"Nicety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... treasure upon their sovereign! And, above all, these vast riches, the sinews of war, and without which all the glorious success had proved abortive —these treasures are managed with such faithfulness and nicety, that they answer seasonably all their demands, though at never so great a distance. Upon these considerations, my lord, how hard and difficult a thing will it prove to persuade our neighbors ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... apply to it the word "imbecility." The American for a dozen years had been clubbed without giving evidence of rebellion, beyond words; now that he showed signs of restiveness, without corresponding evidence of power, he should feel the lash, and there need be no nicety in measuring punishment. Codrington, an officer of mark and character, who joined Cochrane at this time as chief of staff, used expressions which doubtless convey the average point of view of the British officer of that day: President Madison, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... weight of Gramarye a fardel to make him stagger. This was out of all order. Had he lain sick for a month, the work would have gone as steadily. The truth is, he was investing the conduct of a waggoner's team with the nicety requisite to the control of a tandem of thoroughbreds. That Lyveden of all men in the world should make such a costly mistake showed that his ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... more, but started at a fast walk for the stable and his horse. After him went the Native Son, who had not been with the Flying U long enough to sense the magnitude of the affront, and Slim, who knew to a nicety just what "cowmen" considered the unpardonable sin, and the rest of the Happy Family, who were ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... he spread his bed in the canoe, a somewhat difficult task, as everything had to be adjusted with nicety, but the close wall of reeds and bushes helped him to keep the balance, and at last he lay on the bottom with the Indian's blanket under him and his own and the painted robe above him. Then he went to sleep and did not awaken until the next day ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with an air at once refreshed and solemn. Workmen, perhaps, pay more attention; but though they may be eager listeners, they have rarely seemed to me either willing or careful thinkers. Culture is not measured by the greatness of the field which is covered by our knowledge, but by the nicety with which we can perceive relations in that field, whether great or small. Workmen, certainly those who were on board with me, I found wanting in this quality or habit of the mind. They did not perceive relations, but leaped to a so-called cause, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his sole vocation was attending church. Three times a week, regardless of the inclemency of the weather, he unwound his long legs from the chair rungs in the Cant-Pass-It, carefully smoothed his red hair, and made his way to a front pew in the Immanuel Church. At intervals, calculated to a nicety, he fell from grace, and was reclaimed, passing from periods of grave backsliding into periods of great religious fervor. Meanwhile he followed the Scriptures literally and took no thought of the morrow. His reliance in Providence and the Ladies' ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... evil and of utter degradation. These two extremes, more widely asunder than Prospero and Caliban, Hawthorne has linked together in his immense grasp of the inmost laws of life, and with a miraculous nicety of artistic skill. Then comes Donatello's fall, illustrating the genesis of sin from crime, in accordance with the Biblical story of Cain; and this precipitates an examination, not only of the result upon ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... presence of the Adventure in those seas; consequently he resolved to remain where he was until the last possible moment. Such work, therefore, as needed to be done was done with the utmost deliberation and nicety; and when at length all was finished there still remained time to spare, which the men were permitted to employ pretty much as they liked, it having by this time been ascertained conclusively that, apart from themselves, the island was absolutely ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... your neck! The hinges, now—might they not better be here, and here, than there, and there? Manvers was indifferent as to the hinges. The fastening? Let the fastening be one which could be snapped-to, and open upon a spring. The chain—ah, there was some nicety required for that. From his point of view, Sebastian said, with the light of enthusiasm irradiating his face, that that was the ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... when a look of pain upon Miss Warren's face checked me, and I said nothing. Lack of delicacy was one of Mr. Hearn's gravest faults. While courtly, polished, and refined in externals, he lacked in tact and nicety of discrimination. He often said things which a finer-fibred but much worse man would never have said. He had an abundance of intellect, great shrewdness, vast will force, and organizing power, but not much ideality or imagination. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... is sanctified by giving tithes, and their apparel hallowed by cleanliness, their reputations unblemished, and minds content. The intelligent are aware that the zeal of devotion is warmed by good fare, and the sincerity of piety rendered more serene in a nicety of vesture; for it is evident what ardor there can be in a hungry stomach; what generosity in squalid penury; what ability of travelling with a bare foot; and what alacrity at bestowing from an empty hand:—Uneasy must be the night-slumbers of him ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the rest but she did not share their ignorant mistrust, for she had sufficient worldly wisdom to recognize the nicety of his speech and the reticence of his manners as belonging to a gentleman—a gentleman under a cloud mayhap but still born a gentleman. She was intensely curious regarding his antecedents, and one day she had her curiosity gratified. A letter which came in the morning mail from ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... skill. The arched effect, so beautifully achieved, and the great accomplishment of merging the huge, brilliant panels into the decorative plan, were not the only difficulties. He had also to calculate the scale of proportion to a mathematical nicety, to make the figures large enough to appear the proper size when viewed so high overhead. The panels are in two sequences, four of them devoted to each subject. The sequence of which an example is illustrated is the Four ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... version of Apuleius "rude and curious;"[3] but adds, that it contains "expressions full of liveliness and propriety." By "rude" is probably meant obsolete, and comparatively unlearned. Correctness of interpretation and classical nicety of style (as Mr. Panizzi observes) were the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... an opportunity of examining my host. There was nicety but no ornament in his dress. His form was of the middle height, spare, but vigorous and graceful. His face was cast, I thought, in a foreign mould. His forehead receded beyond the usual degree in visages which I had seen. His eyes large and prominent, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... cause, in certain quarters. I only hope that it will not discourage those who accompanied you to the altar, and shared your enthusiasm at the time." He had spoken throughout with studied slowness and an insolent nicety of utterance. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... the miner's touch to a nicety, and in a moment had a spray of dirty water flying from the edge of the pan, while all the boys stood in a respectful semicircle, and stared delightedly. The pan empty, Toledo refilled it several times; and, finally, picking out some pebbles ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... little powers, Elsley Vavasour began to fancy that his wife was a very commonplace person, who was fast losing even her good looks and her good temper. So, on the whole, they were not happy. Elsley was an affectionate man, and honourable to a fantastic nicety; but he was vain, capricious, over-sensitive, craving for admiration and distinction; and it was not enough for him that his wife loved him, and bore him children, kept his accounts, mended and moiled all ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... doesn't come to," Rawdon said to his little wife as they sat together in the snug little Brompton lodgings. She had been trying the new piano all the morning. The new gloves fitted her to a nicety. The new shawl became her wonderfully. The new rings glittered on her little hands, and the new watch ticked at ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... be taken by the toe of the club, and the consequences will not be satisfactory. I have returned to make this the last word about the cut because it is the essence of the stroke, and it calls for what a young player may well regard as an almost hopeless nicety of perfection. ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... to the kitchen to drink coffee. There was no time to wait for any nicety of service. They stood outside the window and the cook passed them their coffee and a roll, which they drank and ate from the window-sill. ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... a human brain, like any man-made mechanism of great nicety, may readily be thrown into confusion, its exquisite balance disturbed, its functioning confounded. Thirst, near-exhaustion, severe bodily distress and, on top of all, blood-lust anger made Alan Howard over into another man. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... of his eyes which had flowed into them from a small wound on his forehead caused by a flying splinter, was astounded to observe the amount of damage and the number of casualties that had resulted from that one discharge. The pirates had somehow managed to get the range to a nicety, and every shot had come aboard. There were no less than nine men killed and wounded, and the crew of the four-inch gun were all down. Unconquerable or not, the pirates were certainly marvellously clever gunners, and their weapons must ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... set him down either for the gentleman by birth fallen a victim to some degrading habit, or for the man of small independent means whose expenses are calculated to such a nicety that the breakage of a windowpane, a rent in a coat, or a visit from the philanthropic pest who asks you for subscriptions to a charity, absorbs the whole of a month's little surplus of pocket-money. If you ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... his own account; it was individualistic in placing the end of education in the perfecting of certain faculties possessed at the outset by the individual. This kind of distribution of values expressed with nicety the state of opinion in the generations following upon Locke. It became, without explicit reference to Locke, a common-place of educational theory and of psychology. Practically, it seemed to provide the educator with definite, instead of vague, tasks. It ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... reared themselves since morning, fresh from the rain and flavored as sweet as a nut. Narrow furrows and sharp ridges adorn their drooping caps; these in turn are decorated with tiny shining scales. Nibbling at the nut-like flesh, I am touched with the nicety, the universality of nature's appeal to the finer senses and sentiments. Here is form and color and sparkle to please the eye, flesh tender to the touch, aroma that tests the subtlest sense of smell, taste that recalls stories of Epicurean feasts, millions of life-germs among the purple-black gills, ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... Socrates, I wish to demonstrate to you that what is called [1] "the