardener who ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... received another interruption. A stray ass, turned out to browse on the common, seemingly actuated thereto by sympathy or proximity of either man or beast, burst into one of those hysterical, though exquisite cadences, which defy all imitation, and at the same time produce an extraordinary and irresistible effect ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... ever executed. Perhaps, like a young artist struggling to get on, he listened too much to the wishes and suggestions of his intelligent patron. The finish and the truth to nature of the unpleasant youth are exquisite. The folds of the skin and the softness of the flesh are perfectly rendered, but the work is repulsive, save for the mischievous little Satyr who steals the grapes; he seems to take us out into the open air, and away from the fumes of the wine shop. ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... was shewn some curiosities; a Hebrew manuscript of exquisite penmanship, and a Latin translation of Aristotle's Politicks by Leonardus Aretinus, written in the Roman character with nicety and beauty, which, as the art of printing has made them no longer necessary, are not now to be found. This was one of the latest performances of ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... antiquities, of which there is a most valuable collection, are two very remarkable ones: the one a beautiful bronze shield, found in the Po, called the shield of Marius; it represents, in figures in bas-relief, the history of the Jugurthine war.[76] This shield is of the most exquisite workmanship. The other is a table of the most beautiful black marble incrusted and inlaid with figures and hieroglyphics of silver. It is called the Table of Isis, was brought from Egypt and is supposed to be of the most remote antiquity. It is always kept polished. Among the many valuable ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... hour and a half's scramble we turned to the right beneath a perpendicular cliff of exquisite colouring on our left, combining the bright red which denoted the presence of iron, with the dark purple and the silvery grey of the Jura limestone. On our right was a deep and precipitous ravine, sparsely covered with evergreen shrubs. In this spot, metamorphic ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... are now going to look at together, my dear little girl. We will study first, piece by piece, the exquisite machine within ourselves, which is of such unceasing use to us as long as we do not give it more than a proper share of work to perform. Do you understand? We will see what becomes of the mouthful of bread which you ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... said Mrs. Sandford; "and the dress is to be made with an exquisite red cashmere cardinal of Mrs. Randolph's. You will make the best Red Riding-Hood here. Though Daisy would be more like the lamb the wolf was after," continued the lady, appealing to the manager; "and you might change. Who is ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... solitary rocky hills, looking for all the world like ant-heaps, but in reality hundreds of feet high, broke the uniformity of the plains. Flooded as the whole landscape was with brilliant sunshine, the view was exquisite in respect both of form and of color. But as we moved on, turning and twisting and ever rising, we were soon confined to just the few yards the sinuosities of the trail would allow us to see at one ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... girl, and she was realizing it for the first time. Isabelle's maternal pride refused to accept such a depressing answer, and moreover she did not believe that any young thing, any kitten or puppy, could be as colorless, as little vital as the exquisite Miss Lane. She must find the real cause, study her child, live with her awhile. The next generation, apparently, was as inscrutable a manuscript to read as hers had been to the Colonel and her mother. Her parents had never understood all the longings ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... he knew what he had been going toward, not only on those terrible roads in France, but all through the years of his life. An exquisite, imperious little officer's girl with divinely compassionate eyes, who wasn't ashamed to dance with a private, and who had let him hold her hand at parting while she said in accents an angel might have ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... years were spent in a mellower interest in dogma, and an ever keener interest in the history of Quakerism and of the community in which he lived. His wife, Roby, was a Quakeress of rare sweetness and exquisite gentleness of character. Together this strong, dominating man and his gentle wife constituted an influence, while they lived, which held the community together, and disseminated their principles more successfully than if ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... beautiful, but the features were delicate and fine. Her lips were as red as rich blood could make them, the upper one pouting ever so slightly, and the soft brown hair was parted in the middle and drawn back from an exquisite forehead. The dark brown eyes were the girl's chief charm. They danced and sparkled in impish mischief, and had a way of shooting sudden glances which made themselves felt as keenly as arrows. And crowning it all was ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... was turned and entered a still creek, a picture of delicate loveliness, with multitudes of lilies and other aquatic plants, which made her feel as if she were moving through an exquisite dream. A shingly beach, evidently a busy trading-place, was reached, and there stood a young man and young woman, handsome and well-dressed, who assisted her to land. They led her into a good house and into a ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... splendid tribute to Judith by applying to her who is pre-eminently the strong or valiant woman (mulier fortis) full of the strength that always wore the exquisite veil of humility, the words spoken to this valiant woman of the Hebrews by her countrymen, as they adored the Lord, who had given her the victory. See the lesson read on the Feast ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... arts have been really vigorous, were closely connected with the highest imaginative work. Greek painting is represented to us only by its distant reflexion on the walls of the buried houses of Pompeii, and the designs of subordinate though exquisite craftsmen on the vases. Of wrought metal, partly through the inherent usefulness of its material, tempting ignorant persons into whose hands it may fall to re-fashion it, we have comparatively little; while, in consequence of the perishableness of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... her that the youth had died in some foreign country. For this end, Mervyn was to personate a kinsman of Welbeck who had just arrived from Europe, and who had been a witness of her nephew's death. A story was, no doubt, to be contrived, where truth should be copied with the most exquisite dexterity; and, the lady being prevailed upon to believe the story, the way was cleared for accomplishing the remainder ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... yield to La Bruyere for his intimate knowledge of human nature; and the Athenians never produced a writer whose humour was so exquisite as that of Addison, or who delineated and supported a character with so much nature and true pleasantry, as that of Sir Roger de Coverly. It ought, indeed, to be remembered, that every species of wit written in distant times and in ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... effort—possibly, indeed, without interest—that the obsequies of the old Senator Boligand were a distinguished success: a fashionable, proper function, ordered by the young widow with exquisite taste, as all the world said, and conducted without reproach, as the undertaker and the clergy very heartily agreed. At the Church of the Lifted Cross, the incident of the child, the blonde lady and the mysteriously veiled man, who sat in awe and ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... seated upon the top of his load, and, as they neared the bridge, despite his familiarity with every detail of the scene, a sense of its exquisite beauty took possession of him, and, for a moment, he forgot that he was driving an ox-team. For a moment he was oblivious to the fact that it takes all a driver's care and skill to prevent mischief whenever a thirsty ox obtains a glimpse of water upon a summer's day. As they neared ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons, Knots, goodwits, lampreys. I myself will have The beards of barbels served; instead of salads, Oiled mushrooms, and the swelling unctuous paps Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce, For which I'll say unto my cook, 'There's gold: Go forth, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... continued with an extraordinary haughtiness of attitude and tone that aroused my attention, "I would never have dared to put before him my views of the extraordinary merits and the uncertain fate of the exquisite woman of whom we speak, if I had not been certain that, partly by my fault, I admit, his attention has been attracted to her and ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... individual does not know the natural taste of most foods. He seasons them so highly that the normal taste is hidden or destroyed. Those who wish to know the exquisite flavor of such common foods as onions, carrots, cabbage, apples and oranges must eat them without seasoning or dressing for a while. To get real enjoyment from food it is necessary to eat slowly ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... The first thing she saw was her own exquisite face, and Sam's brown phiz peering over her shoulder. A golden tress of hair, loosened by the sea breeze, fell down into the water, and had to be looped up again. Then gazing down once more, she saw beneath the crystal ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... complexion, the bright eyes, the lustrous hair that are such helps are born of good health rather than of creams and hair tonics. Health depends a good deal on wholesome diet and out-door exercise, which make pure blood. Pure air is invaluable. Country girls often have exquisite complexions because of the pure air they breathe—unless they eat too much ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... symbol of lachrymosity.) Dear, alluring, immoral catalogues, sweet sirens for a man's undoing! How you sang to me of sedums, and whispered of peonies and irises—yea, even of German irises! How you spoke in soft, seductive accents of wonderful lilacs, and exquisite spireas, and sweet syringas, murmurous with bees! How you told of tulips and narcissuses, and a thousand lovely things for beds and borders and rock work—at so much a dozen, so very much a dozen, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... exquisite little poem is unaccountably omitted from the Household (and presumably complete) Edition of Sill's poems issued by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1906. It is found in the little volume, "Poems," by Edward Rowland Sill, published by the same firm at an earlier date. Mountain View Cemetery ...
— The Sea Fogs • Robert Louis Stevenson
... roue—the duellist—and, with all his faults, the hero too! In that dark large eye lurked the profound and fiery enthusiasm of his ill-starred passion. In the thin but exquisite lip I read the courage of the paladin, who would have 'fought his way,' though single-handed, against all the magnates of his county, and by ordeal of battle have purged the honour of the Ruthyns. There in that ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... must be fixed in the hearts of the considerate few, by language that proclaims so much, and provokes conjectures as unfavourable as imagination can furnish? Here, said I, being moved beyond what it would become me to express, here is a revolting account of a man of exquisite genius, and confessedly of many high moral qualities, sunk into the lowest depths of vice and misery! But the painful story, notwithstanding its minuteness, is incomplete,—in essentials it is deficient; ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... life!" murmured the glorious dreamer. "Sweet, O life! hast thou been to me. How fathomless thy joys,—how rapturously has my soul bounded forth upon the upward paths! To him who forever renews his youth in the clear fount of Nature, how exquisite is the mere happiness TO BE! Farewell, ye lamps of heaven, and ye million tribes, the Populace of Air. Not a mote in the beam, not an herb on the mountain, not a pebble on the shore, not a seed far-blown into the wilderness, but contributed to the lore that sought in all the true principle of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... I haue portrayed out in rude lineaments my Westerne Atlantis or America: assuring you, that if I had bene able, I would haue limned her and set her out with farre more liuely and exquisite colours: yet, as she is, I humbly desire you to receiue her with your wonted and accustomed fauour at my handes, who alwayes wil remaine most ready and deuoted to do your honour any poore seruice that I may; and in the meane season will not faile vnfainedly ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... upon me by the Japanese was that they are all so active, healthy, and strong; always good-tempered, their manners are exquisite, even the plain people bowing to each other, and many young people saluted me on the street. The infinite variety in their shops is noticeable. To see the coaling of the steamers in Japanese harbours, which is done ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... never stood forth in full proportion until Jesus Christ stepped upon this planet. What strength! What gentleness! Behold His exquisite sympathy! Behold the instinct of confidence, that drew little children to His arms! How did men, defiled within and without, throng round Him, while His presence wrought the miracle of miracles in cleansing them! Then for the first ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... equally unvaried, being usually spent in sewing or reading, while her husband, in seven evenings out of ten, dozed, either on the sofa, or on one of the children's little beds in the nursery. His exquisite tenderness to the children, and his quiet delight in simply being where they were, were the brightest points in John ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... from that moment; the bliss which had been mine as a wife would never be mine as a mother. If I had not known what it was to love my husband, I might have been content with my love for Marian. But look at that exquisite creature as she lies there asleep, and then think that I, her mother, should desert her if she were dying, for aught I know, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... did not. This he did with infinite talent and with a perspicuity beyond all praise. But to my thinking it was remarkable that he seemed to regard the witnesses as a dissecting surgeon may be supposed to regard the subjects on which he operates for the advancement of science. With exquisite care he displayed what each had said and how the special saying of one bore on that special saying of another. But he never spoke of them as though they had been live men and women who were themselves as much entitled to justice at his hands ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... from the violin floated out to him, and he would stop and raise his haggard face toward heaven. His face was no longer masked in smiles; it was grief-stricken, self-abhorring. At length he softly crossed the lawn and stood before the music-room window. Ah, no fretting care sat on yonder exquisite face, nor pain, nor trouble; youth, only youth and some pleasant thought which the music had aroused. How like her mother! How like ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... skies, and in every orderly section of social life magic possibilities of vagrancy. But he was also a Cockney, a lover of limit, civic tradition, the uniform of all ritual. He liked exceptions, because, in every other instance, he would approve of the rule. He broke bounds with exquisite decorum. There was in all his excesses ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... distinctness of pronunciation, the dignity of attitude, and expression of face, his gestures are so just and significant, that a man, though utterly bereft of the sense of hearing, might, by seeing him only, understand the meaning of every word he speaks! Sure nothing can be more exquisite than his manner of telling Isabella how Alonzo behaved, when he found the incendiary letter which he had dropped by the Moor's direction; and when, to crown his vengeance, he discovers himself to be the contriver ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... respiration, and gives warmth and glow to the whole system. It brightens the eye, increases the perspiration, expands the chest, forces the poisoned air from the least-used lung cells, and tends to restore that exquisite poise or balance which we call health, which results from the harmonious action of all the functions of the body. This delicate poise, which may be destroyed by a sleepless night, a piece of bad news, by grief or anxiety, is often wholly restored ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Prophet's imagination. His native powers of vision were not such as soar, or at any rate easily soar, to the sublime. He was a lyric poet and his revelations of God are subjective and given to us by glimpses in scattered verses, which, however intimate and exquisite, have not the adoring ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... that amazed Ned Sinton most was, that the company of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen who moved about in these splendid halls, and ate golden ices, or listened to the exquisite strains of music that floated on the atmosphere, were all as yellow as guineas! Ned could by no means understand this. In order to convince himself that there was no deception in the matter, he shook hands with several ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... a light sleep, she made a noiseless tour of the room, smiling at the revelation of Paul Wyndham's hand in the exquisite neatness wherewith all things had been set in order. A towel pinned to the punkah frill brought the faint relief of moving air nearer to Denvil's face. In the hasty manner of its pinning Theo's workmanship stood revealed, and the smile deepened in her eyes. She ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... famous for the purple dye of Tyre, which was thought to be the most beautiful in all the world. Then too they had learned the art of blowing glass into fairy-like forms, as delicate and light as a bubble, catching in it every shade of colour, and twisting it into a hundred exquisite shapes. Truly there had never been a richer or more beautiful city than this Queen of ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... the sheer quality of loveliness. For, in these unobtrusive pages, there is nothing shunned which makes the spectacle of life parade its dark and painful, its ironic and cynical burdens, as well as those images with happy and exquisite aspects. With a broader and deeper background of experience and environment, which by some divine special privilege belongs to the poetic imagination, it is easier to set apart and contrast these opposing words and sympathies in a poet; but here we find them evoked in a restricted locale- an English ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... so much affect the moderately comic, or half serious, as they did the great, the pompous, or heroic stile of dance. They spared for no pains nor cost, towards the perfection of their dances. The figures were exquisite. The least number of the figurers were forty or fifty. Their dresses were magnificent and in taste. Their decorations were sublime. A competent skill in the theatrical, or actor's art, and a great ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... possessed with wild desires, which now in one way, now another, seize upon an unhappy bachelor when the devil tries to get hold of him, making the sign of the cross, the Touranian hammered away at his metal, drove out the rebellious spirits from his brain by bending down over the exquisite works of art, little engravings, figures of gold and silver forms, with which he appeased the anger of his Venus. Add to this that this Touranian was an artless man, of simple understanding, fearing God above all things, then robbers, next to that of nobles, and more than all, a ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... me that though the world has since gone prosperously with him, and his life has indeed been a happy one, yet never has he experienced a moment of more exquisite felicity than the time when I accompanied him to the little ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... to my shape, and reaching to my feet, with very long strait falling sleeves. Over this is the girdle, of about four fingers broad, which all that can afford have entirely of diamonds or other precious stones; those who will not be at that expense, have it of exquisite embroidery on satin; but it must be fastened before with a clasp of diamonds. The curdee is a loose robe they throw off or put on according to the weather, being of a rich brocade (mine is green and gold), either lined with ermine or sables; ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... hypothesis? Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the noble forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanisms of the human body, but the human mind itself—emotion, intellect, will, and all these phenomena, were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a notion is ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... while the men employ themselves in making a sheath for a parang, or an axe-handle, or carving a hilt for a sword, etc. They talk till late at night and sometimes sing. None of the Bahau people are able to make rattan mats of such exquisite finish as the Long-Glats. The beautiful dull-red colour employed is procured from a certain grass which is crushed and boiled, the rattan being kept in the infusion one day. The black colour is obtained by the same method from the leaves of a tree, ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... he might make a becoming first appearance before his uncle either at Saumur or at Froidfond, he had put on his most elegant travelling attire, simple yet exquisite,—"adorable," to use the word which in those days summed up the special perfections of a man or a thing. At Tours a hairdresser had re-curled his beautiful chestnut locks; there he changed his linen and put on a black satin cravat, which, combined with a round shirt-collar, framed his fair and ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac |
