"Fastidiousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tea-table; and, though he ate but sparingly of the supper, which always gave him indigestion, Grace was his only confidante in the matter. Mr. Drummond, indeed, looked at his son rather sharply once or twice, as though he suspected him of fastidiousness. "I cannot compliment you on your appetite," he would say, as he helped himself to cold meat; "but perhaps our home fare is not so ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... are great gifts but the correlative of great work? We are not born for ourselves, but for our kind, for our neighbours, for our country: it is but selfishness, indolence, a perverse fastidiousness, an unmanliness, and no virtue or praise, to bury our talent in a ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... fastidiousness and timidity to be real and not affected, and withal feeling bound to be guided by her wishes, called a carriage and put her ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... last published volume of essays.] A fascinating book! Wit, grace, subtlety, imagination, thought—these letters possess them all. How much I regret that I never knew the man himself. He was a Frenchman of the best type, un delicat ne sublime, to quote Sainte-Beuve's expression. Fastidiousness of temper, and a too keen love of perfection, led him to withhold his talent from the public, but while still living, and within his own circle, he was the recognized equal of the best. He scarcely lacked anything except that fraction of ambition, of brutality and material ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... breakfast almost in silence, astonishing Sandy somewhat by not complaining of the excess of soda in the biscuits. Ford was inclined toward fastidiousness when he was sober—a trait which caused men to suspect him of descending from an upper stratum of society; though just when, or just where, or how great that descent had been, they had no means of finding out. Ford, so ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... of public and private baths, it may seem a work of supererogation to insist upon cleanliness as the first requisite in a lady's toilet. Yet it may be as well to remind our fair readers that fastidiousness on this head cannot be carried too far. Cleanliness is the outward sign of inward purity. Cleanliness is health, and health ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... mode of attacking the British on Long Island, differences arose between Count D'Estaing and his new American friends on questions of etiquette. Mr. Tucker says: "D'Estaing's fastidiousness on points of etiquette, and his refusal to aid in what would have given so serious a blow to the British power in America, is calculated to raise a doubt whether he was really anxious to bring the war to an immediate conclusion."[16] Early in November, Count D'Estaing, with ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... year and a day thereafter you would have thought Titus still at the helm. There was the same clemency, the same regard for justice, the same refinement and fastidiousness. The morose young poet had developed into a model monarch. The old Neronians were perplexed, irritated too; they had expected other things. Domitian was merely feeling the way; the hand that held the ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... into the snare, the would-be critics were going on to condemn the likeness, when the relaxing features and hearty laughter of the supposed portrait, speedily and sufficiently avenged the painter of their fastidiousness. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... of text, made by Wordsworth during his lifetime, or written by him on copies of his Poems, or discovered in MS. letters, from himself, or his sister, or his wife, are given in footnotes in this edition. Few English poets changed their text more frequently, or with more fastidiousness, than Wordsworth did. He did not always alter it for the better. Every alteration however, which has been discovered by me, whether for the better or for the worse, is here printed in full. We have ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... next week. She was a widow, some thirty years old, ten years older than I was. I did not think her pretty,—perhaps piquante, but that was all. In my first fastidiousness, I thought her hardly lady-like, and laughed at her evident attempts to attract my notice,—at her little vanities and affectations. But I do not know; we were always together; I saw no other woman but the farmer's wife. There were the mountain walks, the trees, the flowers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... Without fastidiousness, it was fair to declare, on the other hand, that the little inn at Azay-le-Rideau was very bad. It was terribly dirty, and it was in charge of a fat megere whom the appearance of four trustful travellers - we were four, with an illustrious fourth, on that occasion - roused apparently to fury. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... leprosy." Men shrink more from skin-diseases than from any other.[2] [Footnote 2: And they are amongst the hardest to cure; just as the skin-diseases of the soul linger long after the heart is greatly cured. Witness the petulance, fastidiousness, censoriousness, social self-assertion, general disagreeableness of so many good people—all in the moral skin—repulsive exceedingly. I say good people; I do not say very good, nor do I say Christ-like, for ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... in his grave while we enlist him for the cause of democracy. One view of the technique of this man might summarize it thus: fastidiousness in choice of subject, the picture well within the frame, low relief, a Velasquez study of tones and a Japanese study of spaces. Let us, dear and patient reader, particularly dwell upon the spacing. A Whistler, or a ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... growing fastidiousness of taste, were likely to give rise to this feeling. But a poet can no more renounce his lyre than a painter his palette; and his fine "Secular Hymn," and many of the Odes of the Fourth Book, which were written after this period, prove ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... notion of a salvation by knowledge alone, or by material civilization alone, vain symbol as this is of civilization, precarious external arrangement ill-fitted to replace the intimate union and consent of souls. We would wage war also on bad morals, whether in public or in private life; on luxury, fastidiousness, and over-refinement, on all that tends to increase the painful, immoral, and anti-social multiplications of our wants; on all that excites envy and dislike in the soul of the common people, and confirms ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the eminent Pym, in one of his trances of verbal fastidiousness, that he went on, unconscious not only of his opponent's interruption, but ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... uncle spoke like this there was always that dancing, mischievous light in his dark blue eyes, which showed me that this humour of his was a conscious eccentricity, depending, as I believe, upon a natural fastidiousness of taste, but wilfully driven to grotesque lengths for the very reason which made him recommend me also to develop some peculiarity of my own. When I thought of the way in which he had spoken of his unhappy friend, Lord Avon, upon the evening before, ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... more owing to the fastidiousness of my caprice than the delicacy of my taste; but I am so often tired, disgusted and hurt with insipidity, affectation, and pride of mankind, that when I meet with a person "after my own heart," I positively feel what an orthodox Protestant would call a species ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... incapable of passionate feeling, was obvious to any physiognomist; the fully curved lips showed her generous and pleasure-loving temperament, while the softly glancing, intelligent, smiling eyes spoke fastidiousness and discrimination. Her voice was low and soft, with a vibrating sound in it, and she laughed often and easily, being very ready to see and enjoy the amusing side of life. But observation and emotion alike were instinctively veiled by a quiet, ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... veranda, and Mortimer returned to his chair and cigarette. He did not approve his step-father, but admitted that Cartwright could be trusted to handle a matter like this. Mortimer's fastidiousness was sometimes a handicap, ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... had shrunk from the idea of competition with fellows unknown, with Schomberg the hotel-keeper. The vaporous white figure before him swayed pitifully in the darkness. He felt ashamed of his fastidiousness. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... him, under any circumstances, to have lingered long on earth, yet at least he might have been spared the bitter sufferings which clouded his last hours! With a tender and ardent soul, though exacting through its fastidiousness and excessive delicacy, he could not live unless surrounded by the radiant phantoms he had himself evoked; he could not expel the profound sorrow which his heart cherished as the sole remaining fragment of the happy past. He was another great and illustrious ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... Rose" with some girl cousins of Barry's, two jolly girls from Girton. Against their undiscriminating enthusiasm, Gerda and her fastidious distaste stood out sharp and clear, like some delicate etching among flamboyant pictures. That fastidiousness she had from both her parents, with ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... This fastidiousness of the best writers and critics of America is by no means inconsistent with the existence of an enormous class of half-educated readers, who devour the kind of "literature" provided for them, and ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... obtained in keeping the furniture in repair, and his handsome suite of rooms, including a salon, salle a manger, ante-chambre, cabinet, several chambres a coucher, and a boudoir—yes, a male boudoir! for so he affected to call it—in a condition to please even his fastidiousness. ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... not to tire you, it fared with my second work as it did with my first; I flung it aside and, in order to forget it, I began a third, on which I am now occupied; but the difficulty of writing it is immense, my extreme desire to be original sadly cramping the powers of my mind; my fastidiousness being so great that I invariably reject whatever ideas I do not think to be legitimately my own. But there is one circumstance to which I cannot help alluding here, as it serves to show what miseries this love of originality must needs bring upon ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... woman who typifies the begueule may be spotless as snow; but she is presumed to have snow's other quality, and at the same time to be a thoroughly absurd and intolerable creature. Well, here is the point of difference. Fastidiousness of speech is not a direct outcome of Puritanism, as our literature sufficiently proves; it is a refinement of civilization following upon absorption into the national life of all the best things which Puritanism had to teach. We who know English women by the ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... speed with his dressing. What with refusing several waistcoats—a fastidiousness which opened the slant eyes of Matzai, being unusual—and what with pausing to smoke a brooding cigar, it stood roundly twelve before he was ready for the street. One need not call Richard lazy. He was no one to retire or ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... lose the secret conviction that it was all very silly. Only what Rip had pointed out was the truth—one adjusted to the customs of aliens or one didn't trade and there were other things he might have had to do on other worlds which would have been far more upsetting to that core of private fastidiousness which few would have suspected existed in his tall, ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... sense of beauty. But look from the writer, as shown by himself, to the means by which himself is shown. You will find that for words as for colour-tones he has the same reverent care, and for phrases as for forms the same caressing sense of beauty. Fastidiousness—'daintiness,' as he would have said—dandyishness, as we might well say: by just that which marks him as a painter is he marked as a writer too. His meaning was ever ferocious; but his method, how delicate and tender! ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... polished address, cannot be conceived, to which he added all the attractions of a very handsome person and a most prepossessing countenance. The only thing the most scrupulous critic could possibly detect as faulty in his whole air and bearing, was a certain ultra refinement and fastidiousness, which in a man of acknowledged family and connections was somewhat unaccountable, and certainly unnecessary. The fastidiousness I speak of, extended to everything round and about him; he never eat of the wrong dish, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... souls. The former class ignore the claims of the physical, and gather their robes together sanctimoniously indicating: "Avaunt, lest my purity be contaminated"; while the latter laugh their spiritual pride and fastidiousness to scorn. The war goes on between good and evil, whereas there is really no just ground for difference. All that is needed for the attainment of harmony and peace is a wise adjustment of these forces in ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... taking, happy region of silver lake and green mountain slope. He had many congenial neighbours. Of Wordsworth he saw little. The poet was, in external manner and habit, too much of the peasant for Greg's intellectual fastidiousness. He called on one occasion at Rydal Mount, and Wordsworth, who had been regravelling his little garden-walks, would talk of nothing but gravel, its various qualities, and their respective virtues. The fine and subtle understanding of Hartley Coleridge, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... one may as well deprecate a little in talking about fastidiousness, not told by way of evincing superior knowledge of the world, but just to show you, gentle or simple reader, whichever you may be, that, in a sentimental journey through Canada, you must accommodate yourself a little to the manners and customs of the population, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... balcony, as the Mendoza Family Hotel. It was obvious from the chronic cluster of refuse-barrels at its area-gate and the blurred surface of its curtainless windows, that the families frequenting the Mendoza Hotel were not exacting in their tastes; though they doubtless indulged in as much fastidiousness as they could afford to pay for, and rather more than their landlord thought they had a right ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... property in 1890."[156] What fantasy of action was it that caused William Waldorf Astor to so depart from the accepted formulas of his class as to give up these "magnificent investments?" Was it an abhorrence of tenements, or a growing fastidiousness as to the methods? It is to be observed that up to that time he and his family had tenaciously kept the revenues from their tenements; evidently then, the source of the money was not a troubling factor. And in selling those tenements he must have known that his profits on the transaction ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... whole, nay, amiable as neighbour, friend, housemate—in short, in all the concentric circles of attachment save only the last and inmost; and yet from how many causes be estranged from the highest perfection in this! Pride, coldness, or fastidiousness of nature, worldly cares, an anxious or ambitious disposition, a passion for display, a sullen temper,—one or the other—too often proves 'the dead fly in the compost of spices', and any one is enough to unfit it for the precious balm of unction. For some mighty good sort of people, too, there ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... man took that tone, the tone of vast experience and a fastidiousness justified by ineffable recollections, our friend was more provoked than he could say, though he was also considerably amused, for he had a good while since, made up his mind about the element of rather stupid convention in it. It was fatuous ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... clearer view of what he was than enthusiasm allowed later on. Rejecting Marchmont, or rather acquiescing in Marchmont's refusal, on the ground of his excessive caution, his want of imagination, and his fastidiousness, he had hesitated to sound Quisante in regard to the great project. It seemed to him impossible to regard his new friend as an ideal leader for this purpose; one reason is enough to indicate—the ideal leader should be absolutely unselfish by nature. By nature Quisante was very far from ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... as well as individuals. If fastidiousness, selfishness, pride, and sensuality, conspire to cloud, with imaginary woes, the enjoyments of those whom others deem happy and prosperous; faction, discontent, a querulous appetite for freedom, and an inordinate ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Loraine's fastidiousness rather shuddered at this idea, yet perhaps a certain sort of character disintegration had set in, with her first cutting loose the moorings of preconceived standards. Possibly it was working a more rapid atrophy ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... with an intense pride of all her fiery liberty from every feminine trammel, of all her complete immunity from every scruple and every fastidiousness of her sex. But, for once, within sight of that noble and haughty beauty, a poignant, cruel, wounding sense of utter inferiority, of utter debasement, possessed and weighed down her lawless and indomitable spirit. Some vague, weary feeling ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... awfully comic, according to the point of view, and I swing from one to the other, pushed by my fastidiousness to my sense of humour, and back again, in a way to make me giddy. But it's settled. I'm going to do it. I had almost to drag the suggestion out of Lady Kilmarny, who turned red and stammered as if I were the great lady, she the poor young girl in ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... clearness, as though they were, indeed, the indices of a temperate and well-contained life. His dress, and every movement and detail of his person, were characterized by an extreme deliberation; his whole appearance bespoke a peculiar and almost feminine fastidiousness. The few appointments of his simple meal were the most perfect of their kind. A delicate vase of freshly cut flowers stood on the centre of the spotless table-cloth,—the hangings and colouring of the apartment were ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... religious opinions of the day."—"Freethinking is the Secular sphere; drawing its line of demarcation between time and eternity, it works for the welfare of man in this world"—"The Secularist is the larger and more comprehensive designation of the Atheist."[253] With all this coyness and fastidiousness about names, there can be no doubt that the character of the system is essentially atheistic: "We refuse to employ the term God, not having any definite idea of it which we can explain to others,—not knowing any theory of such an existence as will enable us to ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... compositions he hoped would be accepted by his correspondent, Mr George Thomson, for his collection, and the others he expected would find a publisher in the famous bookselling firm of Constable & Co. The failure of both these schemes—for Constable's hands were full, and Thomson exhibited his wonted "fastidiousness"—preyed deeply on the mind of the sensitive bard. A temporary relief to his disappointed expectations was occasioned by a visit which, in the spring of 1810, he received from James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who made a journey to Paisley expressly to form his acquaintance. The visit is remembered ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... had no fancy for drenching that with an infusion of soot, he could not open it. These, however, were the sole faults he had to find with the place. Everything looked nice and clean, and his education had not tended to fastidiousness. He took a book from his bag, and read a good while; then went to bed, and fell ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... rhythmic tread, light and graceful as she passed through the garden seeking another seat. Her features were not regular but they had a piquant fascination—a true Parisian face. Everything that had been invented for the embellishment of feminine charm was used about her person with the most exquisite fastidiousness. She had always lived for herself. Only a few months before had she abdicated a part of this sweet selfishness, sacrificing reunions, teas, and calls in order to give Desnoyers ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sips of his favorite Rhine wine, "I have gained much light on the subject to-night, and I must confess that, even with my rather wide experience, the whole thing is a decided novelty. If Christine were only less troubled with conscience, over-fastidiousness, or whatever it is—if she were more moderate in her ambition as an artist, and could be satisfied with power and admiration, as other women are—what a star she might become in the fashionable world of Europe! But, for some reason, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... servility and effrontery can court patronage.'—'Surely you have some men of worth and genius, who meet their due reward?'—'Few; very few, indeed. Sloth, inanity, and bloated pride are here too often the characteristics of office. Fastidiousness is virtue, and to keep the poor and unprotected in awe a duty. The rich indeed are indulged in all the licentious liberties they can desire.'—'Why do so many young men of family resort hither?'—'Some to get what is to be given away; others are sent by their parents, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of the fox is occasionally eaten by the Esquimaux: Captain Lyon, in his "Private Journal," says that at first all of his party were horrified at the idea of eating foxes—"But very many soon got the better of their fastidiousness and found them good eating; not being myself very nice, I soon made the experiment, and found the flesh much resembling that of kid, and afterwards frequently ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... eloquence, it did not impede, or at all lessen, the force of that conciser quality, wit. Of satiric wit he possessed a very peculiar species. It was neither the dead-doing broadside of Dr. Johnson's satire, nor the aurora borealis of Gray ... whose arch yet coy and quiet fastidiousness of taste and feeling, as recorded by Mason, glanced bright and cold through his conversation, while it seemed difficult to define its nature; and while its effects were rather perceived than felt, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... the celebrated actress Dejazet, whom we had very lately seen in London, was so striking as to be quite remarkable. Her tone of voice, her air and manner, as well as her features, reminded us strongly of the artiste whose warm reception in England, where we are supposed to be correct even to fastidiousness, has not a little amused the Parisians at our expense. Whatever may be the objections to Dejazet's style, certain it is that her imitation of the manners of the class of grisettes and peasants is inimitable; not a shade, not a tone, is forgotten, and the truth of her representations ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... above themselves for a wife. For it was no less a person than Miss Penelope Palfrey, second daughter of the Mr. Palfrey who farmed his own land, that had attracted Mr. Freely's peculiar regard, and conquered his fastidiousness; and no wonder, for the Ideal, as exhibited in the finest waxwork, was perhaps never so closely approached by the Real as in the person of the pretty Penelope. Her yellowish flaxen hair did not curl naturally, I admit, but its bright crisp ringlets were such smooth, perfect ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... There are men, indeed, in whom an over-sensitive conscience is even a paralysing thing, which by suggesting constant petty and ingenious scruples holds them back from useful action. It is a moral infirmity corresponding to that exaggerated intellectual fastidiousness which so often makes an intellectual life almost wholly barren, or to that excessive tendency to look on all sides of a question and to realise the dangers and drawbacks of any course which not unfrequently in moments of difficulty paralyses ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... no time that evening for grappling with the problem for which she had voluntarily made herself responsible. The preparation of Joel's supper was a task demanding time and prayerful consideration, for as is the case with most chronic invalids, his fastidiousness concerning his food approached the proportions of a mania. Her efforts to gratify her brother's insatiable curiosity on points of history and literature, had put her several hours behind with her sewing, and as she owned to a most unprofessional pride in keeping her word to the ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... the architect. You will find that the impression you have received from the whole is single and vivid, and, while you may not perceive it, it will generally be the case that certain details at which your fastidiousness cries out, certain uncouthnesses, as you fancy, are perfectly appropriate and in their place, and have contributed to the ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... True, The Bon Vivant had accepted the story which The Era rejected; but it had paid only seventy-five dollars. Banneker did not care to go farther on that path. Aside from the unsatisfactory return, his fastidiousness revolted from being identified with the output of a third-class and flashy publication. Whatever The Ledger's shortcomings, it at least stood first in its field. But was there any future for him there, other than as a conspicuously well-paid reporter? ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... before the door of the "Palmetto Shades." The upper floor of this saloon and hostelry was occupied by Mr. Hamlin as his private lodgings, and was fitted up with the usual luxury and more than the usual fastidiousness of his extravagant class. As the dusty and travel-worn party trod the soft carpets and brushed aside their silken hangings in their slow progress with their helpless burden to the lace-canopied and snowy couch of the young gambler, it seemed almost a profanation ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... pursuits were in any way connected with books, could, with a knock, most easily open the door of our heart, and find a convenient reposing place in our bosom. We so admitted all who brought books, that neither the multitude of first-comers could produce a fastidiousness of the last, nor the benefit conferred yesterday be prejudicial to that of to-day. Wherefore, as we were continually resorted to by all the aforesaid persons, as to a sort of adamant attractive of books, the desired accession of the vessels of science, and a multifarious ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... dangerous tenderness in Von Gerhard's eyes as he said: "Again you are a wanderer, eh—small one? That you, with your love of beautiful things, and your fastidiousness, should have to live in this way—in these boarding-houses, alone, with not even the comforts that should be yours. Ach, Kindchen, you were not made for that. You were intended for the home, with a husband, and kinder, and all that ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... and vulgar as ever?" "Dawson of ours was the last, and was called up for sentence when we were ordered away; of course, he bolted," etc. Such was the invariable style of question and answer concerning them; and although some few, either from good feeling or fastidiousness, relished but little the mode in which it had become habitual to treat them, I grieve to say that, generally, they were pronounced fair game for every species of flirtation and love-making without any "intentions" for the future. I should not have trespassed so ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... meat and some ham and eggs," observed Mrs. Drummond, a little plaintively. She did not dare anger her husband further by proposing even a chop, for she knew how touchy he was about Archie's fastidiousness; but if she could have had her own way she would have killed the fatted calf for this dearest son. Nothing was too good for him in her eyes; and yet for the sake of tranquillity she dared not even hazard the question ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... account of his illustrious father's life; but unfortunately, he never pursued his design beyond the commencement, and a few memorandums are all that have come down to us. From these, however, we learn the singular fastidiousness of Ariosto in his horticultural amusements, and some other traits of his character, which render him not the less an object of our veneration, by showing us the simplicity as well as power of his mind. 'In gardening,' says Virginio, 'he pursued ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... to heave a bigger breast and take her in with this heavenly preservative helpmate, her inspiration and her essence. You have to teach your imagination of the feminine image you have set up to bend your civilized knees to, that it must temper its fastidiousness, shun the grossness of the over-dainty. Or, to speak in the philosophic tongue, you must turn on yourself, resolutely track and seize that burrower, and scrub and cleanse him; by which process, during the course of it, you will arrive at the conception of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at the mirror see the raw flush which her cool comment brought to Cecille's face, nor would she have understood it had she seen. That one's privacy, one's physical fastidiousness, could be affronted by mere words, would have astounded her. Fastidiousness carried that far—fastidiousness of any sort—was incomprehensible to Felicity. But she found ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... physical, or at all events experimental, science is tabooed; it is written down "snobbish," and its being so considered has much influence in making it so: the necessity of manipulation is a sad drawback to the gentlemanliness of a pursuit. Bacon rebuked this fastidiousness, but in vain. "We will, moreover, show those who, in love with contemplation, regard our frequent mention of experiments as something harsh, unworthy, and mechanical, how they oppose the attainment of their own wishes, since abstract contemplation, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... far as to affect a negligence of dress, and hid his small, slim, arched feet in the largest and heaviest walking-shoes. There is a story told that he went to his tailor in Sacramento, and asked him to make him a suit of clothes like everybody else. The tailor, familiar with Mr. Oakhurst's fastidiousness, did not know what he meant. "I mean," said Mr. Oakhurst savagely, "something RESPECTABLE,—something that doesn't exactly fit me, you know." But, however Mr. Oakhurst might hide his shapely limbs in homespun and homemade garments, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... first lieutenant should introduce a uniform and well-explained system of discipline on board, especially as regards cleanliness and neatness of appearance, which are best effected by frequent and regular musterings, without too much fastidiousness in the first instance, as this might only teaze the men, and prevent the effectual establishment of those observances which it is the chief purpose of good discipline to render habitual. Great efforts should always be made to give to Sunday its true character of a day of repose; ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... beaver, and gave the rest to the Indians. The otter is a favorite food, though much inferior, at least in our estimation, to the dog, which they will not eat. The horse is seldom eaten, and never except when absolute necessity compels them, as the only alternative to dying of hunger. This fastidiousness does not, however, seem to proceed so much from any dislike to the food, as from attachment to the animal itself; for many of them eat very heartily of the horse-beef which we ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... fastidiousness which had characterized his old life. A dainty eater, he found that his mates, finishing first, robbed him of his unfinished ration. There was no defending it. While he was fighting off two or three, it was disappearing down the throats of the others. To remedy this, ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... always the personification of fastidiousness in his dress, and for this trait in his character ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... was often held back by the subtler shades of taste that civilize human intercourse. Her world, in short, had been chiefly peopled by the dull or the crude, and, hemmed in between the two, she had created for herself an inner kingdom where the fastidiousness she had to set aside in her outward relations recovered its full sway. There must be actual beings worthy of admission to this secret precinct, but hitherto they had not come her way; and the sense that they were somewhere just out of reach still gave an edge ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... steamed slowly in amidst the maze of masts, of sampans and junks, which latter lay with their sterns pointing grotesquely upward, resembling nothing so closely as great brown hawks which had flown down from a Brobdingnagian heaven, to select with greater convenience and fastidiousness what prey might fall within reach of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... other's pride of wit, and have each converted the other to the true faith. But indeed that heresy was all along feigned as a refuge from merry persecutions; and the virtue of the thing is, that in the belief that they have each conquered the other's assumed fastidiousness, they each lay aside their own. The case involves a highly curious interplay of various motives on either side; and it is not easy to say whether vanity or generosity, the self-regarding or the self-forgetting emotions, are uppermost ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... they squatted in their humpies, or braved the elements "with honour clad." Thinking no evil, clothing for decency's sake was superfluous. Clothes are worn at the present day, partly as a concession to the fastidiousness of the whites, and largely from vanity. Our blacks are exceedingly fond of dress; the more glaring and clashing the colours the greater ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... by great men; greatness is not to be had in the required quantity. Giotto may design a campanile, but he cannot carve it; he can only carve one or two of the bas-reliefs at the base of it. And with every increase of your fastidiousness in the execution of your ornament, you diminish the possible number and grandeur of your buildings. Do not think you can educate your workmen, or that the demand for perfection will increase the supply: educated imbecility ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... that there are many of my hearers who are likely to commit overt breaches of the law. But there are a great many of us who are apt to neglect the obligations of citizenship. In a community like ours, laziness, fastidiousness, absorption in our own occupations, and a number of other more or less reputable reasons, tempt many to stand aloof from the plain imperative obligations of every citizen in a free country. Every man who thus neglects to do his ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... things the cowboy is a horseman. His pride in this almost amounts to a craze. His fastidiousness in horse-flesh, in his accoutrements, his boots, his chapps, his jaunty silk handkerchief about his neck, even to the gauntlets he so often wears upon his hands, is an education in dandyism. He is a thorough dandy in his outfit. And the greater the dandy, the more surely is he a capable horseman. ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... puzzle lies; that a man should be created with the strong instinct that I feel for liberty and independence and solitude and the quiet of the country, and then that he should discover that the life he so desires should be the one that develops all the worst side of him—morbidity, fastidiousness, gloom, discontent. This is the shadow of civilisation; that it makes people intellectual, alert, craving for stimulus, and yet sucks their nerves dry of the strength ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... little fastidiousness about these knights of the saddle-bag, in admitting a stranger to hob and nob with them; to prevent a knowledge, therefore, of our pursuits, my friend Bob was instructed, before entering the room, to sink the arts, and if any inquisitive fellow should inquire what ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... three pairs looked discouragingly neat. She probably would not have ventured on it had she not spied Nat Hicks in the pool-parlor, being witty over bottle-pool. Erik was alone! She fluttered toward the tailor shop, dashed into its slovenly heat with the comic fastidiousness of a humming bird dipping into a dry tiger-lily. It was after she had entered ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... has armed himself. He discusses with equal learning and enthusiasm the profoundest and the minutest questions, mysteries of consciousness and niceties of metre and accent. Yet this laboriousness is curiously conjoined with something of a sybaritic tone, as of a taste cultivated to hyper-fastidiousness and courting a languorous enjoyment of flavors rather than the satisfaction of a keen appetite. There are in this book some passages in which the thought is so attenuated in the process of elaboration and figurative adornment that we are tempted to regard the whole ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... is supple and boneless as the hands wrought in pigment by a fashionable portrait painter. The tapering fingers bend backward. Between them burns a scented cigarette. You poise it with infinite daintiness, like a woman under the eyes of her lover. The long line of your curved nail is fastidiousness ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... came up with the going down of the sun, and the atmosphere was still redolent with the morning spicing of pine and hay and a stronger balm that seemed to fill his breast with sunshine. He walked toward the nearest shade—a cluster of young buckeyes—and having with a certain civic fastidiousness flicked the dust from a stump with his handkerchief he sat down. It was very quiet and calm. The life and animation of early morning had already vanished from the hill, or seemed to be suspended with the sun in the sky. He could see the ranchmen and oxen toiling on the green terraced ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... lurking sensitiveness that he was unfairly favored, by some mere accident, above his less lucky companions. The rude vices of his old associates had made him impatient of the feebler sensual indulgences of the later companions of his luxury, and exposed their hollow fascinations; his sensitive fastidiousness kept him clean among vulgar temptations; his clear perceptions were never blinded by selfish sophistry. Meantime his feeling for Susy remained unchanged. Pride had kept him from seeking the Peytons. His present visit was as unpremeditated as Peyton's invitation had been unlooked for ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... it not be, were human duty properly understood—to pass months, and even years, without washing the whole body once? There are thousands and tens of thousands of both sexes, who are exceedingly nice, even to fastidiousness, about externals;—who, like those mentioned in the gospel, keep clean the 'outside of the cup and the platter,'—but alas! how is it within? Not a few of us,—living, as we do, in a land where soap and water are abundant and cheap—would ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... a society teeming with quaint and genial eccentricity, he might possibly have been the first Western humorist, and his humor might have gained in depth and richness. In England, on the other hand, everything encouraged his natural fastidiousness; he became a refined writer, but by no means a robust one. At the same time he is too essentially the man of his own age to pass for a paler Addison or a more decorous Sterne. He has far more of the poet than any of the writers of the eighteenth century, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... infinite fastidiousness shown by savages in selecting beads, which, indeed, are their jewellery; so that valuable beads, taken at hap-hazard, are much more likely to prove failures than not. It would always be well to take abundance (40 or 50 lbs. weight goes but a little way) ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... nature had never intended, and neither art nor education had ever prepared her; whose faults and deficiencies were thus brought into the flash of day at once, before the malice of party and the fastidiousness of fashion, which knows not to distinguish between manque d'esprit, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... horror of fire. His furniture is neat and select; his books, rather for use than show, are disposed around him. He has a harpsichord in the room. In the corner of one of the apartments is a trunk containing his deceased mother's dresses, carefully folded up and preserved. His fastidiousness, bordering upon effeminacy, is visible in his gait and manner—in his handsome features and small, well-dressed person, especially when he walks abroad and sinks the author and hard student in "the gentleman who sometimes ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... held back by some instinctive fastidiousness, declined to move further than the threshold of this hitherto closed and sacredly guarded chamber. Leaning against the doorway he looked in wonderingly, with a vague feeling of bewilderment, while Mrs. Spruce, trotting busily ahead, gave instructions to a fresh-faced country lass, who, breathing ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... neck was a scraggle of hair, Parker Heye was preferable to the three Swiss waiters snoring in the hot room under the eaves, with its door half open, opposite the half-open door of the room where negro chambermaids tumbled and snorted in uncouth slumber. Carl's nose wrinkled with bitter fastidiousness as he pulled off his clothes, sticky with heat, and glared at the swathed forms of the waiters. He was the aristocrat among proletarians, going back to His Own People—of ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... exquisite [Footnote: Overelaborate.] eloquence in him: He was a good citizen, of an honest, gentle nature, as are commonly fat and burly men: for so was he: But to speake truly of thim? full of ambitious vanity and remisse niceness. [Footnote: Ineffectual fastidiousness.] And I know not well how to excuse him, in that he deemed his Poesie worthy to be published. It is no great imperfection to make bad verses, but it is an imperfection in him that he never perceived how unworthy they were of the glorie of his ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... want of refinement in a woman who undertakes any active business or profession, and of the first importance of woman's domestic position, when carried to an extreme, are perhaps better suited to the caprice and fanciful fastidiousness of men than to the real requirements, in the present age, of the other sex. The throng of semi-educated authoresses who are now flocking about the world of letters is a wholesome protest against such exclusive jealousy. The real objection to literary ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... define, but I certainly don't mean pernicketty. Of course, there is a fastidiousness which makes one shrink from unpleasant things, but Harry's is the other kind. It impels him to do them every ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... costumes. She could do so with impunity, because her own was indubitably beyond criticism. Some she wholly condemned, and there was not one which earned her unreserved approval. All the absurd fastidiousness of her schoolgirlish provinciality emerged in that eager, affected torrent of remarks. However, she was clever enough to read, after a time, in Gerald's tone and features, that she was making a tedious fool of herself. And she adroitly ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... actually to like her," Mrs. Corey reported to her daughters, very much shaken in her own prejudices by the fact. If the girl were not so offensive to his fastidiousness, there might be some hope that she was not so offensive as Mrs. Corey had thought. "I wonder how she will strike YOU," she concluded, looking from one daughter to another, as if trying to decide which of them would like ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of Marion's mind in the matter was an equally irrational affair. Her training had been one, not simply of silences, but suppressions. An enormous force of suggestion had so shaped her that the intense natural fastidiousness of girlhood had developed into an absolute perversion of instinct. For all that is cardinal in this essential business of life she had one inseparable epithet—"horrid." Without any such training she would have been a shy lover, but now she was an impossible one. For the ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... was ill. He felt well enough, except for being tired, desperately tired; but that could be accounted for by the way in which he had spent the night. He noticed chiefly the ashy tint of his skin, the dullness of his eyes, and—notwithstanding the fact that his clothes were of his usual fastidiousness—a curious effect of being badly dressed more startling to him than pain. He was careful to brush his beard and twist his long mustache into its usual upward, French-looking curve, so as to regain as much as possible the air of his old self, before seating himself at his desk ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... because she could not grasp emotions, or, if she grasped, failed to hold them. Perhaps she was too much of a Victorian lady to do more than express the culture of an imperfect age imperfectly. At any rate, it is clear that a shrinking fastidiousness excluded from her world much of the raw material from which great art is made. Stray reflections on Greek life and thought, though in themselves trivial, are interesting for what they betray of a state of mind familiar and always slightly distressing to people who take art seriously. She was ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... lavished on it far more pains than on "Eothen": the proof sheets were a black sea of erasures, intercalations, blots; the original chaotic manuscript pages had to be disentangled by a calligraphic Taunton bookseller before they could be sent to press. This fastidiousness in part gained its purpose; won temporary success; gave to his style the glitter, rapidity, point, effectiveness, of a pungent editorial; went home, stormed, convinced, vindicated, damaged, triumphed: but it missed by excessive polish the reposeful, unlaboured, classic grace essential ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... scaring sense of desperate powers in Lucy that were carrying her outside the familiar and established, seized her friend. It was all different from her expectations. Her personal repugnance and fastidiousness were swept aside in the menace of larger things. She leaned ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... Struldbug into a world where few were born when you went away. Scarce here and there one will be able to make out your face; all your opinions will be out of date, your jokes obsolete, your puns rejected with fastidiousness as wit of the last age. Your way of mathematics has already given way to a new method, which after all is I believe the old doctrine of Maclaurin, new-vamped up with what he borrowed of the negative ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... any particular pains to alter his son's opinion of himself. On the whole he was more proud of him than otherwise, recognizing that while he obviously suffered from an overdevelopment of the ego and an excessive fastidiousness in dress, he was, at bottom, clearly all right and a good sort. Still, he was forced to confess that there wasn't much between them. His son expressed the same thought by regretting that his father "did not ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... fastidiousness of the good man will not be excuse enough for the introduction of such a long preamble to a story for which only a few will in the least care. But the said preamble happening to touch on some interesting subjects, I thought it well to record it. As to ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... into the drawing-room. Yet he enjoyed the company of his equals, and never withdrew, no matter how many callers—whom he recognized as of his society—might come into the drawing-room. Calvin was fond of company, but he wanted to choose it; and I have no doubt that his was an aristocratic fastidiousness rather than one of faith. It ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... with boredom; on the other hand, every one in the house, with the exception of his mother, looked upon him with unfriendly eyes. His father did not like his habits of the capital; his dress-suits, frilled shirts, books, his flute, his cleanliness, in which, not without reason, they scented his fastidiousness; he was constantly complaining and grumbling at his son.—"Nothing here suits him," he was wont to say: "at table he is dainty, he does not eat, he cannot endure the odour of the servants, the stifling atmosphere; the sight of drunken men disturbs ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... many years abroad, chiefly in Italy, for the sake of the climate. She was of delicate health, and constantly threatened by the hereditary disease that had left her the last of her generation, and she had the fastidiousness of an invalid. She was full of generous impulses which she mistook for virtues; but the presence of some object at once charming and worthy was necessary to rouse these impulses. She had been prosperously ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... beautiful trios and other specimens of chamber-music; and the lovely "Songs without Words," which are to be found upon almost every piano, the beauty and freshness of which time has not impaired. Mendelssohn never wrote a grand opera, owing to his fastidiousness as to a libretto; though he finally obtained one from Geibel, on the subject of the "Loreley," which suited him. He had begun to write it, and had finished the finale to the first act, when death interrupted ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... scion of a noble house, but the only son of a decayed merchant. His attitude of mind and disposition, however, were naturally somewhat aristocratic, I think. Also, as I have said, our talk was in the 'sixties. He was sensitive, very proud, inclined, perhaps, to scornfulness, certainly to fastidiousness, and one who seldom suffered fools either gladly or with much show of tolerance. It was a somewhat unfortunate temperament, probably, for a man situated as he was, possessed of no private means and dependent entirely ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the little Georgian town. And when Harmouth was discovered by a stock-broker and became a watering-place, and people began to talk about Harmouth society, Court House remained innocently unaware that anything of the sort existed. Lucia selected her friends elsewhere with such supreme fastidiousness that she could count them on the fingers of one hand, her instinct, like all great natural gifts, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... pictures are distinguished by their close adherence to nature and the delicacy and technical perfection of their execution. His technical skill is proved by the fact that several copies he made after Correggio have been taken to be duplicates by Correggio himself. His extreme fastidiousness limited his power of production, though the number of his works is not so small as is sometimes asserted. Several specimens are to be seen at Florence and elsewhere. The finest of all his works is his "Judith and Holofernes,'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Hispano-Moresque and mellow ivories, a broad medal or so and a well-poised Renaissance bronze, a Japanese painting on the lighted wall, and one or two drawings by great contemporaries, Emma's friends, he was amazed at the quality of everything. A sense of extreme fastidiousness rebuked, in a way, his more indiscriminate zeal as a collector. Uncomfortably near him on the dark wall he began to be aware of something marvellous on old gold when tea interrupted his observations. Tea with Emma was always engrossing. The mere practice and etiquette of it brought ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... William Unwin, "is, though some writers boast of negligence, and others would be ashamed to show their foul copies, the secret of almost all good writing, especially in verse. I am never weary of it myself." Even if we count him only a middling poet, however, this does not mean that all his fastidiousness of composition was wasted. He acquired in the workshop of verse the style that stood him in such good stead in the field of familiar prose. It is because of this hard-won ease of style that readers of English will never grow weary of that epistolary autobiography in which he recounts his ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... freedom from all tendency to plaything-sentiments and trivial romances, his youth had been unlike the youth of other men. Being man and young, he had known temptation, but had disdained it; being also proud and perhaps haughty in his fastidiousness, and being strong, he had thrust base and light things aside. He had held in his brain a fancy from his boyhood, and singularly enough it had but grown stronger and become more fully formed with his own strength and increase ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... directly facing the prevailing wind. Mrs. Robson was a Cumberland woman, and as such, was a cleaner housewife than the farmers' wives of that north-eastern coast, and was often shocked at their ways, showing it more by her looks than by her words, for she was not a great talker. This fastidiousness in such matters made her own house extremely comfortable, but did not tend to render her popular among her neighbours. Indeed, Bell Robson piqued herself on her housekeeping generally, and once in-doors ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... major and the coldly-polite concern of Mrs. Randolph, who, in deliberately chosen sentences, managed to convey to the young girl the conviction that accidents of any kind to young ladies were to be regarded as only a shade removed from indiscretions. Rose was impressed, and even flattered, by the fastidiousness of this foreign-appearing woman, and after the fashion of youthful natures, accorded to her the respect due to recognized authority. When to this authority, which was evident, she added a depreciation of the major, I fear that some common instinct of feminine tyranny responded in Rose's breast, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... street, or who confused the table implements, or did the hundred and one other little things that are supposedly the indelible marks of an inferior culture. A most fastidious person himself, as was obvious, he looked in others for a fastidiousness of spirit rather than for a correct performance of the whims of refinement. For the one, as everybody knows but forgets, is eternal, and the other is merely transitory—the most transitory aspect of human beings, ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... enough of its kind, was captivated by the Colonel's imposing "bow-wow" manner, the idea of a country place—an old family place too—by his diamond ring and florid compliments, his self-satisfied fastidiousness and his social position. In short, to her he seemed a fashionable hero; but she was quite sure he never would hamper himself with two little portionless boys. Ada Liddell was by no means unkind to her children; she was ready to pet them when they ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... while the flying feet slipped on the chunks of ice which rattled from his moccasins and German socks. A Northland dance is quite an informal affair, the men of the creeks and trails having lost whatever fastidiousness they might have at one time possessed; and only in the high official circles are conventions at all observed. Here, caste carried no significance. Millionaires and paupers, dog-drivers and mounted policemen joined hands with 'ladies ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... House, she was not so readily pleased with the sitting-room. That, at all events, must not wear so mean and dingy a look as one usually has to put up with when the rent is only ten shillings a week; and beyond that sum they were determined not to go. The reason of this fastidiousness about a sitting- room presently appeared. Fan was told the secret of the engagement with Merton Chance; also that Merton was now for the first time about to be informed of the step Constance had taken without first consulting him, and ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... alacrity, want of readiness; indocility &c (obstinacy) 606 [Obs.]. scrupulousness, scrupulosity; qualms of conscience, twinge of conscience; delicacy, demur, scruple, qualm, shrinking, recoil; hesitation &c (irresolution) 605; fastidiousness &c 868. averseness &c (dislike) 867 [Obs.]; dissent &c 489; refusal &c 764. V. be unwilling &c adj.; nill; dislike &c 867; grudge, begrudge; not be able to find it in one's heart to, not have the stomach to. demur, stick at, scruple, stickle; hang fire, run rusty; recoil, shrink, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... contributions, he had undertaken to help us by some work of his own, and had been engaged for the last four days in molding certain events which had happened within his personal knowledge into the form of a story. His extreme fastidiousness as a writer interfered, however, so seriously with his progress that he was still sadly behindhand, and was likely, though less heavily burdened than Morgan or myself, to be the last to complete his ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... should aug not be referred to the same source as the German Auge, and why should not both be traced back to the same root that yielded the Latin oc-ulus? As long as we trust to our ears, or to what is complacently called common sense, it would seem mere fastidiousness to reject so evident an etymology. But as soon as we know the real chemistry of vowels and consonants, we shrink instinctly from such combinations. If a German word has the same sound as a Greek word, the two words cannot ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... taken a philosopher to decide upon the values of the theories held by the two friends. Lou, lacking that certain pride and fastidiousness that keeps stores and desks filled with girls working for the barest living, thumped away gaily with her iron in the noisy and stifling laundry. Her wages supported her even beyond the point of comfort; so that her dress profited until sometimes she ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Gibbon. He was assiduous in his attentions on the ladies, ever anxiously polite and kind. That he found his happiness among them and was eager to gain and to retain their favour he plainly showed. If he sometimes jarred on their fastidiousness he ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... wild mockery and laughter, but still returned. She would struggle to persuade herself that her whole condition was one of foolish exaggeration, of senseless excitement about nothing—the merest delirium of feminine fastidiousness; and the next instant would turn cold with horror at a fresh glimpse of the mere fact. What could the wretched matter be to him now—or to her? Who was the worse, or had ever been the worse but herself? And what did it amount to? What claim had any one, what claim could ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... of the version of Tasso by Fairfax, and the very stanzas extracted by T. N. The translator could not please himself with the outset of his undertaking, and hence the recorded substitution; but it is not known that he carried his fastidiousness so far as to furnish a third version of the first stanza, as well as of the "Argument" of the introductory canto, differing from both the others. In the instance pointed out by T. N. the substitution was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... Christopher out of the corner of his eye, a little doubtfully. He had not come near, fastidiousness ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... enigma is the complex YOU I want to learn. Of course you're a specialized type, a product of artistic hothouse propagation. You're so exquisite in your fastidiousness that to be near you is a luxury. Simplicity and you have not a bowing acquaintance. One looks to see your most casual act freighted with ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall of Lincoln's Inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful Dog Guide at their feet,—whither are they fled? or into what corners, blind as themselves, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiors in science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness which disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr. Congreve: though he seemed to value others chiefly according to the progress they had made in knowledge, yet he could not bear to be considered merely ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... doubly tender feeling towards their fatherly elder brother. Now that they guessed something to be amiss with him, they had no irritation for him—and indeed he gave them no cause for any; the discomfort was partly indeed occasioned by the lack of his usual quiet mirth, but far more by Alda's fastidiousness, and Wilmet's vigilance lest she should be annoyed. This caused restrictions that weighed more heavily on the younger ones than on Lance and Robina, and had the effect of making Angela and Bernard rebellious. They had neither the principle nor the consideration of their two ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Could it then, in any true and vital sense, be reckoned religion at all? Gross sins had never exercised any attraction over him. What virtue was there, then, in being innocent of gross sin? But to those other sins—sins of defective moral courage in speech and action, sins arising from over-fastidiousness—had he not yielded freely? Was he not a spiritual valetudinarian? He feared so. Offered, in the Eternal Mercy, endless precious opportunities of service, he had been too weak, too timorous, too slothful, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... intellectual clearness, within a certain range, come, as with the brightened senses, certain drawbacks, arising out of the fastidiousness which belongs to the changing man just at this time. Let him, therefore, be careful what novels he chooses, for of all times this is the one for fiction, when we are away from the contradictions of the fierce outer world, and are in an atmosphere all sun and flowers, ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... syllogisms on the propriety of the liberties which have been taken with his name and standing. But with all his quickness of feeling, his manners were easy and courteous, simply because his nature was warm and kindly, and with all his natural fastidiousness there was nothing of the coxcomb ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... because the error about impartiality and justice is by no means confined to a criminal question. In much more serious matters it is assumed that the agnostic is impartial; whereas the agnostic is merely ignorant. The logical outcome of the fastidiousness about the Thaw jurors would be that the case ought to be tried by Esquimaux, or Hottentots, or savages from the Cannibal Islands—by some class of people who could have no conceivable interest in the parties, and moreover, no conceivable interest ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... succeeded fairly well with the dinner, considering the materials and the appliances available. Not one, however, was disposed to epicurean fastidiousness. The situation was gravely discussed, and the experiences of friends related. Dr. Devoe gave cheering assurances that injury to life and limb had been far less than might have been expected. "The first shock could scarcely have come at a better ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... Without fastidiousness it was fair to declare on the other hand that the little inn at Azay-le-Rideau was very bad. It was terribly dirty and it was in charge of a fat megere whom the appearance of four trustful travellers—we were four, with an illustrious fourth, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... discharged it adequately, but without ostentation. Respecting wealth, but not greatly caring for it—as why should he?—every year without effort he put aside a thousand or two. Men liked him, in spite of his shyness: his good manners hiding a certain fastidiousness of which he was aware without being at all proud of it. No one had ever treated him with familiarity. One or two at the most called him friend, and these probably enjoyed a deeper friendship than they knew. Everyone felt him to be, behind his ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that very year partly answers the question: 'Gourmands say that a meal is not all that it ought to be unless, precisely when you are relishing most what you are eating, your plate is removed and another, and better, and richer one is put in its place. Your exquisite, who makes extravagance and fastidiousness pass for wit, calls that the "bloom of a meal." "The only bird," says he, "which you should eat whole is the becafico. Of every other bird, wild or tame, nothing, unless your host be a mean fellow, but the hinder ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... matter in space—but still design. This power of design rises to higher uses as time goes on, is bent to the interpretation of lofty themes and the expression of deep emotions, but it is in its nature the same power that produced the delicate, ethereal beauty of the reliefs. The infinite fastidiousness of a master designer, constantly reworking and readjusting his design, that every part shall be perfect and that no fold or spray of leafage shall be out of its proper place, never satisfied that his composition is beyond improvement while an experiment remains untried—this is what cost him years ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... flowers that might tempt its guests to parade the grounds on balmy evenings. Wilfrid kept by the side of Lady Charlotte. She did not win his taste a bit. Had she been younger, less decided in tone, and without a title, it is very possible that she would have offended his native, secret, and dominating fastidiousness as much as did Emilia. Then, what made him subject at all to her influence, as he felt himself beginning to be? She supplied a deficiency in the youth. He was growing and uncertain: she was set ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of what they said or did. I think I could devote a dozen pages to the single man who was placed next to me. I was interested in him from the outset. The first thing that struck me about him was an air of neatness, even fastidiousness, about his person—though he wore no stiff collar, only a soft woollen shirt without a necktie. He had the long sensitive, beautiful hands of an artist, but his face was thin and marked with the pallor peculiar to the indoor worker. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... the humorous aspects of a repulsive subject is seen in the curiosity and fastidiousness of prisoners on trial for capital offences with regard to the professional status of the judges who try them. A sheep-stealer of the old bloody days liked that sentence should be passed upon him by a Chief Justice; and ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... candle on the floor, and appropriated the chair. He might, from his tone, have been thanking her for some priceless boon. He wore a boutonniere. His clothes fitted him like gloves. He exuded a certain studied, almost languid fastidiousness—that was wholly out of keeping with the quick, daring, agile wit that he had exhibited the night before. She found her hand toying unconsciously with the weapon in her pocket. She was aware that she was fencing with unbuttoned foils. How much did he know—about ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... Petersburg, types so various were to be seen in the streets that no figure, however queer, would have caused surprise. But there was such accumulated bitterness and contempt in the young man's heart, that, in spite of all the fastidiousness of youth, he minded his rags least of all in the street. It was a different matter when he met with acquaintances or with former fellow students, whom, indeed, he disliked meeting at any time. And yet when a drunken man who, for some unknown reason, was being taken somewhere in a huge ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... her on her return. He had in fact lain awake thinking of plans of defence but had so far been able to decide on none. If there had been anything to touch, to appeal to, there might have been some hope, but she had left taste and fastidiousness scattered in shreds behind her. The War, as she put it, had made her less afraid of life. She had in fact joined the army of women who could always live so long as their beauty lasted. At the beginning ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