intricate variety in husbandry" [2] presents no difficulty. I use a phrase of those who, whatever the nicety with which they treat the art in theory, [3] have but the faintest practical experience of tillage. What they assert is, that "he who would rightly till the soil must first be made acquainted with ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... ready, 'A' party? Then come on." Worming over the bank Samuel followed his subaltern into the darkness, and the raid had begun. Without a sound they approached the wire through which they had to cut, crawling as they had practised. Timed to a nicety they reached it and lay still, just as a couple of flashes from the rear proclaimed the gunners were beginning. Five—six—seven seconds, and with a shrill scream two shells whistled over their heads and burst fifty yards in ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... taught to answer these false indications, in the same way that a carthorse is brought to turn right or left by the touch of the whip on the opposite side of the neck, or the word of the driver; and indeed such is the nicety to which it may be brought, that you constantly hear people boast that their horses will "turn by the weight of the reins on the neck." This, however, only proves the docility of the horse, and how badly he has been ridden. For a horse which has been finely broken should take ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... pride: Psyche, Les Fourberies de Scapin, La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, betrayed nothing of their author's increasing sadness or suffering. Les Femmes Savantes had at first but little success; the piece was considered heavy; the marvellous nicety of the portraits, the correctness of the judgments, the delicacy and elegance of the dialogue, were not appreciated until later on. Moliere had just composed Le Malade Imaginaire, the last of that succession of blows which he had so often dealt the doctors; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... as it is, or at least just as it appears to me; and those who have a curiosity to see courts and courtiers dissected, must bear with the dirt they find in laying open such minds with as little nicety and as much patience as, in a dissection of their bodies, if they wanted to see that operation, they must ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... gloom at the brilliant, removed spectacle. The final fact that had taken him from the setting of so many of his years had been the increasing expense of a discriminating existence in New York. Again his distaste for anything short of absolute nicety had dictated the form and conditions of his living. When the situation of his rooms had definitely declined, and the cost of possible locations—he could not endure a club—became prohibitive; when his once adequate, unaugmented income assumed the ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... hand, he recognized Tom as almost indispensable; he could put a lick and polish on the maharajah's troops that no amount of cursing and coaxing by their own officers accomplished. Tom understood to a nicety that drift of the Rajput's martial mind that caused each sepoy to believe himself the equal of any other Rajput man, but permitted him to tolerate ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... parlour, the door of which, however, was fast closed this morning; and Nettie herself sat by the child's bedside—Nettie, all alert and vigorous, in the little room, which, homely as its aspect was, displayed even to the doctor's uninitiated glance a fastidious nicety of arrangement which made it harmonious with that little figure. Nettie was singing childish songs to solace the little invalid's retirement—the "fox that jumped up on a moonlight night," the "frog that would a-wooing go"—classic ditties of which the nursery never tires. ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... for the oven by simply mixing it in the mass, without kneading, pouring it into pans, and suffering it to rise there. The air-cells in bread thus prepared are coarse and uneven; the bread is as inferior in delicacy and nicety to that which is well kneaded as a raw Irish servant to a perfectly educated and refined lady. The process of kneading seems to impart an evenness to the minute air-cells, a fineness of texture, and a tenderness and pliability ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Observations on Shakespeare had been published by Mr. Upton[21], a man skilled in languages, and acquainted with books, but who seems to have had no great vigour of genius or nicety of taste. Many of his explanations are curious and useful, but he, likewise, though he professed to oppose the licentious confidence of editors, and adhere to the old copies, is unable to restrain the rage of emendation, though his ardour is ill seconded by his skill. Every cold empirick, when ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... making them all of one size and by making them of sufficient hardness so that they would not break up into granules of smaller size. The trouble due to the settling of the granules and wedging the electrodes apart has been practically eliminated in well-designed instruments, by great mechanical nicety in manufacture. ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... the distance will either be infinite, or greater than infinite, which is absurd. And, to confess the truth, it is hardly possible for a person to distinguish seconds with certainty by any instruments, however skilfully they may be made; and therefore it is not to be wondered at, that the excessive nicety of this matter should have eluded the many ingenious endeavours of the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... family dinner, at anything like the proper time, in spite of all his ringing, and as much anger as he liked to show, for fear of making Lord Hollingford uncomfortable. At last dinner was ready, but the poor host saw the want of nicety—almost the want of cleanliness, in all its accompaniments—dingy plate, dull-looking glass, a tablecloth that, if not absolutely dirty, was anything but fresh in its splashed and rumpled condition, and compared ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a wholesome thing to depend upon main strength and reality, and to earn one's bread with the bare and brawny arm of a blacksmith. A watchmaker gets his brain puzzled by his wheels within a wheel, or loses his health or the nicety of his eyesight, as was my case, and finds himself at middle age, or a little after, past labor at his own trade and fit for nothing else, yet too poor to live at his ease. So I say once again, give me main strength for my money. And then, how ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the utmost nicety the time which he would probably need in getting through his business, and he had cut each of his fuses to such a length that the bombs should explode, as nearly as possible, at the same instant. If he received no ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... when so considerable a force of the Carthaginians lay ready to be commanded by him, he had employed them hitherto by degrees and in small numbers, introducing their reinforcements by stealth and clandestinely, as if he had been ashamed of the action. Therefore, now laying aside his former nicety, he calls in Mago, their admiral, with his whole navy, who presently set sail, and seized upon the port with a formidable fleet of at least a hundred and fifty vessels, landing there sixty thousand foot which were all lodged within the city ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... "The incidents fit to a nicety. Two years afterwards Ensign Knightley comes home. He knows nothing of the duel, or any cause for a duel. Lieutenant Scrope is still 'Harry' to him, and his best of friends. It is ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... And then I saw the dissolving picture of Nineveh, with its ramparts now covered with mountains of sand, where Layard is digging up colossal winged bulls, huge as a mountain, and yet carved with the nicety of a cameo; and then Babylon, with its wonderful walls; and Jerusalem, with its unequalled temple; Tyrus, with its countless fleets; Arad, with its wharves; and Sidon, with its labyrinth of work-shops and factories; and Ascalon, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... propounded by the Talmud, or arise out of a consideration of the Talmud, Rashi cites previous explanations or parallel texts. But this is exceptional. As a rule he finds with marvellous [marvelous sic] nicety and without circumlocution the exact word, the fitting expression, the necessary turn. One or two words suffice for him to sum up an observation, to anticipate a question, to forestall an unexpressed objection, to refute a false interpretation, or to throw light ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... (if it were worth while), the carpets to be brushed, and the next morning would bring back the things entrusted to it, all well cleaned. A few hours later your hot coffee and your eggs done to a nicety would appear on your table. It is a fact that between twelve and two o'clock there are more than twenty million Americans and as many Englishmen who eat roast beef or mutton, boiled pork, potatoes and a seasonable vegetable. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... and charming. And she's Lady Dawn's sister, of course. But——Well, to put it frankly, a woman who's been married three times might just as well never have been married at all. Looks as though she'd only squandered her money in rising to the nicety of a marriage-license. I hope you don't mean to marry her, old chap, because ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... fitted him to a nicety; it had, in fact, no chance to do otherwise, for his great back and shoulders stretched it tight, and would have done so had it been made like a sack. Of all the big men who had gone by that day Jack Duck was the biggest; his back was immense, and straight, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... keeping my line taut, could put my whole mind on his performance. There is a little the same sort of pleasure in watching the skillful handling of a rod that there is in watching the bow-action of a violinist. Both things demand the utmost nicety of adjustment: body, arm, wrist, fingers uniting in an interplay of efficiency exactly adapted to the intricately shifting needs of ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... to a nicety, he paid off the sheet and pulled up the tiller. The cat-boat pivoted on her heel; with a crack her sail flapped full and rigid; then, with the untempered might of the wind behind her, she shot like an arrow under the brigantine's bows, so close that the bowsprit of the latter first ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... nicety of his combinations, and the stars were not more punctual than his arithmetic. His personal attention descended to the smallest particulars. "At Montebello, I ordered Kellermann to attack with eight hundred horse, and with these he separated the six thousand Hungarian ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... must either invent a new vehicle of meaning or wrest an old one to a different purpose; and this necessity frequently recurring must tend to lessen his idea of the sanctity of symbols. Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own conscience, and draws, with a human nicety, the distinction between formal and essential truth. Of his punning perversions, his legitimate dexterity with symbols, he is even vain; but when he has told and been detected in a lie, there is not a hair upon ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... counteracts all the intrigues by which that rat-faced little rascal, Shaykh Hasan el-'Ukbi, tries to breed mischief between friends. He is a walking map; it would be easy to draw up a rude plan of the country from his information. He does not know hours and miles, but he can tell to a nicety the comparative length of a march; and, when ignorant, he has the courage to say M'adri, "don't know." He never asked me for anything, nor told a lie, nor even hid a water-hole. Willing and ready to undertake the longest march, the hardest work, his word is Hazir—"I'm here"—and he will even walk ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... call a Jack-of-all-Trades.* Sometimes you would see him behind his counter selling broadcloth, sometimes measuring linen; next day he would be dealing in merceryware. High heads, ribbons, gloves, fans, and lace he understood to a nicety. Charles Mather could not bubble a young beau better with a toy; nay, he would descend even to the selling of tape, garters, and shoe-buckles. When shop was shut up he would go about the neighbourhood and ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... circumstances. Its constitutional powers being at once more extensive, and less susceptible of precise limits, it can, with the greater facility, mask, under complicated and indirect measures, the encroachments which it makes on the co-ordinate departments. It is not unfrequently a question of real nicety in legislative bodies, whether the operation of a particular measure will, or will not, extend beyond the legislative sphere. On the other side, the executive power being restrained within a narrower compass, and being more simple in its nature, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... that is in it. You will hear what plays were acted that week, which is the finest song in the opera, who was intolerable at the last assembly, and what games are most in fashion. Flavia thinks they are atheists who play at cards on the Sunday, but she will tell you the nicety of all the games, what cards she held, how she played them, and the history of all that happened at play, as soon as she comes from church. If you would know who is rude and ill-natured, who is vain and foppish, who lives too ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... "in other matters; but in eating, you really don't behave well. He who deprives me of my share at meals is no friend; at every mouthful of which he robs me, I seem to lose an eye. I'm for sharing every thing to a nicety, even if it be no better than ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... greenheart) must be stiff and powerful; special precautions have to be taken that the fly shall float unhindered and shall not "drag"; special casts have to be made to counteract awkward winds; and, lastly, the matching of the fly with the insect on the water is a matter of much nicety, for the water-flies are of many shades and colours. Many brains have busied themselves with the solution of these problems with such success that dry-fly fishing is now a finished art. The entomology of the dry-fly stream has been studied very ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... nicety and refinement in her personal ways, I think—and the cigarette is really a feminine weapon if ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... shot. He subjected his own drives to a masterly analysis, and strove to incite his brother to correct form, illustrating this for his instruction with practice swings that were marvels of nicety, and learnedly ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... at any rate," remarked Roberts, as he crossed the deck and placed himself at my side. "By the report of it I judge that it is a brass gun they are using, and they've got our range to a nicety, for ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... are not in one piece but composed of forty or fifty. The French burrs which Tibbald preferred come over in fragments, and these are carefully fitted together and stuck with plaster of Paris. Such work required great nicety: the old millwright was, in fact, a kind of ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... desirability of civilized life and customs. Nor was this difficult, as she was soon to learn, for it rapidly became evident that beneath the uncouth savagery of the girl was a bed rock of innate refinement—a nicety of taste and predilection that quite equaled ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wrote, "It was my happy fortune to be the guest of another ideal Chinese woman, Dr. Mary Stone, at Kiukiang. I saw her in her model hospital, where every little wheel of the complicated machinery was adjusted to perfect nicety." ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... a dish of splendid bass ready for the fire. Catharine selected a large flat block of limestone on which the fish when broiled was laid; but old Jacob opened his wide mouth and laughed when she proceeded to lay her bush table with large basswood leaves for platters. Such nicety he professed was unusual on a hunter's table. He was too old a forester to care how his food was dished, so that he had wherewithal to satisfy ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... Essays: there is the germ, at least, and generally much more. He sowed the seed and cleared away the rubbish, even where others have reaped the fruit, or cultivated and decorated the soil to a greater degree of nicety and perfection. There is no one to whom the old Latin adage is more applicable than to Montaigne, "Pereant isti qui ante nos nostra dixerunt." There has been no new impulse given to thought since ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... placed himself at such a point on the road as to leave it no longer doubtful, should Stevens pass, of the place which usually brought him up. Here he dismounted, hurried his horse, out of sight and hearing, into the woods, and choosing a position for himself, with some nicety, along the road-side, put himself in close cover, where, stretching his frame at length, he commenced the difficult labor of cooling his ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... there for two, I should have gone down on my knees before her, or have stood on my head at her feet—have made a fool of myself in some way or another before the whole room full. She timed it to a nicety. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... cut short the waking hours of this our night," and quoth Shahrazad:—It hath reached me, O King of the Age, that the King of the Jann said to the Queen-mother, "Indeed Zayn al-Asnam hath not kept faith and covenant with all nicety as regards the young lady, in that he longed for her to become his wife. However, I am assured that this lapse befel him from man's natural and inherent frailty albeit I repeatedly enjoined him to defend and protect her until he concealed from her his face. I now accept[FN61] this man's ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Trumpet yielded an uncertain Sound for some Ages, and like what he was, and according to what he practised from the Beginning, he deliver'd out Falshood and Delusion by Retale: The Priests of Apollo acted this Farce for him to a great Nicety at Delphos; there were divers others at the same Time, and some, which to give the Devil his due, he had very little Hand in, as we shall ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... when the order of sailing was reversed, the boats now taking the schooner in tow, preceded by your humble servant in the gig. We dashed safely through the small canal of blue water, which divided the surf at the harbour's mouth, having hit it to a nicety; but when about a pistolshot from the entrance, the channel narrowed to a muddy creek, not more than twenty yards wide, with high trees, and thick underwood close to the water's edge. All was silent, the sun shone clown ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... parlour waiting for us. From the parlour we went to the new study, and here I felt more at ease, for I went to see the Philosopher in his study, and not in his drawing-room. But even this room had too much the look of nicety to be an author's sanctum; and I inquired and was soon informed by Mrs. Dick, that I should have a ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... their bicycles out of the cats' home quietly, mounted, rode quickly down the road till they were out of hearing of the house, and then slackened their pace in order to reach their destination cool and tidy. They timed their arrival with such nicety that as they dismounted before the door of Deeping Hall, Sir James Morgan, in the content inspired by an excellent dinner, was settling himself comfortably in an easy chair ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... the first time. He pauses, panting, but with the scowl of determination still more intense, and concentrated chiefly in his right eye. Very cautiously extending his dexter hand, that he may not destroy the nicety of his perpendicular balance, he points with a finger at the knob of the door, and suffers his stronger eye to fasten firmly upon the same object. A moment's balancing, to make sure, and then, in three irresistible, rushing strides, he goes through the glass doors with a burst, without ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... Slavic dialects, the Polish presents to the foreigner the most difficulties; partly on account of the great variety and nicety of shades in the pronunciation of the vowels, and from the combination of consonants in such a way that only a Slavic tongue can conquer them, and cause the apparent harshness in some measure to disappear;[9] partly on account ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... of gasoline is always a pretty fair indication of the character of the roads. Our machine was supposed to make twenty miles to the gallon, and so it would on level roads, with the spark well advanced and the intake valve operating to a nicety; but under adverse conditions more gasoline is used, and with the hill-climbing gear four times the gasoline is used ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... a clearer light from the line of study in which I was chiefly occupied. I was absorbed for the time, not so much in the Bible as in the "Tracts for the Times"—a publication which was engaging much attention. These Oxford tracts suited me exactly, and fitted my tone of mind to a nicety. Their object was the restoration of the Church of England from a cold, formal condition, into something like reality—from a secular to a religious state; this also was my own present object for myself. I read these writings with avidity, and formed from them ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... Illustrissimus to Him than which nihil dici potest Illustrius. But because this was in the time of the purity of the Latin tongue, when the word Serenus was never used in the Title of any Prince or Person, I shall go on to deale with the utmost candor, forasmuch as in this Nation the nicety of that most eloquent language is not so perfectly understood, which gives occasion to these mistakes. I confess therefore that indeed in the declination of the Latin tongue, and when there scarce could be found out words enough to supply the modern ambition of Titles, Serenissimus ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... curious likeness in build of these two men—a likeness accentuated, rather than slurred, by their contrast in colour and face, was now seen to extend even to their feet. When the stranger stood up at length in Zeb's shoes, they fitted him to a nicety, the broad steel buckles lying comfortably over the instep, the back of the uppers closing round the hollow of his ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... form, and imitated the full St. Andrews swing to the best of his ability. In addressing the ball he stood as squarely to it as was possible, without the use of a measuring tape, and drove off the right leg, as the expression is. Despite an almost exaggerated adherence to nicety of style, West's play had an ease and grace much envied by other golf disciples in the school, and his shots were ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... square inch and more, there would be danger of bursting the pipe if the water were suddenly shut off at the nozzle itself. For this reason it is necessary to use a needle valve, similar to that in an ordinary garden hose nozzle; and by such a valve the amount of water may be regulated to a nicety. Where the head is so great that even such a valve could not be used safely, provision is made to deflect the nozzle. These wheels have a speed variation amounting to as much as 25 per cent from no-load to full load, in generating electricity, and since the speed of ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... settled by the original Bumpus, back in the Plymouth Colony days, and if he were rich he'd have a library stuffed with gritty, yellow-backed books and be a leading light in the Historical Society. He speaks with that nicety of pronunciation of the old New Englander, never slurring his syllables, and he has a really fine face, the kind of face one doesn't often see nowadays. I kept looking at it, wondering what was the matter with it, and at last I realized what it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... section of the public which regarded battle-ships as possessing a name immorally suggestive of violence, we compromised by calling the new ships armored cruisers, and making them combine with exquisite nicety all the defects and none of the virtues of both types. Then we got to the point of building battle-ships. But there still remained a public opinion, as old as the time of Jefferson, which thought that in the event of war all our problem ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... minutes, half an hour, remaining silent, or merely exchanging a few frank words with him before she went her way. In these matters she was gifted with an unerring tact; without a hint on Durant's part she seemed to know to a nicety how far her presence was agreeable ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... He could no more have given reason for his sensations than he could have told the precise date upon which, coming down-stairs at eight o'clock, he had first found her waiting breakfast for him. The time when all such incidents were to stand out, each to a nicety in its appointed place, had not yet arrived. For the moment his youth had returned to him; he possessed the knowledge of work done, the sense of present companionship in a world of agreeable things; above ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... dog team at St. Anthony, Newfoundland, is Gypsy, a big black and white fellow, friendly as ever a good dog can be, and trained to a nicety, always obedient and prompt in responding to the driver's commands. Running next behind Gypsy, and pulling side by side, are Tiger and Spider. Tiger is a large, good-natured red and white fellow, and Spider, his brother, is black ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... Botany Bay natives, at Red Point; and they were showing themselves to the others, and persuading them to follow their example. While, therefore, the powder was drying, I began with a large pair of scissors to execute my new office upon the eldest of four or five chins presented to me; and as great nicety was not required, the shearing of a dozen of them did not occupy me long. Some of the more timid were alarmed at a formidable instrument coming so near to their noses, and would scarcely be persuaded by their shaven friends to allow the operation to be finished. But when their chins ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... 'phoned and asked me to come and bring you." I throw the bait with studied nicety. "He's getting up a party to go out to Johnson's, and wants to talk things over a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... even before she noticed the double stamping and breathing of the animals. Her keen senses seemed to make the whole surrounding landscape visible to her without the moving of a muscle. She knew to a nicety exactly how her weapons lay, and what movement would bring her hand to the trigger of her pistol; yet she ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... impenetrable depositary. The true Japanese manner of understanding luxury consists in a scrupulous and indeed almost excessive cleanliness, white mats and white woodwork; an appearance of extreme simplicity, and an incredible nicety in the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... was bound to do on so momentous an occasion. The Capitalist was dressed with almost suspicious nicety. We pedestrians could not help waiting to see them off, and I thought he handed the ladies into the carriage with the air of a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... then made a sign to cut the bush-rope that held the canoe to the fallen tree. The canoe drove down the torrent with inconceivable rapidity. It did not touch the rocks once all the way. The Indian proved to a nicety: "medio tutissimus ibis." ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... used more for ascertaining relatively large differences in altitudes than for purposes where any great nicety is required. For hills under 2000 ft., the following rule will give a very close approximation, and is easily remembered, because 55 degrees, the assumed temperature, agrees with 55 degrees, the significant figures in the 55,000 ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... civilians as sheer madness. I therefore merely examined my pile very carefully, and congratulated myself at finding that three out of the fifteen were genuine. It was very evident that despite his very sound advice, my friend General Valiente had neglected to examine them with any great nicety. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... number of units was required, and in order that it might preserve its fidelity it was necessary not only that the separate pieces should exactly coincide but that they should be fixed and fitted with extreme nicety. At Babylon they were attached to the wall with bitumen. On the posterior surface of several enamelled bricks in the Louvre a thick coat of this substance may be seen; it has preserved an impression of all the roughnesses on the surface ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... sense of balance was beginning to come to her. Such a tiny movement of the wheel sent the car to right or left; at first she had jerked it clumsily, now she could reckon the proportion with greater nicety. Was that something coming in the distance? "Sound your hooter!" shouted Aunt Harriet quickly, as a motor cycle hove in sight. In rather a panic, Winona squeezed the india-rubber bulb, making the car lurch as she took her hand momentarily from the wheel. "Keep ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... you for centuries at least," he shouted, with a pleasantly foreign accent, which was rather a nicety than a fault of enunciation, "but the quest ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... varies every minute as the wind and clouds change. I can keep mine constant with mathematical accuracy, or vary the light to a nicety by ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... asleep on the deck, with the exception of the man at the helm, who, instead of thirty-two, could clearly make out sixty-four points in the compass, and of course was able to steer to a much greater nicety. Fortunately, the weather was fine, for when the man at the helm had steered till he could see no more, and requested to be released, he found that his shipmates were so overpowered with fatigue, that it was impossible to wake them. He kicked them one by one most unmercifully ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and powerful the British race certainly is; illiberal, cowardly or mean it certainly is not. Highly refined it never was, possibly never will be. Neither the ocean nor the mountain produces the highest refinement of manners or nicety of scientific investigation; but the shores of the ocean and the mountain valleys are the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... fierce and useless animals only were in question. /1/ It may even be very much for the public good that the dangerous accumulation should be made (a consideration which might influence the decision in some instances, and differently in different jurisdictions); but as there is a limit to the nicety of inquiry which is possible in a trial, it may be considered that the safest way to secure care is to throw the risk upon the person who decides what precautions shall be taken. The liability for trespasses of cattle seems to lie on the boundary line between rules based on policy ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... the face, who upon this made up to him (the landlord being in the room), and whispered him softly in the ear to drink out of it without any ceremony; for though the cog looked ill, yet it was clean; and, if he should show any nicety, it might raise a suspicion about him in the landlord's mind. The Prince said, 'You are right,' and took a hearty draught of water out of the rough cog, and then he ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... with a natural emotion (I assure you my heart beat), stooped and kissed, when she said quickly, 'Mais non, je ne veux pas,' and kissed my lips. She is somewhat large for her height—not tall—and was dressed with great nicety in a sort of grey serge gown and jacket, made after the ruling fashion just now, and fastened up to the throat, plain linen collarette and sleeves. Her hair was uncovered, divided on the forehead in black, glossy bandeaux, and twisted up behind. The eyes and brow are noble, and the nose is of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... had made the dresses alike, to the nicety of a bow, because we thought it ladylike that the costumes of sisters should be so. How far we were from guessing that they would not be worn together ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... nice, engaging little fashion, and she felt the thimble hard against my side, much as I felt it when it was in your pocket. In she slipped her little bit of a white hand and drew it out. I never saw any one so delighted over a toy of the sort in all my life. It fitted her little finger just to a nicety. ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... one, a soldierly, abrupt, red-faced person, with white eyebrows and an explosive temper, could be managed with a silken thread. He left on reaching the age limit. The second, a perfect gentleman, knowing his own and everybody else's place to a nicety, on resigning to take up a higher appointment out of England got decorated for (really) Inspector Heat's services. To work with him had been a pride and a pleasure. The third, a bit of a dark horse from the first, was at the end of eighteen months something of a dark horse still to the department. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... and limbs half-consumed. Next this, the broken pieces of a china bowl and what looked like the torn remnants of some very fine lace. Further along, his eye lighted on a young girl's bonnet, exquisite in colour and nicety of material, but crushed out of all shape and only betraying its identity by its dangling strings. The next article, in this long array of totally unhomogeneous objects, was a metronome, with its pendulum wrenched half off and one of its sides lacking. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... equipage of rank and ostentation. Flattery, we may safely assert, will never offer its incense in a more seductive form, than when it borrowed the pencil of Holbein and the lyre of Spenser. Yet these persons were the same who trode upon floors strewn with rushes, and deemed it a point of nicety and refinement if these were changed sufficiently often to prevent the soiling of their clothes. They are the same who dined without forks, and thought pewter dishes too great a luxury to be used in common by the highest ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... (including two beady black paint eyes) Chet was momentarily at a loss. Miss Kate had not told him to stop painting when the chicken was completed. Miss Kate was at the other end of the sunny garden walk, bending over a wheel-chair. So Chet went on painting, placidly. One by one, with meticulous nicety, he painted all his finger nails a bright and cheery yellow. Then he did the whole of his left thumb, and was starting on the second joint of the index finger when Miss Kate came up behind him and took the brush gently from ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber |
