"High-toned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that one of the ladies of the party was rudely jostled by a large man, who caught his foot in the matting of the vestibule and fell against her with such violence as nearly to throw her to the floor. He turned and apologized at once, and with so much high-toned and gentlemanly dignity, that all the party felt almost glad that the little accident had occurred. This made the first step of an acquaintance between him and myself; and when, in the intermission the same evening, I met him for a few moments in ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the window, opened it, and pointing down into the street, he said, with a mocking laugh: "Just look, Gotzkowsky! There is the true test of your beautiful, high-toned principles. How often has Berlin not called you her benefactor, and yet she is overjoyed on the very day you are going to ruin! The whole town of Berlin knows that Gotzkowsky fails to-day, and yet they pass by your house with merry music, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... a great many wigwam poles near and in the pass hard by our camp, while by the creek we came across the remains of both summer and winter camps, probably those of hunters. "One of the beggars was high-toned," said George; "he had a stove." This was evidenced by the arrangement of stones within the circle of wigwam poles, and a few pieces of wood ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... gaily ringin' an' the room is filled with song, I like, to sit an' watch 'em, all that glad an' merry throng, For the ragtime they are playin' on the old piano there Beats any high-toned music where the bright lights shine an' glare, An' the racket they are makin' stirs my pulses more and more, So I whisper in my gladness: that's ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... superior as a writer of high-toned stories—pure in style, original in conception, and with skilfully wrought-out plots; but we have seen nothing from this lady's pen equal in dramatic energy to her latest work, Under False ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... kind neighbors have handed me a ten-story apartment-house, with a minimum rental per suite of three thousand dollars a year. I'm going to build their neighborhood ornament and fill it with high-toned niggers!" ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... my dear sister were of the most conservative and high-toned character, as was to have been ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... clumsily, "I mean I was his attendant up to the Retreat. It was a real high-toned place, and they did not take any dangerous ones, only folks like him. His people ain't the kind that stand for price. They've got plenty, and they don't care what they pay. I dare say you've been in his father's store many a time,—Longworth & Whittles, one of the biggest and best dry-goods stores ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... dry, direct, and practical as the morning itself, spoke in his ear: "Mornin', Reddy! My daughter says you're willin' to take an indoor job, and I reckon, speakin' square, as man to man, it's more in your line than what you've bin doin'. It mayn't be high-toned work, but work's WORK anyhow you can fix it; and the only difference I kin see is in the work that a man does squarely, and the ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... spoke of Graines in the highest terms, not only in his official capacity, but as a high-toned, patriotic, and thoroughly reliable man. The moment the executive officer put his eye on the assistant engineer, he decided that Graines should be his right-hand man. As a matter of precaution the proposed expedition was to be a profound secret, for there ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... have been accused of driving him crazy with no proper justification for my actions, and the result might have been most disastrous to me. The fact that I, an unknown man from the North, had driven a high-toned Southern gentleman insane, would have been sufficient to hang me by the ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... This earthly mind may be of noble calibre, enriched by culture, high-toned, virtuous, and pure. But if it know not God? What though its correspondences reach to the stars of heaven or grasp the magnitudes of Time and Space? The stars of heaven are not heaven. Space is not God. Natural Law, Death, ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... to circulate freely among all classes, yet there are several kinds of this current form of language corresponding to the several classes of society. The two great divisions of slang are the vulgar of the uneducated and coarse-minded, and the high-toned slang of the so-called upper classes—the educated and the wealthy. The hoyden of the gutter does not use the same slang as my lady in her boudoir, but both use it, and so expressive is it that the one ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... public business under the mouths of British cannon, adjourned it to Cambridge. On the night after this adjournment, the cannon were removed. These irritating proceedings made this body still more high-toned. While in this mood, it received from the Governor two messages, (July 6 and 12,) asking an appropriation of money to meet the expenses which had been incurred by the crown officers in quartering troops in Boston. The members nobly met this demand by returning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... your delicacy," he went fatuously on. "You're the only person I ever felt that way about. Absolutely the only one. But you've got to expect that sort of thing in a man who prevails in such a world as this. When men get too high-toned and aristocratic, too fussy about manners and dress, along come real men to ride them down and under. But I'll try to be everything you wish—to you. Not to the others. That would defeat our object; for I'm going to take my wife ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... been sent for the benefit of its waters, she accepted a pressing invitation to visit Scotland, where, as in England, she received valuable presents and innumerable acts of kindness. The piety of her English friends seemed to her of the most high-toned character, and their ardent friendship called forth her warmest affections. Though on her way to a still dearer country, the land of her birth, she could not part with ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... problem. He was born that way. He had no idea what to do with her or for that matter with anything or anybody including himself. He bolted back to his suite of rooms in the hotel. He was the most helpless ... She might have been left in the Priory to the end of time had not the high-toned governess threatened to send in her resignation. She didn't care for the child a bit, and the lonely, gloomy Priory had got on her nerves. She wasn't going to put up with such a life and, having just come out of some ducal family, she bullied de Barral in a very lofty fashion. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Those high-toned sentiments were received with loud cheers. Even Opposition felt the natural force of the appeal, and the cheering was universal; party was forgotten for the time, and the name of England, and the revived glory of those illustrious days, bowed the whole ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... his daughter he never doubted that all would come right. He stood looking down toward the lake, as if not caring to her how shut in from the whole countryside it lay, in its rock-basin. He thought it might just happen that some high-toned lady, with a grand name, would come rowing across from Doveness, on the south shore of the lake. Because of the little girl he felt almost sure this ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... Not at all. In England, at the close of the Parliamentary war, it was generally argued—that Providence had decided the question against the Royalists by the mere fact of the issue. Milton himself, with all his high-toned morality, uses this argument as irrefragable: which is odd, were it only on this account—that the issue ought necessarily to have been held for a time as merely hypothetic, and liable to be set aside ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Moon seems to think he is there to make jokes— very good jokes I dare say, but not at all adapted to assist his client. He picks holes in science. He picks holes in my client's social popularity. He picks holes in my literary style, which doesn't seem to suit his high-toned European taste. But how does this picking of holes affect the issue? This Smith has picked two holes in my client's hat, and with an inch better aim would have picked two holes in his head. All the jokes in the world won't unpick those holes or be ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... you any, young feller. Seems like you be too high-toned fur this sorter work. Might try the bank and see what Mr. Harvey Gibbs kin offer you," and so saying Ezra slammed the door shut behind Dick, thus bringing to a termination the interview that was not proving ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... one, God won't forsake us.' While he listened, it seemed to him as if the whistling of the wind changed into the sound of bells. Was it his fancy? But the bells never ceased; some were deep-toned and some high-toned; voices were intermixed with them. They approached from behind like a swarm of bees ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... any old king was, however, not sufficient for the high-toned people of our republic. When you come to think of it, such a circle might be “mixed.” One really must draw the line somewhere (as the Boston parvenu replied when asked why he had not invited his brother to a ball). So the founders of the “Circle of Holland Dames of the New Netherlands” drew ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... at his high-placed love but known the truth; how she whom he so worshipped, on her part, adored him? But this he himself did not know, or even suspect. Had he possessed much less of a fine, high-toned sense of honor, he might, by wooing the lady, have found this out for himself; but he, an almost penniless young man, was much too proud to ask the hand of the wealthy heiress. Or had he possessed a little more personal vanity, he might have suspected the truth; for certainly there was ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... never have existed. He was a failure at the Fort, we are told. Why? I made inquiries concerning that. I was told by a gentleman who calls himself a Presbyterian—I need not mention his name—that he was not suitable to the peculiarly select and high-toned society of that place. No, sir, our missionary could not bow and scrape, he was a failure at tennis, he did not shine at card parties,' and here you could smell things sizzling. 'He could not smile upon ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... to preserve peace it is necessary to be prepared for war, that a nation with a large army or navy commands respect, and that her word carries weight. This argument cuts both ways, for a nation occupying such a commanding position may be unreasonable and a terror to weaker nations. If this high-toned doctrine continues where will it end? We shall soon see every nation arming to the teeth for the sake of her national honor and safety, and draining her treasury for the purpose of building dreadnaughts ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... ill-proportioned body, and a small, round head. Claiming descent from Pocahontas, he wore his coarse, black hair long, parted in the middle, and combed down on either side of his sallow face. His small, black eyes were expressive in their rapid glances, especially when he was engaged in debate, and his high-toned and thin voice would ring through the Senate Chamber like the shrill scream of an angry vixen. He generally wore a full suit of heavy, drab-colored English broadcloth, the high, rolling collar of his surtout coat almost concealing his head, while ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... high-toned a gentleman as you'd meet with anywhere; polished, sir, so smooth your fingers would slip if you tried to take hold of him, but it's been commented on that when a horsethief or counterfeiter gets into trouble the colonel's ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... differing widely from those which caused her fear of Arnault. She dreaded the latter's pride, the resolute selfishness of his scheme of life, which would lead him to drop her should she interfere with it. She was learning to dread even more Graydon's high-toned sense of honor, the final decisions he reached from motives which had slight influence with her. What if she should permit both men to slip from her grasp, while she hesitated? She fairly turned cold with horror at the thought of this and of the ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... as disfigure such functions in the effete East [applause], and while I am only too anxious to exclaim with the poet, 'On with the dance, let joy be unconfined' [great applause], yet it must be remembered that this high-toned outfit has been got up for a special, definite purpose, as a fit welcome to one who has come among us with the high and holy object of instructing our offspring and elevating the educational ideals of this community. We, of this Bachelors' Club, may possess no offspring ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... what a sweet prophetess you are! The life you suggest is so beautiful, and I do not think I could live without beauty. He is so handsome and refined, and his taste is so perfect that every association he awakens is refined and high-toned. It seems as if my—as if he might take out of my future all that is hard and coarse—all that I shrink from even in thought. But, mamma, I wish he were a wee bit stronger. His hands are almost as white and small as mine; and then sometimes ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... callously ahead and the officer watching him with a wary eye to observe any suggestive movement. He couldn't make out this chap. There was something wrong, some deep-dyed villainy—of this he hadn't the slightest doubt. It was them high-toned swells that was the craftiest an' most daring. Handsome is that handsome does. A quarter of an hour later they arrived at the third precinct, where our jehu was registered for the night under the name of James Osborne. He was hustled into a small ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... the advance of intellect. It will perform a noble and distinguished part in the great mission of the age and of future ages—that of vindicating the dignity of free labor and showing that the humblest work may be rendered high-toned and raised to a level with the calling of scholar or diplomatist through the influence of science. If we were called on to set forth the noble spirit of the North with all its free labor and all its glorious tendencies, we should, with whole heart and soul, choose this ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... believed in it myself, but they are a mighty elegant family; no doubt of that. I've got the notion that they were not as well off as they might be. Perhaps the family got too big for the estate. That would happen with these old families, you know; but they were as high-toned and honorable as if their fore-bears had been kings. Not proud, I don't mean—not a bit ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the account of his preparations for the march from Babylon to Jerusalem gives us a glimpse of a high-toned faith, and a noble strain of feeling. He and his company had a long weary journey of four months before them. They had had little experience of arms and warfare, or of hardships and desert marches, in their Babylonian homes. Their caravan was made unwieldy and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... There was considerable high-toned deprecation of so early a cessation of Mrs. Wittleday's sorrowing, she being still young and handsome, and there was some fault found on the economic ground that the widow couldn't yet have half worn out her ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... notes of the bag-pipe moved them as no other instrument could. The piper performed his duty in peace as well as in war. At harvest homes, Hallowe'en christenings, weddings, and evenings spent in dancing, he was the hero for the occasion. The people took delight in the high-toned warlike notes to which they danced, and were charmed with the solemn and melancholy airs which filled up the pauses. Withal the piper was a humorous fellow ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean |
