"Impressiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were gatherings round shining tables; and bottles and glasses clinked cheerily in many a parlour. But Mr. Spottiswoode was sober by inclination. The impressiveness of office, which had quite the contrary effect on many provosts of his era, only added to his characteristic caution. The yeomen, too, knew well where hilarity ended and excess began. So there was little ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... earlier than had been announced to Tacon-a piece of villany that had nearly cut off the young soldier from the clemency that the governor had resolved to extend to him at the very last moment, when the impressiveness of the scene ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... sometime, Lydia; or rather, you'll learn for yourself. In Italy it's very different from what it is in America." Mrs. Erwin suddenly started up and bowed with great impressiveness, as a gondola swept towards them. The gondoliers wore shirts of blue silk, and long crimson sashes. On the cushions of the boat, beside a hideous little man who was sucking the top of an ivory-handled stick, reclined ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Mayor of Boston, has made one of the ablest chief executives that the city has ever possessed. Indeed, few past Mayors can at all compare with him either in personal impressiveness or financial acumen. No man living understands Boston's true interests better than he, and no one has the future prosperity of the New England metropolis more sincerely at heart. Possessing an earnest desire for the public ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... quaint and delicate pattern on this band, together with that of the embroidered edges of the dress, is of great value in opposing and making more manifest the severe and grave outlines of the whole figure, whose impressiveness is also partly increased by the rise of the mountain just above it, like a tent. A vulgar composer would have moved this peak to the right or left, and lost ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... several studies of him. In one of them which he showed me, he had left the face blank, but had drawn the figure from the head down with much care. It was so expressive, so unmistakably Whitman, conveyed so surely a certain majesty and impressiveness that pertained to the poet physically, that I looked upon it with no ordinary interest. Every wrinkle in the garments seemed to proclaim the man. Probably a similar painting of any of one's friends would be more or less a recognizable portrait, but I doubt if it would speak ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... of us had stepped outside the window into the garden when she came into the room. There was a singularly radiant eager look in her face, her eyes shone bright as though they had been washed with glad tears, and as she kissed us one by one there was more than the usual impressiveness, or what the French would call effusion in her manner. Annie Bowers looked at her with a quick inquiring glance, but said nothing. Marian Cooper, who had grown as tall as Miss Grantley was herself, held her hand tight, ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... eyes something of that gathering wrath which was manifest when he hurled that fair woman from him. He explained to me that posts were few and uncertain, and that my writing now would ensure ease of mind to my friends. And he assured me with so much impressiveness that he would countermand the later letters, which would be held over at Bistritz until due time in case chance would admit of my prolonging my stay, that to oppose him would have been to create new suspicion. I therefore pretended to fall in with his views, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... works—his memoir of his father (Oeuv., xiii.) This is one of those records of solid and elevated character, which do more to refresh and invigorate the reader than a whole library of religious or ethical exhortations can do. It has the loftiness, the refined austerity, the touching impressiveness of Tacitus's Agricola or Condorcet's Turgot, together with a certain grave sweetness that was almost peculiar to the Jansenist school of the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... (December 1, 1783) in one of the speeches which rank only below his greatest, and it contains two or three passages of unsurpassed energy and impressiveness. Everybody knows the fine page about Fox as the descendant of Henry IV. of France, and the happy quotation from Silius Italicus. Every book of British eloquence contains the magnificent description ...
— Burke • John Morley
... hour he had explained the great plan of salvation he touched upon the responsibility that the hearing of such conclusive reasoning imposed. The sower had sown broadcast; it remained for him to speak with awful impressiveness of those forces which would be arrayed against the convicted soul. Under this head he referred at once and with deep emotion to the devil, who, in the guise of false teachers lying in wait, caught up ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... mere technical cleverness of the pictures even today holds the interest spellbound as in those early days when nothing but this technical skill could claim the attention. We are still startled by every original effect, even if the mere showing of movement has today lost its impressiveness. Moreover we are captivated by the undeniable beauty of many settings. The melodrama may be cheap; yet it does not disturb the cultured mind as grossly as a similar tragic vulgarity would on the real stage, because it may have the snowfields of Alaska or the palm trees of Florida as ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... liable to no errors, and not simply the imaginings of weak and erring folk, who merely substitute the imposing word "science," in place of the thoughts and words of the people, for the sake of impressiveness. ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... absorption been directed towards the casket over which the clergyman's words rose and fell with ever increasing impressiveness, he might have noted the man but would scarcely have been held by him. But this interest, sincere and strong as it undoubtedly was, centred not so much in the services, careful as he was to maintain a decorous attitude towards the same, but in the faint ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... stood out against the firmament, then kindled into magnificent grandeur by the myriads of stars that glowed in its expanse. There was perfect silence and solitude around me; and, as I stood alone in the dark chamber of the mountains, I felt the impressiveness of the situation gradually supersede my terrors. A sublime sense of religious awe descended on me; my soul kindled into a glow of solemn and elevated devotion, which gave me a more intense perception ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... The dramatic impressiveness of the minister's death won him undisputed favour, yet it failed to establish unity in his society. Supply after supply filled his pulpit, but the people found them all unsatisfactory when they remembered ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... after he had gone, went to the glass and surveyed himself steadily. The words of the priest were uttered with much solemnity and earnestness; but withal in such a tone of kind regret and good feeling, that their import and impressiveness were much ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... you say, Milbrey," interrupted Shepler, "and they often do conceal it. Why, I know a chap in New York who was positively never east of Kansas City until he was twenty-five or so, and yet that fellow to-day"—he lowered his voice to the pitch of impressiveness—"has over eighty pairs of trousers and complains of the hardship every time he ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... of its portico vignetted in a flush of tenderest green, the tulips just beginning to flame forth their Easter colours in the well-kept beds, the stately, well-groomed evergreens, the vivid lawns, the clipped hedges. And like an overwhelming wave of emotion that swept all before it, the impressiveness of wealth took possession of me. For here was a kind of wealth I had never known, that did not exist in the West, nor even in the still Puritan environs of Boston where I had visited. It took itself for granted, proclaimed itself ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... intenser actuality of things at which all human language fails to do justice to it. Yet—as simply told as possible—there are many incidents of this great tragedy which nothing has ever surpassed or ever can surpass in impressiveness. It is a consolation, too, that human nature at such times does betray here and there a gleam of that side of it which gives forth a reflection of the ideal manhood or womanhood. Bits of heroism and of tender devotedness scattered throughout ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... with their surplus of imagination, their instinctive music and irregular rightness of form, their sweeping impressiveness, effects of landscape, their scant allusions to dogma or perfidious man, are, indeed, not at all like the poetry women generally write. The hand that ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Instead of one presiding, all-determining idea, we must be prepared to welcome a wealth of separate beauties, wrought out by men of independent genius, whereby each part is made a masterpiece, and many diverse elements become a whole of picturesque rather than architectural impressiveness. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... roll upon the tongue of the announcing footman. She had a vision of Sibyl in that august company; Sibyl, coldly beautiful, admirably sage, with—perhaps—ever so little of the air of a martyr, to heighten her impressiveness. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... words, for the unhappy Marie Antoinette; but away with these gloomy presentiments! After the concert the discharge of a rocket from the palace gave the signal for the fireworks. These had been arranged for the whole length of the Avenue of the Champs Elysees. The illumination brought out the impressiveness of the vast architectural lines of the Tuileries. The main avenues of the gardens were richly decorated; around the flower-beds were one hundred and twenty-eight porticoes and twenty-eight arches ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... the sun with the keen invigorating cold of the air forms a combination which is inexpressibly health-giving and satisfying to me, whilst the golden light on this wonderful scene of mountain and ice satisfies every claim of scenic magnificence. No words of mine can convey the impressiveness of the wonderful panorama displayed to our eyes.... It's splendid to see at last the effect of all the months of preparation and organisation. There is much snoring about me as I write (2 A.M.) from men tired after a hard day's work and preparing for such another ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... impression of the scene from this point. As the lowly strains arose tears were trickling down many a hard, rough face, whilst a spirit of holy quietude appeared to pervade others. Few funerals have been characterised by greater impressiveness. All the avenues at the cemetery were crowded, and hundreds had been waiting or a long time to meet ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... that of a sudden came down upon that front was terrifying. More awful in its gripping impressiveness than the most terrific cannonading. You seemed, in that tense moment, to have lost your footing on some storm-swept hill, and fallen headlong into a deep valley. There was no cheering. The boys simply looked at each other ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... see if Colton has come down," Witherspoon remarked, glancing through a door into another room. "Yes, there he is. He's coming. Mr. Colton," said Witherspoon, with deep impressiveness, "this ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... was now done. President Green arose to make the concluding address. The circumstances under which it was uttered may have lent it an impressiveness not its own; but as I now recall it, it seems to me the most powerful and eloquent speech to which I have ever listened. He passed in review the work that had been done, the constitution of the new society, the declaration of sentiments, and the union and earnestness which had marked ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that too indicating, as the first results, the very blessing I had been hoping and praying for, a deeper impressiveness to our Sabbath and other religious efforts. Shortly after, we found that hearts not sensibly touched before, were being deeply impressed, among them one of the worst cases perhaps in prison. It was taking a new start in ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... he said, and he leisurely patted the horses while the gorgeous footmen watched with solemn impressiveness. ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... conscious maiden. He lifted the almost lifeless hand from her side, and pressing it within both his own, a proceeding which her mother vainly endeavored to prevent, he addressed the maiden with all that impressiveness of tone which declares a stifled but still present and passionate emotion in the heart. His words were ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... our treasury, but do not defile your souls with the thought that the offerings of such a heart and such a hand are pleasing to the Divinity. Above all," and the voice of the old man had a heart-felt impressiveness, "Above all, do not flatter the erring man—and this is what you do, with the idea that he is walking in the right way; for your, for our first duty, O my friends, is always this—to guide the souls of those who trust in us ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... an alternate who can go in the kitchen, and two for the dining-room—can be every bit as well run, so far as essentials go, as the palaces of the Gildings and the Worldlys, though of course not with the same impressiveness. But good service is badly handicapped if, when the waitress goes out, there is no one to open the door, or when the cook goes out, there is no one to prepare ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... after having delivered the line with his usual force and impressiveness, Mead, after prolonged fumbling in his ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... The insane oddity of a monument set up in a village to preserve a name that would outlast the hills and the rocks without any such help, would advertise Elmira to the ends of the earth—and draw custom. It would be the only monument on the planet to Adam, and in the matter of interest and impressiveness could never have a rival until somebody should set up a ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... adhesive! No fine arabesque carvings, but strong, unhewn, native traits, and deep lines of care, toil, and human sympathy. Lincoln's Gettysburg speech is one of the most genuine and characteristic utterances in our annals. It has the true antique simplicity and impressiveness. It came straight from the man, and is as sure an index of character as the living voice, or the physiognomy, or the personal presence. Indeed, it may be said of Mr. Lincoln's entire course while at the head of the nation, that no President, since ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Congress. To the Senate he brought, in 1827, qualities that gave him at once a preeminent position. His massive head, beetling brow, flashing eye, and stately carriage attracted instant attention wherever he went. His physical impressiveness was matched by lofty traits of character and by extraordinary powers of intellect; and by 1830 he had acquired a reputation for forensic ability and legal acumen which were second ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... been deeply moved by the incident which he had tried to make Braile see with his own sense of its impressiveness, it could not have been wholly with the hope of impressing Braile that he had stopped to tell it. His notion might have been that Braile would ridicule it, and so help him throw off the lingering hold which it had upon him. His ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... with his eyes fixed upon the speaker, calm as he ever had been when awaiting the enemy's broadside, hearkened without stirring a muscle. But when the judge, after pronouncing the last words with a lingering fulness and impressiveness, continued through the heavy silence: "And that, at a subsequent time, your body, bound in irons, shall be suspended upon a gibbet erected as near as possible to the scenes of your successive crimes, and shall there remain as a lasting warning to wrong-doers ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... official and South Carolina impressiveness. "There is no indication of diminution of the prevailing ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... look at it from a more practical side. Frankly, there are qualities, which you always look for in a picture,—good drawing, of course, and good color. But there are such things as these: Harmony, Balance, Rhythm, Grace, Impressiveness, Force, Dignity. Where do they come from? Must not every good picture have them, or some of them, to some extent? How are you going to get them? If you have fifteen or twenty square feet or square yards of surface, you will not get them onto it by unaided ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... is mewing at no great distance. Then the shadow of a bird flits across a sunny spot. There is a peculiar impressiveness in this mode of being made acquainted with the flight of a bird; it impresses the mind more than if the eye had actually seen it. As we look round to catch a glimpse of the winged creature, we behold the living blue of the sky, and the brilliant disk of the sun, broken and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... buildings of New York in one vast plaza, and if the two thousand clerks and three thousand maintenance men and six thousand girl operators were to march to work each morning with bands and banners, then, perhaps, there might be the necessary quality of impressiveness by which any large idea must always be ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... trembled a little with fear. Nothing could awe the Patchwork Girl, and although the Woozy was somewhat uneasy in these splendid surroundings the Glass Cat was delighted with the sumptuousness of the court and the impressiveness of the occasion—pretty big words ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... access from almost every college site there are serviceable fields of study, and these, in any live course, will be assiduously cultivated. They may be relatively modest in their phenomena; they may seem to lack that impressiveness which has played so large a part in the popular notion of the content of geology, but they may nevertheless serve as most excellent training grounds for young geologists. If students are so situated as to be brought at the beginning ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... life and of the increasing floods of heathen ungodliness. It is well, it is CHRIST-like, to minister temporal relief to suffering humanity, but shall the deep longings and thirstings of His soul, and the impressiveness of His last command ere He ascended on high, be less urgent? How many of the parents who refuse to let son or daughter go into the mission-field would refuse the Queen of England were she to confer the honour of ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... in his eyes, but his waxed mustache of military proportions, his patch of goatee just above the chin, his elaborately oiled hair and flaming necktie, set off his faded face with an odd gear of finery and impressiveness. His skin was that of an old roue's, patched up and chalked, but the features were those of a once handsome man of style ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... formed by the drive on the east or entrance front of the house and at some distance to either side are two barns. Thus the house becomes the central feature in a strikingly picturesque group of buildings having all the manorial impressiveness of the old Virginia mansions along the ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... along. Finally Watson said, with a sort of mournful impressiveness: "Boys, let us all bid each other good-bye. For some of us ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... Christianity both contained the highest truth, as men already supposed it to be and as they had discovered it in their own minds, and the absolutely reliable guarantee that was desired for this truth. To the quality which makes it appear meagre to us it owed its impressiveness. The fact of its falling in with the general spiritual current of the time and making no attempt to satisfy special and deeper needs enabled it to plead the cause of spiritual monotheism and to oppose the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... righteous God. We see the educational effect upon the religious Hebrew of this clearly personal God. It constantly lifted him out of the littleness of self-consciousness, setting before his imagination the loftiest object. It gave definiteness and impressiveness to his best ideals. And, further, this anthropomorphism, as we name it now, was but the primitive expression of the principle which is central in all forms of religious faith, that man and the universe are in some deepest ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... of unusual impressiveness, opened with the reading by Miss Anthony of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's tribute to the distinguished dead of the past year who advocated equality of rights for women—George William Curtis, John Greenleaf Whittier, Ernestine ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... teachings. This was the prevailing spirit of Sunday's commemoration, and as the great mass of people filed past in orderly array and knelt, prayed, and laid wreaths on the lonely grave, the solemnity and impressiveness of the occasion was intensified. In the suppressed murmurs, and silent gaze on the tomb of the mighty dead, one could recognise the eagerness and the hope for another Tone to arise to complete the work which he promoted, and vindicate the purity of the motives which moved men like the leaders of ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... the clinking hoof-tramp of one of the horse-patrols who do regular duty there. About sunset, or a little later, was the time when the broad and somewhat desolate peculiarity of the heath seemed to me to put on its utmost impressiveness. At that hour, finding myself on elevated ground, I once had a view of immense London, four or five miles off, with the vast Dome in the midst, and the towers of the two Houses of Parliament rising up into the smoky canopy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... kindly judgment is required for unavoidable short-comings and ministerial mistakes. With different ages, sexes, experiences, states of mind, degrees of intelligence and impressibleness in a congregation, it is a rare felicity for a sermon to reach all its members with equal impressiveness or acceptance. Who ever heard a uniform estimate of any discourse? There seems almost a curse upon the preacher's office from its very greatness, so that it is never finished, and no portion of it can be done perfectly well and secure against all objection. If he try to unfold the deep ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... I positively put posers to him; but his memory was perfect in spite of the shock which would have killed a—a more sensitive nature.' She had risen, it seemed, and was moving with all her splendid impressiveness of silk and presence across the general line of vision. But the hall was dark and still; her eyes were dimmed with light. Lawford could ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Captain Asher he had taken toll from two ladies in a phaeton he was quite eloquent in his description of said ladies. He declared with an impressiveness which the captain had not noticed in him before that he did not know when he had seen such handsome ladies. The younger one, who paid the toll, was absolutely charming. She seemed a little bit startled, but he supposed that was because she saw a strange face at the toll-gate. Dick wanted very ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... Much of this may be owing to a cause similar to that which fires the Swiss soldier on foreign service when he hears the chant of his own mountain "Rans des vaches." Something may doubtless be laid to the account of early association; but, we think, more is justly due to the great impressiveness and power of his native tongue. The poems, original and translated, contained in the first part of the ensuing collection, may convey to the English reader some idea of this ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... speakers on problems of sex have been using words which definitely and directly express the desired meanings, and have avoided the suggestive circumlocutions which characterize many modern realistic novels. One who does not already appreciate the serious impressiveness of cold scientific language in discussion of sexual problems should take one of the indecently suggestive paragraphs from stories in the most notoriously vulgar of the fifteen-cent magazines, and translate ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... in a speech of two hours' duration. Mr. Lane seldom occupied the time of the Senate by speech-making, but when he felt it his duty to speak, none upon the floor attracted more marked attention, both from the importance of his matter and the impressiveness of ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... use humor, and it is always very simple and obvious and effective. With him even a very simple pun may be used, not only with-out taking away from the strength of what he is saying, but with a vivid increase of impressiveness. And when he says something funny it is in such a delightful and confidential way, with such a genial, quiet, infectious humorousness, that his audience is captivated. And they never think that he is telling something ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... kitchen. Nothing was broke, Aunt M'riar testified, and closed the door. Uncle Mo continued:—"I told you Davenant, because of young Radishes. But I'll pound it I was right and he was wrong. Don't you call to mind, Jeremiah?" For Uncle Mo often addressed his friend thus, for a greater impressiveness. Jeremiah recalled the incident on reflection. "There you are, you see," continued Uncle Mo. "Now you bear in mind what I tell you, sir;"—this mode of address was also to gain force—"He's him! That man's him—the very identical beggar! And this widder woman he was for hunting up, she's ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... with all the impressiveness she had at command that she did not expect Oscar that afternoon; "he is so busy with his new poems, you know; they say there has been no such sensation since Byron," she added; "already everyone is talking ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... come safe on the other side. Tread in His steps, aye, in the steps which are marked with bleeding feet, for 'He suffered and left us an example.' I will just add one word, dear friends, to deepen the thought in its impressiveness, that the cross of Christ it to be the pattern of our lives. It stands alone, thank God, for mighty power in its relation to the salvation of the world, and it stands alone in awful terror. You and I are, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... she, as one of them that were alive, would be caught up with other saints into the air, and would possibly receive while rising some distinguishing token of confidence and approbation which should fall with due impressiveness upon the surrounding multitude; then would come the consummation of all things, and she would be ever with the Lord. She died peaceably in her bed before she could know that a commercial panic was the nearest approach ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... slowly, and with its going the habitual shrewdness and capacity to make servants of circumstances apparently the most untoward returned. The youth had intellect, impressiveness, aptitude in words, and a sublime idea. But what of his spirit—his courage—his ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... with much impressiveness, "I am a magistrate of this county—as you perhaps know. You may consider yourself before the Bar of Justice, and reply to my ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... politic. Indeed, the fact that his seat was of fallen pine, and his draperies of butternut brown, and his audience two half-breed children, an artist, and a writer, and his body politic two hundred acres in the wilderness, did not filch from him the impressiveness of his estate. He was a Patriarch. It did not need the park of birch trees, the grass beneath them sloping down to the water, the wooded knoll fairly insisting on a spacious mansion, to substantiate Dick's fancy that ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... than any other in the world, and which I then beheld, and now look back upon, with profound gratitude to the men who built it, and a kindly interest, I may add, in the humblest personage that has contributed his little all to its impressiveness, by depositing his dust or his memory there. But it is a characteristic of this grand edifice that it permits you to smile as freely under the roof of its central nave as if you stood beneath the yet grander canopy of heaven. Break into laughter, if you feel inclined, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... effect, and concentrating our attention upon its lines of structures, we shall find that it owes a great part of its beauty to the harmonious relation of its leading lines, or to certain pleasant contrasts, or a certain impressiveness of form and mass, and at the same time we shall perceive that this linear expression is inseparable from the sentiment or emotion suggested by that ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... Windsor Castle, were about him, and early attracted his observant eye. Yet the same things were about his elder brother Arthur, an exceedingly clever fellow, who remained quite curiously impervious to the impressiveness of ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... whatsoever forgotten and superseded time, has passed the prayerful enthusiasm of man, the rite could hardly fail of a moving solemnity. As Chrysostom Trotter ordered it, it was certainly made to yield its fullest measure of impressiveness. To begin with, the chapel was quite a comely edifice inside and out; and its ministerial end, with its singers' gallery backed by great organ pipes, and fronted by a handsome pulpit, which Mr. Trotter had dared to garnish with chrysanthemums on each side of his Bible, had a modest, sacerdotal ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... faith in their own work to subscribe their names, and if they failed to do so its adoption by the people would have been impossible. It was then that Doctor Franklin rendered one of the last and greatest services of his life. With ingratiating wit and with all the impressiveness that his distinguished career inspired, ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... correctness of that remark. Somehow it added to the impressiveness of the affair. Several older officers of both regiments, prompted by nothing but sheer kindness and love of harmony, proposed to form a Court of Honour, to which the two young men would leave the task of their reconciliation. Unfortunately they began by approaching ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... pleased and delighted with this evening service of praise and prayer. Their weird surroundings added to its impressiveness. Then the fact that they were out in the cold forest, with no roof above them but the starry heavens and no walls around them but snowbanks, and the temperature so many degrees below zero, made the petition in the ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... that," said Antonia, with solemn impressiveness; "if there is one thing more than another that gives me intense pain, it is praise. I am but the meanest disciple of great Art. I am doing this in the cause of Art. Now, I am not going to tell you what my plan of campaign ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... suffered. And being by experience made perfect He then went on to do such and such things for us. Why, for instance, for one thing, why do you think was our Lord able to speak with such extraordinary point, impressiveness, and assurance about prayer; about the absolute necessity and certainty of secret, importunate, persevering prayer having, sooner or later, in one shape or other, and in the best possible shape, its answer? Why but because of His own experience? Why but because His ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... laughing heartily and quite unbending from his formal and dry way of talking, said, "Well done, my little red-hot Abolitionist; you'll get through this world, I'll be bound." He bade the wanderers farewell and goodspeed with much impressiveness and sent messages of ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... dreadful night was that when Margaret Cooper was first brought to feel the awful truth in its true impressiveness of wo. Alas! how terribly do the pleasures of sin torture us. The worst human foe is guilt. The severest censure the consciousness of wrong doing. Poverty may be endured—nay is—and virtue still be secure; since the mind may be made strong to endure the heaviest toil, yet cherish few desires; ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... cap trimmed with a ruching of organdie, and beneath it her thin gray hair still showed a gleam of faded yellow in the sunlight. She had never been handsome, but her prodigious size had endowed her with an impressiveness which had passed in her youth, and among an indulgent people, for beauty. Only in the last few years had her fleshiness, due to rich food which she could not resist and to lack of exercise for which she had an instinctive aversion, begun seriously ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... strange creatures, doomed, it is hoped, to extinction in favor of more intelligent and gracious forms of life. They are big, powerful, "necessitous," and have therefore an impressiveness, even an aesthetic appeal, not to be denied. So subtle and sensitive an old-world consciousness as that of M. Paul Bourget was set vibrating by them like a violin to the concussion of a trip-hammer, and ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... after a pause, "you have never been abroad, you have not observed as I have done, you—." He was gaining importance and impressiveness of tone as he went on; it was a pity that the sound of wheels and of horses' hoofs in the avenue interrupted what would have been one of his best presentations of the subject and have put him into an impregnable position. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... conscientiously observe that standard we shall get light as we journey. In this exhortation of the Apostle's there are many exhortations wrapped up; and in trying to draw them out I venture to adhere to the form of exhortation for the sake of impressiveness and point. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... inquired of her mother why these tiresome bickerings had been renewed, she always got the brooding and cryptic answer, "He COULD do it—if he wanted to." Alice failed to comprehend the desirability of a glue factory—to her mind a father engaged in a glue factory lacked impressiveness; had no advantage over a father employed by Lamb and Company; and she supposed that Adams knew better than her mother whether such an enterprise would be profitable or not. Emphatically, he thought it would not, for she ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... assemblage of the parishioners and the reverend brethren was convened; and the arrival of the latter, successively or in groups—their friendly greetings in the parlour, their progress to the church, and their solemn devoir during the service of the day—bore a character of dignity and impressiveness which does not now generally belong to such ceremonials. It may, perhaps, be unphilosophical, and not in accordance with more modern sentiment, to ascribe any efficacy to mere externals of costume. But it is a principle deeply implanted ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... Barrow (d. 1677) combine comprehensiveness, sagacity, and clearness. Other divines, such as Stillingfleet, Pearson, Burnet, Bull, hold a more prominent place in the history of the church than in that of letters. But all the writers of this age are wanting in that impressiveness and force of undisciplined eloquence which distinguished the first half of the seventeenth century. Among the nonconformist clergy, Howe (d. 1715) wrote the "Living Temple," which is ranked ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... and his artistic method by the time the campaign of 1884 came on, and he had founded a school which could apply the style to American politics with aptness superior to his own. It was Bernhard Gillam, who, working in the new Keppler style, produced a series of cartoons whose tremendous impressiveness was universally recognized. Blaine was depicted as the tattooed man and was exhibited in that character in all sorts of telling situations. While on the stump during the campaign, Blaine had sometimes literally to wade through ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... the old Roman heroes inspire respect rather than love; and something of their stern impressiveness lingers in the atmosphere of this Roman play. Here and there it has very touching scenes, such as that between Brutus and his page (IV, iii); but in the main it is great, not through its power to elicit sympathetic tears, but ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... nevertheless have large well-rounded muscles, a paradox of contradiction between anatomy and physiology. Such a type, for instance, may be picked out by a football coach for an important position in a line-up, simply on the tremendous impressiveness of the muscle make-up, only to see him bowled over and out in the first scrimmage. The tone of muscles, the quality of resisting firmness or yielding softness, is essentially determined by the adrenal glands, especially in time ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... hate like a flower in my breast," she said, with a sort of stern impressiveness. "I have fostered it year after year, and now,—it has grown too strong for me! When Olaf Gueldmar was young he told me I was fair; once he kissed my cheek at parting! For those words,—for that kiss,—I loved him then—for ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... the door of Marya Petrovna Koshkin, a midwife and an old maid. Neither face nor hand can be distinguished in the autumn darkness, but in the very manner of his coughing and the ringing of the bell a certain solidity, positiveness, and even impressiveness can be discerned. After the third ring the door opens and Marya Petrovna herself appears. She has a man's overcoat flung on over her white petticoat. The little lamp with the green shade which she holds in her hand throws a greenish light over her sleepy, ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... weather. Above the mercantile houses and dwellings rose the lofty spire of St. George's Chapel in Nassau Street, which had been completed less than three years before, and which secured Robert's admiration for its height and impressiveness. ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... will she do with all those clothes?" inquired Mrs. Walters the other night, eying me with curious impressiveness. ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... in a tone of stern impressiveness, "it is of the utmost importance for baby's sake that you shouldn't think anything of the kind, for by thinking that he has any internal injuries you might, or I might, or father might cause the darling to think ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... him. It turns his joy to ashes. He looks upon the wife of his bosom with anguish as he thinks of it. He gazes ruefully into his children's eyes; pretty innocents, they know naught of the impending blow. It is a Shadow, as Thackeray would have solemnly said, with Bulwerian impressiveness, which Pursues Him at Mid Day. It Awakens Him at Mid Night, and Says to Him, Sleep No More! What is it, do you ask? inquires Mr. Tibs, in his most startling manner. Brethren, 'tis the fell hand of improvement. That is it. It is that which harrows the suburban soul and destroys suburban ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... women with a strong sex nature; they believe in God, in spiritual mysteries; they are deeply stirred by religious music and by the ritual of worship; they love the architectural impressiveness of a church, the stained glass windows far up among majestic arches, the candles, the incense, ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... can count dollars with any man this side of New York. Yes, sir, with any man west of the Alleghany Mountains." The breathless excitement of the good Deacon changed gradually as he realized that his hearers were not in sympathy with him, and his speech became almost solemn in its impressiveness as he continued. "See here! This ain't a thing to waste. Ten thousand dollars a year to start with, an' the best church in Chicago, you can't expect to do better than that. Though you're young still, when the chance comes, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... which, almost hysterical though it be, is yet successful and full of real life; while in the swaggering strength of the nude figures in "The Rescue of Prisoners" there is something of Luca's own dignity and impressiveness. In his later work, although he never departs from certain likenesses to his first master, yet he gives himself up to the influence of Raffaelle unreservedly, as may be best seen in the Cesena altar-piece, now in the Brera, Milan. Morelli writes of him: "This eclectic painter, who, though ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... and showed itself distinct upon the grass some feet away from the mountain of flesh so lately animated. The sight was one worth looking upon in any age, for, in point of grandeur of appearance, the mammoth, while not as huge as some of the monsters of reptilian times, had a looming impressiveness never surpassed by any beast on the earth's surface. Though prone and ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... hymn-writer mingles these symbolical imitations with the outlines of the original story; and, in his Demeter, the dramatic person of the mysteries mixes itself with the primitive mythical figure. And the worshipper, far from being offended by these interpolations, may have found a special impressiveness in them, as they linked continuously its inner sense with the outward ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Banner" and firing of the cannon. The flag is lowered very slowly during the playing of the "Star Spangled Banner" and camp should be a place of silent patriotism. Those who have witnessed this ceremony in a boys' camp will never forget its impressiveness. The flag should never be permitted to touch the ground, and should be carefully folded and in readiness for ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... but there is no denying his quick perception of colour and his strong sense of the leading points in a landscape. Even minute features are seized and utilized with ease and precision, while the larger elements of a scene are depicted with breadth, sense of proportion, and clearness and impressiveness of arrangement. This holds true whether the description is merely a vivid presentment of what the imagination of the poet calls from the remote past, or a delineation of what has actually come under his notice. Norham at twilight, with the solitary warder on the battlements, and Crichtoun ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... conscious superiority. The dresses of both ladies were exceedingly rich, as to material, but as notably modest as to color and ornament. All parties having seated themselves, the dowager delivered herself of a remark that was not unusual in its form, and yet it came from her lips with the impressiveness of Scripture: ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... unity of his work that I would attribute, in the main, the impressiveness of his deliverances on morality and religion. And this unity justifies us, I think, in applying to Browning's view of life methods of criticism that would be out of place with any other English poet. It is one of his unique characteristics, as already hinted, that he has endeavoured ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... of that lowly Redeemer be ever bending over us. His example may well speak in silent impressiveness, bringing us down from our pedestal of pride. There surely can be no labor of love too humiliating when He stooped so low. Let us be content to take the humblest place; not envious of the success or exaltation of another; not, "like Diotrephes, loving preeminence;" "but willing ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... "unable from pecuniary circumstances," "the more expensive forms of sport." That all very well, but not quite all. Easy enough to catch the trick of speech; who but JEMMY LOWTHER can add the indefinable personal gifts which invest even the commonplace with impressiveness? ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... poesy and dream a practicable compromise may conceivably result, taking the shape of a monotonic delivery of speeches, with dreamy conventional gestures, something in the manner traditionally maintained by the old Christmas mummers, the curiously hypnotizing impressiveness of whose automatic style—that of persons who spoke by no will of their own—may be remembered by all who ever experienced it. Gauzes or screens to blur outlines might still further shut off the actual, as has, indeed, already been done in exceptional cases. But with this branch ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... pressed against the other is the effort of expiring humanity to relieve itself from pain. The sculptor's chisel and the painter's brush have often been called upon to represent scenes of death in all its various forms and manifestations. Yet have they never attained the simplicity, the impressiveness, the vivid naturalness of the story told by the figure which lies in ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... in a pitiable state of suppressed excitement before the ordeal was concluded. The solemnity and impressiveness of the vows she was taking disturbed the serenity with which she had schooled herself to regard the marriage as "make-believe." She was frightened at her own daring. A dread that the tie she was so lightly assuming might be harder to undo than she had contemplated was fluttering her heart and ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... equally eloquent and equally patriotic. But the speeches given here are associated with facts which give them peculiar value and significance, and were spoken under circumstances which lend to them a solemn interest and impressiveness which could not otherwise be obtained. They reach us—these dock speeches, in which nobility of purpose and chivalrous spirit is expressed—like voices from the tomb, like messages from beyond the grave, brimful of lessons of dignity and patriotism. We can see the men who spoke them ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... up and walked along the road. The Cathedral, all white, stood facing the sea not without impressiveness, and beside it the Protestant chapels had the look of meeting-houses. In the road were two or three cars, and a great number of traps, and traps were put up against the walls at the side. People had come from all parts of the island for the service, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... and breathlessness with awe; it is the actual recurrence of a sensation in the throat and lungs that gives those impressions an immediate power, prior to all reflection upon their significance. It is, therefore, to this vital sensation of deep or arrested respiration that the impressiveness of those objects is ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... being is at least as high an ideal as doing. Being, existence in a definite place amid the tangible surroundings of personal life, Grillparzer gives us with extraordinary abundance of sensuous details. The drama was for him what Goethe said it should always be, a present reality; and for the greater impressiveness of this reality he is fond of the use of visible objects—whether they be symbols, like the Golden Fleece in Medea, the lyre in Sappho, the medallion in The Jewess of Toledo, or characteristic weapons, accoutrement, and apparel. Everything expressive is welcome to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... "the natural development of the thoughts of his predecessors in a mind at once capacious and smitten with the love of virtue." Philosophy to Seneca was "altogether a question of practise." Like other thinkers of his day, "he cared nothing for consistency of opinion, everything for impressiveness of application."] ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... would certainly account for much of the potency of what we moderns call music. All that aims to be dramatic, tragic, supernatural in our modern music, derives its impressiveness directly from rhythm.[01] What would that shudder of horror in Weber's "Freischuetz" be without that throb of the basses? Merely a diminished chord of the seventh. Add the pizzicato in the basses and the chord sinks into something fearsome; ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... distance, but tawdry on a closer examination—being very striking. The organ is of splendid tone and quality and reverberated grandly through the aisles, and the whole scene was not without a certain impressiveness. I had not thought of paying a visit to the cathedral when I went out this morning, and it was not until I saw every one staring at me that I remembered I had committed the terrible mistake of going to church in a hat, and without any ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... setting sun, turning it and all within it, even the large straw hut in the background, to the deep hue of blood. Seeing the wonderful effect of the sunset in that dark and forbidding place, it occurred to me at once that the old wizard must have chosen this moment to receive us because of its impressiveness. ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... of practical and knowing men, who, by correspondence or conversation, are feeding him with evidence, anecdotes, and estimates, and it will bereave his fine attitude and resistance of something of their impressiveness. As Sir Robert Peel[572] and Mr. Webster[573] vote, so Locke[574] and Rousseau[575] think for thousands; and so there were foundations all around Homer,[576] Menu,[577] Saada,[578] or Milton,[579] from which they drew; friends, lovers, books, traditions, proverbs,—all ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... under one roof of products of every kind, natural and cultivated, mechanical and artistic, has a certain impressiveness from the wonderful extent and variety of the assemblage, but the effect is confusing and oppressive. The Philadelphia plan of grouping the exhibits in separate buildings was both more pleasant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... to give greater impressiveness to the conclusion of his harangue. His voice as he continued held ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... and no doubt perfectly will, arrange itself.—Oh! I'll obey you within reasonable limits, McCabe. I have no craving to hurry the inevitable conclusion. These last hours possess considerable significance and charm—an impressiveness even, which it would be folly to thrust aside ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... "And my wife," he added, with an impressiveness that was intended to show he had at last arrived at the important part of his message, "says you are ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis |
