"Pleasing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pleasing effects of modern refinement is the havoc it has made among the hearty old holiday customs. It has completely taken off the sharp touchings and spirited reliefs of these embellishments of life, and has worn down society into a more smooth and polished, but certainly a less ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... foaming in every goblet, and fought and danced and wrestled for the pleasing of that merry company, and the hours wore away. Suddenly the sound of a lyre hushed the revels. All heard the voice of a maiden singing, and turned to see whence it came. A sweet voice it was, trembling in tones that told of ancient wrong, in ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... regards the expression of the eye, by an exaggeration of elliptical form in the iris, and closeness of the curves of the lids. In the angels the absence of all true notions of composition may be considered striking; yet their movements are more natural and pleasing than hitherto. One indeed, to the spectator's right of the Virgin, combines more tender reverence in its glance than any that had yet been produced. Cimabue gave to the flesh-tints a clear and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... painted in India-ink—black houses, black passengers, and black sky. Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times more life and color. Before you, shining in the sun, is a long glistening line of GUTTER,—not a very pleasing object in a city, but in a picture invaluable. On each side are houses of all dimensions and hues; some but of one story; some as high as the tower of Babel. From these the haberdashers (and this is their favorite street) flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and the paulownias. On the same tree also the leaves vary in size, those nearest the ground and nearest the trunk being usually larger than those more remote. How different as to beauty would the trees be if their leaves were all of the same size; how much less pleasing ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... neglect the service of God altogether. They live with harlots and mistresses publicly and continuously, within the precincts of the monastery and without. Some of them, who are covetous of honour and promotion, and desirous therefore of pleasing your cupidity, have stolen and made away with the chalices and other jewels of the church. They have even sacrilegiously extracted the precious stones from the very shrine of St. Alban; and you have ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... in regarding herself as his principal model for Hilda appears from an anecdote related by Dr. Elias.(3) It is not an altogether pleasing anecdote, but Dr. Elias is an unexceptionable witness, and it can by no means be omitted from an examination into the origins of The Master Builder. Ibsen had come to Berlin in February 1891 for the first performance of Hedda Gabler. Such experiences were ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... Chateau-Renaud could hardly restrain their astonishment, for very seldom has a man changed so much in three months. When they had seen Cavalcanti Benedetto last, he was the type of a parlor hero, and fascinated every one by his pleasing appearance; but the man who stood now before the judge was another—a ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... In pleasing contrast to our growlings and grumblings as we took their places, the Toronto men filed out prophesying all sorts of cheerful things in store for us. All we could see ahead of us was plenty of work, for the shelling they had received had smashed down our bulwarks and annihilated the ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... especially pleasing to the traveller, as no dish is held in higher honour in Korea. It is the chief cereal, and the inhabitants say it originated in Ha-ram, China, nearly five thousand years ago. Yung Pak called it Syang-nong-si, which means Marvellous Agriculture. He had learned ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... Miss Jenkyns refused to be mollified by Captain Brown's efforts later to beguile her into conversation on some more pleasing subject. She was inexorable. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... her appearance was rather pleasing, but that beauty was out of the question, nor did I understand his brother to have made any remark conveying the idea that she possessed ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... it, you don't make much noise in the world. It is very easy to turn upon somebody who differs from you, and in the guise of zeal for God's honor, to attack somebody who differs from you in point of opinion, but whose life may be very much more pleasing to God, whom you profess to honor, than your own. When it is done by persons whose own lives are full of pretending to be better than their neighbors, and who take that particular form of zeal for God which consists in putting ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... If I never see your blessed face again, I know you will not believe me guilty of what my husband accuses me of. I married Captain Eliot for your sake, believing, since Herbert had proved faithless, that no comfort was left to me except in pleasing others. I meant to be a good wife to Captain Eliot, and I believe I should have kept my vow all my days if the most unfortunate thing had not wakened his jealousy. Since then he has been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... conversation: "I say that in everything it is so hard to know the true perfection as to be well-nigh impossible; and this because of the variety of opinions. Thus there are many who will like a man who speaks much, and will call him pleasing; some will prefer modesty; some others an active and restless man; still others one who shows calmness and deliberation in everything; and so every man praises or decries according to his mind, always clothing vice with the name of its kindred ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... being aroused—by Rev. Doctor Philip Moxom's noble book called "The Religion of Hope;" or who entertains similar emotions over recent new and great and uplifting books by Rev. Doctor George A. Gordon or Rev. Doctor Lyman Abbott, or many another, often evolves the pleasing fantasy that all she requires for producing the same quality of work is the illumination of personal interviews or personal correspondence with them. "Surely," she reasons, "these men are servants of the Lord, and I am one of the least of these whose needs they are divinely commanded to serve. Is ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... commonly believed, that if the butterfly foresaw its destruction, it would fly from the light more eagerly than it now pursues it, and would consider it an evil to lose its life through being absorbed into that hostile fire. But to him (the enthusiast) it is no less pleasing to perish in the flames of amorous ardour than to be drawn to the contemplation of the beauty of that rare splendour, under which, by natural inclination, by voluntary election, and by disposition of fate, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... among your poems next to the "Musings," that beginning "My Pensive Sara" gave me most pleasure. The lines in it I just alluded to are most exquisite; they made my sister and self smile, as conveying a pleasing picture of Mrs. C. checking your wild wanderings, which we were so fond of hearing you indulge when among us. It has endeared us more than anything to your good lady, and your own self-reproof that follows delighted us. 'T is a charming poem throughout (you have well ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... truth about God is worth anything unless it touches the hidden man of the heart, and then passes outward to mould conduct. 'Faith without works is dead.' Correct theology and glowing emotions lack their consummation if they do not impel to holy and God-pleasing living. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... never mind what they say! You are the greatest comfort I have. Some people are so saucy there is no pleasing them. You and I will enjoy it, if ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of the United States ever assembled, on surveying the state of the Union, has met with a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time. In the domestic field there is tranquility and contentment, harmonious relations between management and wage earner, freedom from industrial strife, and the highest record of years of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... fell into a state of partial insensibility, during which the most pleasing images floated in my imagination; such as green trees, waving meadows of ripe grain, processions of dancing girls, troops of cavalry, and other phantasies. I now remember that, in all which passed before my mind's eye, motion was a predominant idea. Thus, I never fancied any stationary ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... laboratory. Mila must have bored him enough by this time! They lighted their pipes; but Mila refused to be sent away. She sat down beside her uncle and put her elbows on the table—white, strong arms she had, and Gerald only took his eyes from their pleasing contemplation to lift them to hers. He was fast losing what little prudence he had; he was a Celt, and he felt that he had known Mila for ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... which we are born into this world is, that we may learn to love. I think Clare the most enviable of boys, because he loved more than any one of his age I have heard of. There are people—oh, such silly people they are!—though they may sometimes be pleasing—who are always wanting people to love them. They think so much of themselves, that they want to think more; and to know that people love them makes them able to think more of themselves. They even think themselves loving because they are fond of being loved! ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... in Young Islay so trim and manly in the uniform old custom demanded for the Sunday parade, a shrewd upward tilt of the chin and lowering of the brow, his hand now and then at his cheeks, not so much to feel its pleasing roughness, as to show the fine fingers of which he was so conscious. It demanded all his strength to shake himself into equanimity, and Miss Mary felt rather than ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... a pleasant shock was in store for him. There stood the formidable Mrs. Milbrey beaming upon him. Behind her was Mr. Milbrey, the pleasing model of all a city's refinements, awaiting the boon of a hand-clasp. Behind these were the uncomfortable little man, the chatty blonde, and the two solemn young men who had lately exhibited more manner than manners. Percival felt they were all ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... ladies were as much pleased in anticipation with this journey as if the destination of the travellers had been Brighton or Ramsgate. To children of their age, change is always pleasing. Often, in consequence of a death, the collapse of a bank, the loss of a law-suit, or some dire disaster of that sort, parents have seen themselves compelled to abandon the home of their fathers, endeared to them by many gentle recollections, perhaps to embark for ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... personal pronoun had not been evolved; and that, probably, for the simple reason that the idea which it denotes was as unknown to the community as it is to the child whose absence of self-consciousness is so pleasing. For a period, the length of which may have been millions of years, the common consciousness, the consciousness of the community, did not discover or discriminate, in language or in thought, the existence of the ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... later had been sent to school in Paris. There, as Norman and Roy could see, he had received a more than ordinary education, part of which, as the boys afterwards learned, was devoted to music. They also learned later that although not a great singer he had a pleasing tenor voice. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... hand, the better parts of the character of the French women are all their own. It is not certainly from the men that they have learnt those truly feminine qualities, that interesting humility and gentleness of manner, that pleasing gaiety of temper, and native kindness of disposition, to which it is very difficult, even for the proverbial coldness of northern critics, to apply terms of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... that sprang eternal, even in the breast of the least confident, of the possibility of victory, and Maurice, ashamed by this time of his tears, listened and caught at the pleasing speculation. Was it not true that only the day before there had been a rumor that Bazaine was at Verdun? Truly, it was time that Fortune should work a miracle for that France whose glories she had so long protected. Henriette, with an imperceptible smile on her lips, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... slums, suffice in their picturesqueness to make a holiday for those who are more occupied with images than with deeds. And there is actually a philosophy of life in which all things are held to be good because they afford a tragic, sublime, and, therefore, pleasing spectacle. This is the very extreme of moral infidelity, the abandonment of the will to make good for the insidious and relaxing interest in making things seem good as ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... for bread and meat: better than any collegiate diet that I have known in Europe. We had also drink of three sorts, all wholesome and good; wine of the grape; a drink of grain, such as is with us our ale, but more clear; and a kind of cider made of a fruit of that country; a wonderful pleasing and refreshing drink. Besides, there were brought in to us great store of those scarlet oranges for our sick; which (they said) were an assured remedy for sickness taken at sea. There was given us also a box of small ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... we have purposely abstained from reference to the position of the affairs of Sir Walter Scott, from our inability to obtain any decisive information on the subject. The most pleasing and the latest intelligence will be found in the Morning Chronicle of Thursday, wherein it is stated that the prospects of the family of Sir Walter are much better than have been represented. "We are assured that there are funds sufficient to cover all his debts, without touching Abbotsford. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... dream has escaped from my memory, Although it was my care till break of day to repeat over and over her sweet words. The day, unless illuminated by her beauty, is, to my eyes, of nocturnal darkness. Happy day that first I gazed upon that lovely face! May the eyes of Jami long be blessed with pleasing visions, since they presented to his view last night The object, on whose account he passed his ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... honest truth, Mr. Severne had hitherto been pleasing his friend with a cold-blooded purpose. His preliminary gossip, that made the time fly so agreeably, was intended to oil the way to lubricate the passage of a premeditated pill. As soon as he had got Vizard into perfect good humor, he said, apropos of nothing that had passed, "By-the-by, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... surmounted by a dense brush of up-standing grayish-brown hair; beetling brows and eyes deep-set, fierce and furtive; combined to make a sufficiently unprepossessing countenance. Nor was his manner more pleasing. He scowled forbiddingly at me, he scrutinized the other customer, craning sideways to survey him in the mirror, he looked about the shop and he stared inquisitively at the parlor door. Every movement was expressive of watchful, ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... hill on the opposite side by Woodside Farm, past the workhouse, through old Windsor, and back to Rosenau within an hour, amply demonstrated how perfectly under control this carriage is, while the sensation of being whirled rapidly along is decidedly pleasing." ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... own [hazard] to undergo any of Caesar's dangers. What shall I do? To whom life may be agreeable, if you survive; but, if otherwise, burdensome. Whether shall I, at your command, pursue my ease, which can not be pleasing unless in your company? Or shall I endure this toil with such a courage, as becomes effeminate men to bear? I will bear it? and with an intrepid soul follow you, either through the summits of the Alps, and the inhospitable Caucus, or to the furthest western bay. You may ask how I, unwarlike ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Macc. 15:4-8] So the land had rest all the days of Simon, And he sought the good of his nation. His authority and his glory were well-pleasing to them all his days. And amid all his glory he took Joppa for a haven, And made it a way to the isles of the sea, And he enlarged the boundaries of his nation, And became master of the land. He also brought many captives together, And made himself master of Gazara and Bethsura, ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... are the object of my surprise. Many curious and interesting facts are buried in oblivion: the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember that the mischances of time and accident have spared the classic works to which the suffrage of antiquity had adjudged the first ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... often made To Epidamium, till my factors death, And he great care of goods at randone left, Drew me from kinde embracements of my spouse; From whom my absence was not sixe moneths olde, Before her selfe (almost at fainting vnder The pleasing punishment that women beare) Had made prouision for her following me, And soone, and safe, arriued where I was: There had she not beene long, but she became A ioyfull mother of two goodly sonnes: And, which was strange, the one so like the other, As could not be distinguish'd but by names. That ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... his dance, and he performed his part with unwonted energy,—for the sake of pleasing his friend rather ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... countenance. But behind the angelic front was hidden a very demon. Jackson was a monstrosity if you will, a whited sepulchre, and one of the unaccountable freaks of nature. To those not knowing his habits, a handsome, affable, pleasing man of fine form and features; to those who knew him truly, a villain of the deepest dye, a very ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... not as civil as they used to be, and her husband, when she suggested to him a little dinner-party, snubbed her most unmercifully. The giving of dinner-parties had been his glory, and she had made the suggestion simply with the view of pleasing him. "If the world were going round the wrong way, a woman would still want a party," he had said, sneering at her. "It was of you I was thinking, Dobbs," she replied; "not of myself. I care little for ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... to be brought to him to be judged. Pilate had two reasons for following this line of conduct; in the first place he was delighted to escape having to pass sentence himself, as he felt very uncomfortable about the whole affair; and in the second place he was glad of an opportunity of pleasing Herod, with whom he had had a disagreement, for he knew him to be ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... setting against them. They moved on in mute impatience, for there was a slight sprinkling of rain. It now fell in torrents. Master Charles grew frightened and screamed. Cupid yelped, and Carlo howled. Accompanied the rest of the way by these pleasing sounds, at one in the morning (two hours and a half later than they intended) they arrived at Westminster stairs, dull, ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... the woodrat down before the little foxes, and how they did did begin pulling and biting him! Mrs. Brushtail up on the log smiled ever so broadly at this. But it was not a pleasing smile to Doctor Rabbit, hiding in the briar patch. I should say not! It was ...
— Doctor Rabbit and Brushtail the Fox • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... startled at finding, that, except in the tallow and wax candles that flickered, not from the presence of a ghost, but from want of snuffing, there was no foundation in real life for any of that congeries of pleasing pictures and descriptions contained in those volumes, from which he had formed his study. Finding, however, some compensation in his gratified vanity, he was about to relinquish his dreams, when the extraordinary being we have ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... be interesting to hear what he and the later aestheticians have to say about art. Most of them connect it in some way with that which is beautiful, that is, pleasing, but they do not all agree in their definition ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... It would be a pleasing and instructive task to trace the progress of this old town, from those rude beginnings to its present strength and wealth. But the limits of the time and subject allotted to me on this occasion forbid. It is the product of the labors of eight generations, who now sleep beneath its soil. They ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... her aunt was going to work the little flesh she had left off her bones." It was rather hard to bear, just when she was looking for ease, too her patience and temper were more tried than in all those weeks before. But if there was small pleasure in pleasing her aunt, Ellen did earnestly wish to please God: she struggled against ill-temper, prayed against it, and, though she often blamed herself in secret, she did so go through that week as to call forth Mr. Van ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... if they are ever written, would have, I think, the rather unusual merit of pleasing both saints and sinners; the saints by the depth and beauty of her spiritual experience, the sinners by her freedom from every shade of cant and by her strong, almost masculine, sympathy with the difficulties ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... in just such a country as this, between two hostile forces. One evening I came to a place where a gang of insurgent Cubans were engaged in the pleasing task of burning a house. As it happened, I was wearing the dress common to the insurgents, and passed for one of themselves. Pressing into the house, I found two ladies—a young girl and her mother—in an agony of terror, surrounded by a howling ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... intervals of a few minutes) followed and attempted to speak to her. Their unwelcome attentions increased her uneasiness of mind; they seemed to tell her of the dubious ways by which men sought to entangle in their toils those of her own sex who were pleasing to the eye: just now, she lumped all men together, and would not admit that there was any difference between them. Arrived in the neighbourhood of the Marble Arch, she was sure of her ground. She was reminded of her wanderings of evenings ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... 20, 1898, Ibsen received the felicitations of the world. It is pleasing to relate that a group of admirers in England, a group which included Mr. Asquith, Mr. J. M. Barrie, Mr. Thomas Hardy, Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, Mr. Pinero and Mr. Bernard Shaw took part in these congratulations and sent Ibsen a handsome set of silver plate, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... very naturally so, when Michael Texel made so manifest a work about pleasing me and having me for his comrade. For though I was now nineteen, he was five years my senior, and his father, being both Burgomeister and Chief Brewer, was of the first consideration in the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... floor was strewed over with little sprigs of juniper (the custom, as I afterwards found, of the country), which formed a contrast with the curtains, and produced an agreeable sensation of freshness, to soften the ardour of noon. Still nothing was so pleasing as the alacrity of hospitality—all that the house afforded was quickly spread on the whitest linen. Remember, I had just left the vessel, where, without being fastidious, I had continually been disgusted. Fish, milk, butter, and cheese, and, I am sorry to add, ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... and exhibit Him in all ages in the endearing attitude and relation of a Human Friend. Immanuel is transfigured on this Mount of Love before His suffering and glory! The Bethany scene, with its tints of soft and mellowed sunlight, forms a pleasing background to the sadder and more awful events which crowd ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... "In the meantime, we have something not so interesting or pleasing, but extremely important, to tell Mr. Brereton. Brereton—how are things going? Has any fresh light been thrown on the Kitely murder? Nothing really certain and definite you say? Very well, my dear sir—then you will allow me to throw some ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... moonlight showed itself only in straggling beams and shed but a ghostly glimmer. At intervals the sombre wildness of the scene would be relieved by a bluegrass glade, all agleam with moonbeams and glistering dew drops, saving where flecked with the shadows of clumped or scattered trees. Pleasing, however, as was the contrast they presented to the savage solitudes around them, these bright spots left upon the spirit an impression of sadness quite peculiar. Each had so much the appearance of a well kept park or woodland ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... would not have to study for years and pass a stiff examination, as a poor girl is obliged to do before she can make her living by sitting behind a counter selling penny postage-stamps. Homely girls can succeed there: for the fine shop a pretty face, an elegant figure, and a pleasing lady-like manner are greatly prized—more than a knowledge of archaeology and the higher mathematics; and you possess all these essentials to start with. But whether you are destined to go into a shop or private house, it is important that you ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... presence of kindly Germans in the Kaiser's armies, and it is pleasing to read about these acts of generosity in relieving distress which is entirely the result of Germany's guilt. But the point which all German writers miss is the explanation of positive evidence of brutal deeds. Their kindly incidents and proofs of German ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... uncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman. The food, as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional character; indeed I have never been able to detect anything in the nature of a meal among this pleasing people; they seem to peck and trifle with viands all day long in an amateur spirit: tentatively French, truly German, and somehow falling ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dish or a spoon between us. But she had for her portion two books, "The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven," and "The Practice of Piety," which her father had left her when he died. In these two books I sometimes read with her. I found some things pleasing to me, but all this while I met with no conviction. She often told me what a godly man her father was, how he would reprove and correct vice both in his house and among his neighbours, what a strict and holy life he lived in his day ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... concerns the love of Vasantasena and Charudatta. Indeed, we have in The Little Clay Cart the material for two plays. The larger part of act i. forms with acts vi. to x. a consistent and ingenious plot; while the remainder of act i. might be combined with acts iii. to v. to make a pleasing comedy of lighter tone. The second act, clever as it is, has little real connection either with the main plot or with the story of the gems. The breadth of treatment which is observable in this play is found in many other specimens of the Sanskrit ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... Aristotle's On the Heavens had filtered across the Pyrenees from the Saracens, in the eleventh century, the Ptolemaic theory of a flat earth located at the center of the heavenly bodies and around which they all revolved, while a very pleasing theological conception, was absolutely fatal to any instruction in astronomy worth while and to any astronomical advance. All mediaeval astronomy, too, was saturated with astrology, as the selection on the motion of the heavenly bodies reproduced from Bartholomew Anglicus shows (R. 77 ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Good Works.—Albeit that good works, which are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God's judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out, necessarily, of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known, as a tree discerned by ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... brought me out—yes, I say once, or two or three times, it isn't more; because, as I say, you once bring me out, I'm to be a slave and say nothing. Pleasure, indeed! A great deal of pleasure I'm to have, if I'm told to hold my tongue. A nice way that of pleasing a woman. ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... Law as it is a Covenant of Works, or whether it be meant of the great commandments of the New Testament which are cited in 1 John 3:22,23—"And whatsoever we ask we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight." But what do you mean, John? Do you mean the covenant of the Law, or the covenant to the Gospel? Why, "this is His commandment," saith he, "That we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another," as the fruits of this faith, "as He gave us commandment." If ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... its calm beauty bursts suddenly upon the sight. Nestled among the snowy summit-peaks of the Sierra Nevada, more than six thousand feet above sea-level, it lies in placid transparency. The surrounding heights are all the more pleasing to the eye because of their lingering winter-cover; and as we gaze upon the Lake, unruffled by the gentlest breeze, we marvel at the quiet,—almost supernatural,—radiancy of the scene. Lakes in other lands may present greater beauty of artificial setting,—beauty ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... young womanhood, with pleasing manners, slight and graceful in body, with a profusion of soft flaxen hair, and a bright, intelligent face. Her mind was quick, penetrating, and original. She was a skilful rider on horseback, and made a fine impression in her scarlet riding-habit, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... on what might be called the table land of the island. A broad plateau, with frequent groves, and any quantity of young trees scattered about everywhere, gave a most pleasing view. During the fourth day of the journey occasional little streams, flowing to the north, were crossed, and in the forenoon they had to halt for two hours and camp during the heaviest rainstorm which had fallen since they ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... either of the barbarities inflicted upon Fife, or of the assaults upon his friends, knocking them down, &c., but, as the editor informs us, all "seemed to acquiesce in the proceedings." 5th. That this conduct of the magistrates was well pleasing to the great mass of the citizens, is plain, from the remark of the editor that "every one supposed that the whole subject was ended," and from his wondering exclamation, "WHAT WAS OUR ASTONISHMENT to hear that Mr. C.R. Kinney had actually took upon him to examine witnesses," ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of a deep rich-red, and here it stood bowing its head up and down, and slowly shaking it from side to side, while the trunk swung and turned and turned and swung here and there, till its owner had selected the fruit most pleasing to its little pig-like eye, when with serpent-like motion it rose in the air, and the end curled round the selected fruit, which was lowered and tucked out of sight on ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... good many comfortable farm-houses scattered about Rockland. The best of them were something of the following pattern, which is too often superseded of late by a more pretentious, but infinitely less pleasing kind of rustic architecture. A little back from the road, seated directly on the green sod, rose a plain wooden building, two stories in front, with a long roof sloping backwards to within a few feet of the ground. This, like the "mansion-house," is copied from an old English pattern. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that is, a melody that appeals to the intelligent music lover as tuneful, pleasing, and intelligible, is one in which, first of all, each successive tone and each successive group of tones stands in a rational harmonic relation to the one before it, and even, usually, to several preceding ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... Jones, one of the most learned judges that have ever lived, learned in Asiatic as well as European law, says, and the fact should be kept forever in mind, as one of the most important of all truths: "It is pleasing to remark, the similarity, or, rather, the identity of those conclusions which pure, unbiased reason, in all ages; and nations, seldom fails to draw, in such juridical inquiries as are not fettered and manacled by positive institutions." [4] In short, the simple fact that the written law must ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... become easy, and when we see it more in the unassuming harmony of common objects than in things startling in their singularity. So much so, that we have to go through the stages of reaction when in the representation of beauty we try to avoid everything that is obviously pleasing and that has been crowned by the sanction of convention. We are then tempted in defiance to exaggerate the commonness of commonplace things, thereby making them aggressively uncommon. To restore harmony we create the discords which are a feature of all reactions. ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... the agent, smiling, urbane, pleasing as to manner—but not too pleasing; urbanity mixed, so to speak, with ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... these, she was quite capable of writing post-haste to Mrs. Gurley or Mr. Strachey, complaining of their want of insight, and bringing forward a string of embarrassing proofs. So, leaving Mother to her pleasing illusions, Laura settled down again to her role of dunce, now, though, with more equanimity than before. School was really not a bad place after all—this had for some time been her growing conviction, and the visit to Godmother ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... from him. He hurried back from a dusky corner of the room, bearing aloft something in his hand. It was an apple—a large, red-mottled, firm pippin, pleasing to behold. In a paper bag on a high shelf in that corner he had found it. It could have been no relic of the lovewrecked Redruth, for its glorious soundness repudiated the theory that it had lain on that musty shelf since August. No doubt ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... lives in confusion and disorder. To many he seems a great man; but in a short time he comes to utter destruction. Wherefore, seeing these things, what ought we to do or think? 'Every man ought to follow God.' What life, then, is pleasing to God? There is an old saying that 'like agrees with like, measure with measure,' and God ought to be our measure in all things. The temperate man is the friend of God because he is like Him, and the intemperate man is not His friend, because he is not like Him. And the conclusion ...
— Laws • Plato
... this, that I had given thee permission for the entertainment, but not to become an associate in wine-drinking, with people thou hadst only known for a few days. Assuredly this folly on thy part was anything but pleasing to me; for when you drank till you became senseless, then what hopes of aid from you remained? But the claims of thy services so cling around my neck, that, notwithstanding such conduct, I forgive thee. And now, behold, I have related to thee all ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... one; not necessarily. No sort of pain or suffering can be pleasing to God; we know it is not; yet sin has made it necessary, ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... German writer 'makes too free a use of direct irony, praising the blameworthy and blaming the praiseworthy—a rhetorical device which should be very sparingly employed. In the long run it disgusts the sensible and misleads the dull, pleasing only the great intermediate class to whom it offers the satisfaction of being able to think themselves more shrewd than other people, without expending much thought of their own' (Wahrheit und Dichtung, book vii). Fielding gives us in Jonathan Wild a sustained ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... effect of the rug makes it rather more suitable for a reception room or a bedroom than for other places. There are, however, deeper tones in these rugs, and sometimes there are no medallions. Perhaps the rug is most pleasing with the palm-leaf design and that of the tree, or with many birds and various floral conceptions. The borders blend harmoniously with the rest of the rug. The finest rugs of Kermanshah were formerly ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... make himself acquainted with the principal constellations in the heavens. This is a pleasing acquirement, and might well form a part of the education of every child in the kingdom. We shall commence our discussion of the sidereal system with a brief account of the principal constellations visible in the northern hemisphere, and we accompany our description with such outline maps of the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... pleasing meal. Though acknowledging himself an imbecile, he was obliged to acknowledge also that a certain pleasure springs from a certain sort of imbecility. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... piqued her more than she cared to admit. That she did not care for him, except as a friend, she was positive, but that he should persistently betray signs of nothing more than the most ordinary friendship was far from pleasing to her vanity. The truth is, she had expected him to go on his knees to her, an event which would have simplified matters exceedingly. It would have given her the opportunity to tell him plainly she could be no more than a friend, and it would have served to alter his course in ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... another, speaking in a very audible voice; and strangers standing or sitting around to hear him, as if he were an ancient apostle or philosopher. He is a bulky man, with a large, massive face, particularly calm in its expression, and mild enough to be pleasing. When not otherwise occupied, he reads, without much notice of what is going on around him. He speaks without effort, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of an ancient family, Comte de Segur was a nobleman by birth, and ranked among the ancient French nobility because one of his ancestors had been a Field-marshal. Being early introduced at Court, he acquired, with the common corruption, also the pleasing manners of a courtier; and by his assiduities about the Ministers, Comte de Maurepas and Comte de Vergennes, he procured from the latter the place of an Ambassador to the Court of St. Petersburg. With some reading and genius, but with more boasting and presumption, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... animated by the same disposition. Our relations with the Emperor of China, so recent in their origin, are most friendly. Our commerce with his dominions is receiving new developments, and it is very pleasing to find that the Government of that great Empire manifests satisfaction with our policy and reposes just confidence in the fairness which marks our intercourse. The unbroken harmony between the United States and the Emperor of Russia is receiving ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... it was done, Pharaoh her father and his councillors would wait upon her and ask if this man was pleasing to her. Being wise, Tua would give no direct answer, only of most of them she was ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... which is so pleasing to the European aristocrats: no matter how bankrupt, incompetent, disreputable, the class theory which is recognized by the masses is, "Once a gentleman, always ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... three o'clock in the afternoon, Cornelius had a vision; and he saw an angel of God coming and saying to him, "Cornelius." Looking straight at him, although he was afraid, Cornelius said, "What is it, Lord?" The angel said to him, "Your prayers and your gifts to the poor are pleasing to God. Now send men to Joppa, and bring a certain Simon, whose other name is Peter. He is staying with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside." When the angel who spoke to him had gone away, Cornelius called two of his household servants, and a trusted soldier who constantly ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... means unpleasing. His position was on an eminence, overlooking a fertile valley, partly cleared, and partly shaded by woods, through which wound a crystal stream, whose gentle murmurs could be heard even where he stood. Beyond this stream, the ground, in pleasing undulations, took a gentle rise, to a goodly height, and was covered by what is termed an open wood—a wood peculiar to Kentucky at this period—consisting of trees in the regularity of an orchard, at some distance ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... side of the Fountain of Ceres, with its pleasing proportions, is most satisfying to the eye. It was a happy selection to place the Goddess of Agriculture between the Food Products Palace and the Palace of Agriculture. Ceres strikes the keynote of this delightfully beautiful court. With corn ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... dividends on her Fitchburg Railway stock. Indifferent, however, to every sense of extravagance and to all other considerations except those of personal pride, I rode away atop of the stage-coach, full of exultation. As we rattled past the Waite house I waved my cap to Captivity and indulged in the pleasing hope that she would be lonesome without me. Much of the satisfaction of going away arises from the thought that those you leave behind are likely to be wretchedly miserable during ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... easily detect that this letter is written at intervals. I told you what a kind reader I have found in S——, during my indulgence in the luxurious indolence for which influenza apologizes, and a growing convalescence renders a pleasing hypocrisy. He has been repeating, from memory, some lines of his favourite Collins. I remembered them not. He could not put his hand on an edition of Collins, but referred to the "Elegant Extracts," and could not find his admired stanza. He remembered ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... hunt my game, and I hunt them—which, in these peaceful times, is for me a sufficiently pleasing picture of war on a ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... destroyed; The little ones, unbuttoned, glowing hot, Playing our games, and on the very spot, As happy as we once, to kneel and draw The chalky ring and knuckle down at taw, To pitch the ball into the grounded hat, Or drive it devious with a dexterous pat;— The pleasing spectacle at once excites Such recollection of our own delights That, viewing it, we seem almost t' obtain Our innocent, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... mazes of a neighbouring grove 250 Unheard they breathed alternate vows of love: By fond society their passion grew, Like the young blossom fed with vernal dew; While their chaste souls possess'd the pleasing pains That truth improves, and virtue ne'er restrains. In evil hour the officious tongue of fame Betray'd the secret of their mutual flame. With grief and anger struggling in his breast, Palemon's father heard the tale confest: Long had he listen'd with suspicion's ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... being kindly received is unquestionably a pleasing internal commotion, out of which arises a not less pleasing secondary sensation, which the unthinking vulgar call conceit, but which is in reality an increased consciousness of life, and a most important part of the mechanism by which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... and further away from the soldier boy, Hope appeared to be singing in his ears; and as an echo of his pleasing musings, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... opening into her tent Teresa Peterson sat presumably playing upon the banjo. The sounds she was making were not particularly pleasing. Yet the camp was fairly deserted. Only a few of the other girls were to be seen and they were busy ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... affectations,—not learned, of course, but of perfect breeding, which is often so much better than learning,—by no means dull, in the sense of knowledge of the world and society, but certainly not clever either in the arts or sciences,—his company is pleasing to all who know him. I did not recognize in him inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly as I did simplicity of character and fearless acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think there are a great many gentlemen and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... or two we debated on our tactics. We had no muskets, though swords were rife enough in Dalness, so a stand and a defence by weapons was out of the question. M'Iver struck on a more pleasing and cleanly plan. It was to give the MacDonalds tit for tat, and decoy them into the house as their friends had decoyed us into it, and leave them there in durance while we went ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a man, who views in it the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations; I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat, in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... children, and his rides on his bicycle, and his meditations on the morning star should pour something of their energy into our law-suit. We do desire that if he has gained any especial lung development from the bicycle, or any bright and pleasing metaphors from the morning star, that the should be placed at our disposal in that particular forensic controversy. In a word, we are very glad that he is an ordinary man, since that may help him ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... seeing myself reflected on every side; and not only myself, but an eye that watched my every movement, and an ear that drank in my every word. How could I feel at ease, or do justice to those powers of pleasing with which nature may ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... medical man's task more agreeable to himself,—and more beneficial to his patient,—by dispelling errors and prejudices, and by proving the importance of your strictly adhering to his rules. If I can accomplish any of these objects, I shall be amply repaid by the pleasing satisfaction that I have been of some little service to ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... said the Rambler of May 14, 1751, "by the influence of some men of learning and genius, seems likely to gain upon the age. . . To imitate the fictions and sentiments of Spenser can incur no reproach, for allegory is perhaps one of the most pleasing vehicles of instruction. But I am very far from extending the same respect to his diction or his stanza. His style was, in his own words and peculiarities of phrase, and so remote from common use that ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... former.[268] In Irenaeus and Tertullian the old conception of sacrifice, viz., that prayers are the Christian sacrifice and that the disposition of the believer hallows his whole life even as it does his offering, and forms a well-pleasing sacrifice to God, remains essentially unchanged. In particular, there is no evidence of any alteration in the notion of sacrifice connected with the Lord's Supper.[269] But nevertheless we can already trace a certain degree of modification in Tertullian. Not only does he give fasting, voluntary ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack |
