"Seductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this matter have shown how the presentation of objects women much desire leads to theft. Grant that during her mensis the woman is in a more excitable and less actively resisting condition, and it may follow she might be easily overpowered by the seductive quality of pretty jewelry and other knickknacks. This possibility leads us, however, to remoter conclusions. Women desire more than merely pretty things, and are less able to resist their desires during their periods. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... at the soggy over-ripe fruit which they had known when it was fresh and firm. Her kisses that so deeply disturbed him! What were they but the intoxicating, unhealthful perfume of a whole career of corruptness and licentiousness, the concentrated essence of a world madly dashing at her seductive beauty, as a bird of night breaks its head against the globe of a lighthouse? Give up everything for that! The two of them traveling about the world, free, and proud of their passion!... And out in that world he would encounter many of his predecessors; and they would look at him with ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (—and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt against "understanding," "the senses," "honor," "good living," "science"; he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which "the soul" soars as a pure thing-in-itself—as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, holiness, had not already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and vices.... ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... vittles had lost their charms. "Take sum of this," said the Capting, shovin a bottle tords my plate. "It's whisky. A few quarts allers sets me right when my stummick gits out of order. It's a excellent tonic!" I declined the seductive flooid. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... glittering mist. On the unbounded plain, you behold her in the form of an enchanted city—a paradise of leafy loveliness, or it may be simply as a fantastic Erl-King, a giddy dazzling vapour. Let her appear, however, where and how she will, she is ever seductive, mysterious, and beautiful, and attended with the awe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... a most seductive but dangerous appeal to the generous sympathies of freemen. Enjoying, as we do, the blessings of a free Government, there is no man who has an American heart that would not rejoice to see these blessings extended to all ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... and rewards intelligent oversight and skilful direction, the more you increase the love of labor. We have already manufacturing communities so well supplied with tasks for brains and hands, that everybody works, or would do so but for Circe and her seductive hollow-ware. We are beginning to push machinery into agriculture, where it will have still greater scope. With the means we now have, in the enormously increased production of iron, our almost omnipresent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... men and women the lure of levers, cranks, wheels and pinions is as seductive, as insidious, as heavenly in its promises, and as hellish in its performances, as the opium habit. The craving for opium, however, is an acquired taste, while the passion for machinery is born ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... feudalism of the 19th century. A handful of men have invented distant, seductive loans, have introduced national debts in countries happily ignorant of them, have advanced money to unsophisticated Powers on ruinous terms, and then, by appealing to small investors all over the world, got rid of the bonds. Furthermore, with the difference ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... into the verification of his visions, putting them to the proof in an argument which is of its kind—direct demonstration being out of the question—quite unequalled. Because, in the third place, he broke down the opposition which the most scientific had felt to the seductive modal formula of evolution by bringing forward a more plausible theory of the process than had been previously suggested. Nor can one forget, since questions of this magnitude are human and not merely academic, that he wrote so ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... but, indeed, we presume that our readers may give a very good guess at it without any assistance from us. The beautiful girl was young, and credulous, and innocent, as might naturally be inferred from the confusion of her manner, and the tremulous tones of her voice, which, indeed, were seductive and full of natural melody. Her heart palpitated until its beatings might be heard, and she trembled with that kind of terror which is composed of apprehension and pleasure. That a gentleman—one of the ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Gouverneur he possessed every gift that fortune as well as nature can bestow. To quote the words of Eliab Kingman, a lifelong friend of his and who for many years was the Nestor of the Washington press, "he even possessed a seductive voice." General Scott, prior to my marriage into the family, remarked to me that there "was something in Mr. Gouverneur lacking ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... represented two women, one nun- like, the other magnificently dressed. The latter is Leonardo's well- known type, as a magically fascinating personality. Its essential feature is a profoundly serious melancholy, but the beauty of the figure is seductive. She is by no means smiling, and yet she looks as though a very slight alteration would produce a smile, and as though the heavens themselves would open, if smile she did. The powerful glance of the dark blue eyes is in harmony with the light-brown hair and the lovely hands. "It would be terrible ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... then, like an old divine, concentrated on thoughts upon the intellectual part of faith. In his obsession about me, he believed that if my brain could be kept unaffected by any of the seductive errors of the age, and my heart centred in the adoring love of God, all would be well with me in perpetuity. He was still convinced that by intensely directing my thoughts, he could compel them to flow in a certain channel, since he had not begun to learn the lesson, so mournful for ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... she derived from the great simplicity of her companion's character. Her cheeks, which had so lately been pale, flushed, and her eyes lighted with some of their former brilliancy. Feeling gave expression to her countenance and softness to her voice, rendering her who was always beautiful, trebly seductive and winning. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... and gambles, and dances with them, and goes riding with them in wheel chairs by moonlight, and sits with them by the sea, and holds their hands, and gets them sentimental. There's some scent she uses that is very seductive—none of the rest of us have been able to find out exactly ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... against this bird [the Tawny Honeyeater] as well as against some of its near relatives, particularly those that inhabit Western Australia, namely, the long-billed, the spine-billed, and the little white-eye or zosterops. During certain seasons they regale themselves too freely with the seductive nectar of the flaming bottle-brush (Callistemon). They become tipsy, and are easily caught by hand under the bushes.In the annals of ornithology I know of no other instance of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the recent English novels—those by the author of Pelham—may be able to abstract from them a tolerably just idea of English fashionable society, provided he does not forget to deduct qualities which the national self-love has erroneously claimed —namely, grace for its roues, seductive manners and witty ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... a more charming posada in Italy, or a more seductive fonda in Spain? No. And the crowd of English tourists have not yet raised the scale of prices as in Switzerland—at least, they had not at the time of which I write. In Dal, the current coin is not the pound sterling, the sovereign ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... the truth. But what has happened? Instead of getting hold of man's freedom, Thou has enlarged it still more! Hast Thou again forgotten that to man rest and even death are preferable to a free choice between the knowledge of Good and Evil? Nothing seems more seductive in his eyes than freedom of conscience, and nothing proves more painful. And behold! instead of laying a firm foundation whereon to rest once for all man's conscience, Thou hast chosen to stir up in him all that is abnormal, mysterious, and indefinite, all that is ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... the seductive powers which European civilization exercised upon Russia, the Russians perceived its weak sides, which they studied by the light of the ideal which they promised themselves to attain in some indefinite future, a future which they nevertheless hoped ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... were not looking at each other with loving eyes when he drew near. Elizabeth turned to him, her face aglow: "Let us walk a bit before Mr. Eschenbach sings." Her manner was almost seductive. Mrs. Minne sneered slightly and waved her fan condescendingly at the two as they moved slowly up the room. "There go the biggest pair of fools in all Christendom," she remarked to Biterolf; "why, she will believe everything he ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... unattractive in comparison with the splendid armor, the gay tournaments, and the witching minstrelsy which signalized French chivalry; and thus the peaceful elements of conquest were as seductive as the force of arms was potent. A dynasty which had ruled for more than six hundred years was overthrown; a great chapter in English history was closed. A new order was established, and a new chapter in England's ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... little while ago, we can call up and renew the life of legend and tradition. This is the Astral Light of the mystics. Its deeper and more living aspect seems to inflame the principle of desire in us. All the sweet, seductive, bewitching temptations of sense are inspired by it. After death the soul passing into this living light goes on thinking, thinking, goes on aspiring, aspiring, creating unconsciously around itself its own circumstance in which all sweetest ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... a low ebb, Aunt M'riar had fallen back on some arrears of stocking-darning. Dolly was engaged on the object to which she gave lifelong attention, that of keeping her doll asleep. I do not fancy that Dolly was very inventive; but then, you may be, at three-and-a-half, seductive without being inventive. Besides, this monotonous fiction of the need of her doll for sleep was only a scenario for another incident—the fear of disturbance by a pleace'n with two heads, a very ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... tried to die more fitly; the other to call his lady fair in more seductive accents. The petulant outburst of the master taught them more than ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... despair.... In another view she has passed the season of despair, and appears as the heartless votary of fashion, a flirt, or that most to be dreaded, most to be despised being, a married coquette; at once seductive, heartless, and basely unprincipled; or as beauty of person has faded away, she may be found turning from these lighter styles of toys to a quiet kind of hand-maiden ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... fact, a life study of the science of life, in a concrete form of body-cell invigorator suitable to all mankind, from earliest infancy to advancing age, and this of a nature equally digestible and assimilable to both. After but a brief experience of this seductive beverage, it may speedily be felt how, once digested and assimilated, it courses through the lymph channels and lacteal vessels and, by the familiar route of the Chyle passes into the heart, where joined ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... what thieves, and what harlots is the thief, the harlot, and the pirate of De Foe? We would not hesitate to say, that in no other book of fiction, where the lives of such characters are described, is guilt and delinquency made less seductive, or the suffering made more closely to follow the commission, or the penitence more earnest or more bleeding, or the intervening flashes of religious visitation upon the rude and uninstructed soul more meltingly and fearfully painted. They, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... none beyond the first flush of earliest maturity. Slight, grey-white nymphs, laughing as they discarded their hampering veils, tossing their white hair as they plunged into the shimmering pool. Seemingly the most seductive, most ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... from sticks of candy, which tempted in the smaller youth with coppers in their fists, up to ornamental articles of apparel, pocket-books, breast-pins, gilt-edged Bibles, stationery, in short, everything which was like to prove seductive to the rural population. The Colonel had made money in trade, and also by matrimony. He had married Sarah, daughter and heiress of the late Tekel Jordan, Esq., an old miser, who gave the town-clock, which carries his name to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to place her virtue, any more than his, under the shelter of prejudice, ignorance, and fear. It would seem that in Europe, where man so easily submits to the despotic sway of women, they are nevertheless curtailed of some of the greatest qualities of the human species, and considered as seductive but imperfect beings; and (what may well provoke astonishment) women ultimately look upon themselves in the same light, and almost consider it as a privilege that they are entitled to show themselves futile, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... grass, fresher and more penetrating than that which exhaled from the trees around him; the warm and balmy air which enveloped him for the first time for many years past; the ineffable enjoyment of liberty in an open country, spoke to the prince in so seductive a language, that notwithstanding the preternatural caution, we would almost say dissimulation of his character, of which we have tried to give an idea, he could not restrain his emotion, and breathed a sigh of ecstasy. Then, by degrees, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Francoise—the good-natured intermediary who by a single word has made supportable, human, almost propitious the inconceivable, infernal scene of gaiety in the thick of which we had been imagining swarms of enemies, perverse and seductive, beguiling away from us, even making laugh at us, the woman whom we love. If we are to judge of them by him, this relative who has accosted us and who is himself an initiate in those cruel mysteries, then ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... was welcomed in this council with a seductive kindness; but besides this, what is harder than to set oneself against the common feeling of one's own order, when moderation already appears to be apostasy? He returned to England filled with the ideas of hierarchic independence; in preparing to carry it through, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... heart than he himself dreams of. I once thought that the highest of human enjoyments was a victory lost and won, with a hundred head of cattle driven before the returning host, in triumph, to Henderland; but, in yon withdrawing-room in the west wing, in which your cunning hands have placed the seductive couch, where one may lie and see roses blooming so near that he may smell their odours, and hear witching strains stealing from these musical things of wood and wire, the charm of the foray is broken, and the riever's spirit overcome. I wish ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... information about them, in order afterwards to examine, according to logical laws, into the use and connection, in a cohering whole, of that information, or, what is still better, merely to test it by them. Notwithstanding, there lies so seductive a charm in the possession of a specious art like this—an art which gives to all our cognitions the form of the understanding, although with respect to the content thereof we may be sadly deficient—that general logic, which is merely a canon of judgement, has been employed as an organon for ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... presence of the infinite sky. In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect. The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... in all others who have grieved me, the guardian of my virtue. My life has been mingled with anguish, fortunately proportioned to my strength; it has thus been kept free from evil passions, from seductive peace, and ever near to God. Our attachment was the mistaken attempt, the innocent effort of two children striving to satisfy their own hearts, God, and men—folly, Felix! Ah," she said quickly, "what ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... have withstood all the seductive charms of the hour if he had not escorted Dolores home and essayed to bid her good-bye. There was a great clump of flaming poinsettia at the Payson gate. Dolores was dark, with a rich southern complexion; her dress was white. So she stood against the poinsettia. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... of Sammy had finally decided her, and she thought it proper, before taking a new husband, to complete the sepulture of the first and have done with the mausoleum and the dangerous intimacy of its seductive designer. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Hogan coolly. "The landlord of The Angel hath a daughter maybe 'twas after her he named his inn—who owns a pair of the most seductive eyes that ever a man saw perdition in. She hath, moreover, a taste for dalliance, and my brave looks and martial trappings did for her what her bold eyes had done for me. We were becoming the sweetest friends, when, like an incarnate fiend, that loutish clown, her lover, sweeps ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... their religion, passionately courageous, passionately loyal and affectionate—they are without the manliness which would give strength and solidity to the sentimental part of their dispositions; while the surface and show is so seductive and winning that only experience of its instability can resist its charm."* Such summary judgments are seldom accurate. Every one must be acquainted with individual Irishmen who do not correspond with Froude's general description. Nor does Froude always take into account the shrewdness, the humour, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... myself to do so; but scarcely had the honeymoon waned, than my fickle partner transferred his affections from me to one of my attendants; and to such a height did his guilty passion carry him, that he quitted his home for Italy, carrying with him the unfortunate victim of his seductive arts. It was during his absence that I first became acquainted with madame Boncault; she was my own age, and equally unfortunate in her domestic life; the same tests, griefs, and a great similarity of temper and disposition soon united us in the bonds of the firmest friendship; but as she ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... for them; anyhow I remember her as a symbol of lachrymosity.) Dear, alluring, immoral catalogues, sweet sirens for a man's undoing! How you sang to me of sedums, and whispered of peonies and irises—yea, even of German irises! How you spoke in soft, seductive accents of wonderful lilacs, and exquisite spireas, and sweet syringas, murmurous with bees! How you told of tulips and narcissuses, and a thousand lovely things for beds and borders and rock work—at so much a dozen, so very much a dozen, and a dozen so very few! ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... first few volumes were in no way seductive. They boasted not the most elementary drawings to help the reader; not the slightest woodcut to give a direct idea of the insects described; of their shape, aspect, or physiognomy; and a simple sketch, however poor, is often worth more than long and laborious descriptions. ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... subordinate to that of availability. We have in our history too many instances of such intrigues and their dangerous consequences, to admit of their success at the present time, though they come in the seductive form of military glory. The degenerate system of party strategy culminated seven years ago in the election of James Buchanan. In pursuance of the secret and treacherous preparations for the present infamous ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... shun the bed of the wicked. She is a wanton mistress, and will cuddle where her fancy chances, careless whether vice or virtue is her bedfellow; coy when most eagerly supplicated, seductive when least desired. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... who were consumed with a desire for honors and power; all were young and beautiful; except Lucretia, all were vicious, graceful, seductive scoundrels, and, as such, among the most charming and attractive figures in the society of old Rome. For only the narrowest observer, blind to everything but their infamous deeds, can paint the Borgias simply as savage and cruel brutes, tiger-cubs by nature. They were privileged malefactors, like ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... seemed to him, from the top of his nineteen years' experience, as if he were marked at birth to be the perpetrator of some signal action, to set back fallen Mercy, to overthrow the usurping devil that sat, horned and hoofed, on her throne. Seductive Jacobin figments, which he had often refuted at the Speculative, swam up in his mind and startled him as with voices: and he seemed to himself to walk accompanied by an almost tangible presence ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... instinctively laying his hand upon his sword. "The clash of arms, the thunder of hoofs, the waving banners—yes, Glory is a seductive mistress who robs us of our youth. Have I not wooed her and found—gray hairs? Who shall give me ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... that love of art and beautiful things for which Valentina and her family were well known. It was in art, letters, and books that the widowed princess sought such consolation as was possible.[56] In her best days she had united in herself a seductive grace of carriage, beauty of person, and dignity of rank, which made her the ornament of the French Court. She was almost the only one about the unfortunate Charles VI. who could influence him in his moments of mental aberration. Coming from the luxury of the most splendid ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... which I apprehend has not been heretofore sufficiently considered. There are many Potawatamies and Ottawas, as also Winnebagoes and Menomonees, who may be easily induced to move into Canada by seductive bribes, in the use of which the British Government has always ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... dress for?" he demanded; "is it to make themselves seductive to men or to have other women admire and ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... may be inane in her patter and have little more than conventional grace and charm, I have been waited on by girls who added real mental celerity, wit and a power of skilful mimicry to that elusive and seductive quality that accounts for the impregnable position of their class. At one dinner impersonations in both the comic and the tragic vein were given by a girl of unmistakable genius. Frequently a plain, elderly ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... to have kept a perfect control of himself and passions until made chief eunuch of the Cherif, who possessed a well-assorted harem of choice Circassian, Georgian, and European beauties. The neglige toilet of the harem bath and the seductive influence of this terrestrial Koranic seventh heaven was too much for the warm Soudanese blood of the chief; his forays were not suspected until a blonde Circassian houri presented her lord and master, the Cherif, with a suspiciously mulatto-looking son and heir. A consultation of the Koran ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... care of yourself, Mr Walpole," said my good friend; "you are going to a very dangerous and seductive city, and you will require all your firmness and good principles to save you from the force of evil example. Don't be led away—don't be led away—that is all I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... war, has for the past decade been the center of discussion at many European Socialist congresses. The recent Prime Minister of France, Briand, was long one of the leading partisans of this method of which he said only a few years before he became Premier: "It has the seductive quality that it is after all the exercise of an incontestable right. It is a revolution which commences with legality. In refusing the yoke of misery, the workingman revolts in the fullness of his rights; illegality is committed by the capitalist class when it becomes ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... though Brazil and the Argentine be predominantly Latin, the minority of Germans, Austrians, and Swiss is by no means insignificant. The great modern steamship, in fact—supplemented by its wandering and seductive agent—is playing the part in the world formerly played by invasions and crusades, while the "economic" immigrant is more and more replacing the refugee, just as the purely commercial company working under native law is replacing the Chartered Company which was a law to itself. How small a part ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... 'twas when you were crossing the Atlantic?" says the master, turning to Pat with a seductive air, and leading into the "full and true account" (for Pat had thought fit to visit North Amerikay, for "a raison he had," in the autumn of the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... the colour that greensickness imparts. Her features were exquisitely delicate. In contrast, Ingigerd's face, with which Frederick fleetingly compared hers, seemed unrefined, even coarse. Here was the aristocracy of a too highly bred race, somewhat faded, to be sure, but at that moment all the more seductive. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... she would have caught the vague anxiety, the note of distrust, in his voice. But the carpet of sand and leaves on which she lay was very seductive. Her eyes closed. She nestled into a comfortable position, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... applied himself to them with sufficient zeal to make henceforth a decent though never a brilliant record. His heart was already elsewhere. For some time past he had been nourishing his soul on forbidden fruit,—books that had to be smuggled in and were of course all the more seductive for that very reason. With a few intimates—Scharffenstein, the Von Hovens and Petersen—he formed a sort of literary club which read and discussed things. What they read spurred them to imitation and to mutual criticism. Presently they commenced sending their productions to the magazines. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... to the Student. In studying the wild-animal mind, the boundary line between Reality and Dreamland is mighty easy to cross. He who easily yields to seductive reasoning, and the call of the wild imagination, soon will become a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions of things that never occurred. The temptation to place upon the simple acts of animals the ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... upon the ear; Yet, striving for release, The most seductive string's Sweet jargonings, The happiest throat's Most easeful, lovely notes Fall back ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... Buren's willingness to place an ocean between the new administration and a master of sarcasm, to whom opposition had become an unchangeable habit, had dictated an offer of the mission, couched in such seductive language that Mr. Randolph yielded to it as readily as those ladies accept an offer of marriage who have often announced their intention never to marry. Having reached the scene of his diplomatic labors at the beginning of August, he began to perform ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... of an officer; there is the half-pistole;" and he showed him the seductive coin, but did not ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a sore temptation to any writer, and of dalliance with a Delilah so seductive it is futile to declare that I am innocent. My principles positively are known to myself; which is a measure of self-knowledge, in these any-thing-arian days, of that cabinet coin-climax the "8th degree of rarity;" and that those choice principles ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... upon her; but her senses were at last awakened to the presence of danger and she wheeled to face the strange bull just before he reached her. Toog halted a few paces from her. His anger had fled before the seductive feminine charms of the stranger. He made conciliatory noises—a species of clucking sound with his broad, flat lips—that were, too, not greatly dissimilar to that which might be produced ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... because he had read some of Tully's Orations, a very few books of Seneca, some things of the poets, and such few volumes of his own sect as were written in Latin and neatly, and was daily practised in speaking, he acquired a certain eloquence, which proved the more pleasing and seductive because under the guidance of a good wit, and with a kind of natural gracefulness. Is it not thus, as I recall it, O Lord my God, Thou judge of my conscience? before Thee is my heart, and my remembrance, Who didst at that time direct me by the hidden mystery of Thy providence, and didst set ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... one, a pile of doubts, questionings, and mysteries; and the other, a much smaller pile of positive conclusions. There is a great temptation to expatiate upon the former subjects, for negative and critical statements have a seductive appearance of depth and much more of a flavour of wisdom than clear and succinct declarations. But I will endeavour to resist this temptation, and will set down, as concisely as I can, some of the positive convictions I ...
— 21 • Frank Crane
... seductive page beguiled, We fancy Charles was just, and Stratford mild; And Fox himself, with party pencil draws Monmouth a hero 'for the good old cause!' Then, rights are wrongs, and victories are defeats, As French or English pride ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... proposition, but Conkling accepted it. Perhaps his nature required a relief from its high-strung irritability in some sort of violence, and resignation backed by the assurance that he would soon be restored to office and to greater power on the shoulders of the party offered the seductive form which that violence ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... you,' replied the young woman. Her voice was sweet, but it sounded to Natalya like the voice of Lilith, stealer of new-born children. Her rosy cheek seemed smeared with seductive paint. In the background glistened the dual crockery of the erst pious kitchen which the new-comer profaned. And between Natalya and it, between Natalya and her grandchildren, this alien girlish figure seemed to stand barrier-wise. She could not ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... not funny; it sobered him. What a situation! He felt instinctively that he ought to fly from this hidden valley. But he could not have done it, even had he not been in the trader's employ. The thing was provokingly seductive. It was like an Arabian Nights' tale. What could these strange, fatally bound women do? Would any one of them become involved in sweet toils such as were possible to him? He was no fool. Already eyes had flashed and lips ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... singular mixture of curiosity, like and dislike. It could not well be otherwise, where there was so much beauty to inspire admiration or jealousy and where there were sentiments known to be different from those of all the others present. A mystery as tantalizing as it was seductive, together with a faint touch of scandal which some had contrived to blow upon her name, though not enough really to injure her as yet, sufficed to give a spice to the conversation when ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... there in that bird's nest within three or four perches of the pole. But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenland-men were; yet that disadvantage is greatly counterbalanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find there; then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... artist; some of his books, it is true, are very hurried productions, finished in haste for the market with no great amount either of inspiration or artistic confidence about them. But little slovenly work will be found bearing his name, for he was a thoroughly trained writer; a suave and seductive workmanship had become a second nature to him, and there was always a flavour of scholarly, subacid and quasi-ironical modernity about his style. There is little doubt that his quality as a stylist was better adapted to the studies of modern London life, on its seamier ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... these two systems, both seductive from their apparent simplicity, and both simple only by mutilation, that the Philosophy of the Conditioned, of which Sir William Hamilton is the representative, endeavours to steer a middle course, at the risk of sharing the fate of most mediators in a quarrel,—being repudiated and denounced ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... Senora Dona Rodriguez, if you will leave out and put aside all love messages, you may go and light your candle and come back, and we will discuss all the commands you have for me and whatever you wish, saving only, as I said, all seductive communications." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... same day, he walked into Ballochcoil, and when he returned, he offered her, with a solemn twinkle in his eye, a good-sized paper bag of the seductive sweetmeat; taking up his position on the top of a low dyke, and watching her, while she proceeded to make of that plump white bag, a lank and emaciated bag, surprising to behold. He sat and looked on, enjoying his ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the Rev. Thomas Gowles in his home ministry. Circumstances called him to that wider field of usefulness, the Pacific, in which so many millions of our dusky brethren either worship owls, butterflies, sharks, and lizards, or are led away captive by the seductive pomps of the Scarlet Woman, or lapse languidly into the lap of a bloated and Erastian establishment, ignorant of the Truth as possessed by our community. Against all these forms of soul-destroying ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... is some town," said Bill, on reaching the gay and dazzling city. The wide streets, oriental buildings, the weird bazaars, gaily-lit cafes, and veiled women, amazed these simple Bushmen. It was like "The Arabian Nights," wonderful, alluring, seductive and strange. All were gripped by the subtle atmosphere of things. Their blood tingled with the sensuous aroma of the East. Cheap wine in the cafes of the Greeks let the devil loose, and so they fell an easy prey to the lures of the bold and handsome wantons of Cairo. Thus ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... second best, or less, His graceful manner still redeems With easy charm and cheerfulness More hackneyed, less seductive themes; Each page has something witty, wise, Well-turned, fantastic or jocose— Each page of Breadandbutterflies, From Mills and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... the shanghaied parson, whose weak flesh scorned the torture, because of the strong, pure faith in the man's soul. There were Blackie and Boston, their rat-hearts steeled to courage by lust of gold, their rascally, seductive tongues welding into a dangerous unit the mob of desperate, broken stiffs who inhabited the foc'sle. There were Lynch and Fitzgibbon, the buckos, living up to their grim code; and the Knitting Swede, that prince of crimps, ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... caboose. After all, it was as warm as the shack, and he reflected with some amusement that Festing probably did not expect him to be punctual. The latter knew his habits, and no doubt imagined that he would find the comfort of the homestead seductive. But Festing did not know Sadie, who had sent him back within the promised time. He enjoyed his supper and slept well afterwards. In fact, he did not waken until a stinging draught swept through the caboose and he saw that it was daylight. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... so many distinct types of what was dignified or pleasant in human habitations. Frequently, along the great historic stream, as along some vast street, contemporary genius was visible (a little prematurely as time would show) in a novel and seductive architecture, which, by its engrafting of exotic grace on homely native forms, spoke of a certain restless aspiration to be what one was not but might become—the old [78] Gaulish desire to be refined, to be mentally enfranchised by the ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... Baron, who accused himself of ruining his family, displayed all his charm of wit and his most seductive graces for the benefit of his wife, for his ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... that time is thus graphically sketched. "He is middle-sized, of an agreeable countenance, and has a military air. To personal advantages he joins the more seductive distinction of manners simple, natural, and full of good taste and ease. At first sight I was struck with his resemblance to Prince Eugene, and to the Empress Josephine, his grandmother. But I did not remark a like resemblance to the Emperor. But ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... unwise it is to allow children yet in their teens to wander so far from home. It more especially illustrates the folly of giving them long holidays in a foreign land, full of seductive dissipation. Port for men, claret for boys, cried Dr. Johnson. Even so, men only should drink the strong drink of travel; boys should still be kept on milk and water at home. Middies! you may despise your ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... in honour of the occasion was given by the committee of arrangements in the evening, which was attended by all the ladies, native and foreign, in the town and vicinity, the naval officers attached to the three ships of war, and the captains of the merchant vessels lying in the harbour. So seductive were the festivities of the day and the pleasures of the dance, that they were not closed until a late hour of the night, or rather until an early ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... unto the sands of the desert, because they were promised a Paradise peopled by dark- eyed houris. Orthodoxy got its hold by a promise of rest, idleness and freedom from responsibility. The heaven into which Jean Jacques slipped was a combination of all that Allah, Gabriel and the seductive dreams of Moody, Sankey and such could provide. Science founded on truth can never be popular until mankind further evolves, since it offers nothing better than toil and difficulty, and after each achievement increased work as a reward for work. This condition stands ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... most unfair. Ban," said Betty in her most seductive tones, "do call him down. Make him write something decent about ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he had such beautiful eyes. And yet—and at this point old Fanny's imagination ceased to function, and something else displayed a certain amount of energy, her knowledge of the world. What would Mr. Arabian be like as a husband? He was charming, seductive even, caressingly sympathetic—yes, caressingly! But—as a husband? And old Fanny felt mysteriously that something in her recoiled from the idea of Arabian as the husband of Beryl, whereas she could think of Mr. Craven in that situation quite calmly. It was ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... coquetry? Had she danced with him, drove with him, sailed with him, walked in the moonlight and made much of him in mere wanton mischief? What right had she to be so pretty and so—without heart or sensibility? A Southern girl with the word love on a young man's lips would have become a Circe of seductive wooing until the tale were told, even though she could not give ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... himself conquered, made a toy of him, bringing the sweetness of fragrant hair, and eloquent eyes, and clinging arms, and dewy lips. A thousand-fold harder to fight than pain was the seductive thought that he had but to go back to Helen to feel again the charm of her presence, to see the grace of her person, to hear the music of her voice, to have again her ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... captivatingly amiable. Like a seductive siren, she immeshed her husband in the magic charms of her caresses, was kindness, tenderness personified, loaded him with every little attention which one can look for from a gracious lady, right up to her bedroom door, which she again ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... kindly to the English militia. It was too democratic, too free. James I, in the very first year of his reign, conferred upon its members the seductive but fatal gift of exemption from the burden of providing their own weapons.[18] As he himself took care not to provide them too profusely, the force speedily lost both in efficiency and independence. The Civil War hopelessly ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... title for a short composition of a dreamy, contemplative, or even elegiac, character. In many of his nocturnes Chopin is the adored sentimentalist of boarding-school misses. There is poppy in them and seductive poison for which Niecks sensibly prescribes Bach and Beethoven as antidotes. The term ballad has been greatly abused in literature, and in music is intrinsically unmeaning. Chopin's four Ballades have one feature in common—they are written in triple ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and away almost as soon as it came. Again the sea grew splendid, the thunder of the waves held voices calling, and the foam framed shapes and faces, wildly seductive, though fugitive as dreams. The words he had heard moved him profoundly. He remembered how the presence of the stranger had turned the ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... he looked too long at some distant peak he would think of Myra. He would sit beside his fireplace with one of Doris Cleveland's books in his hand and the print would grow blurred and meaningless. In the glow of the coals Myra's face would take form and mock him with a seductive smile. Out of the gallery of his mind pictures would come trooping, and in each the chief figure was that fair-haired woman who had been his wife. At night while he slept, he was hounded by dreams in which the conscious repression ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... seem to some of you that I am fearful about my sovereignty, and that this is the motive which has led me, in the past, to shew a friendly spirit toward you and, on the present occasion, to address you with seductive words in order to inspire you with courage. And such reasoning is not out of accord with the ways of men. For unenlightened men are accustomed to shew gentleness toward those whom they want to make use of, even though these happen to be ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... shorter of the two failed to occupy his attention for an instant; he never stopped to think whether she was or was not the major's daughter. His eyes were riveted on the other figure—the figure that moved over the garden walk with the long, lightly falling dress and the easy, seductive grace. There, presented exactly as he had seen her once already—there, with her back again turned on him, was ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Softly seductive it was as the cooing of a dove in the spring, to its mate; pure as the purling of a brook among meadow flowers; rich as the deep notes of a nightingale in his passion for the moon. And for the song, it was the heart-breaking cry of a young Rhaetian peasant who, lying near death in a strange ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... thousand dollars annually upon the walks and buildings. Of course players must lose vast sums of money to enable the keepers of the establishment to pay these large prices. All classes of people gamble, and about one fourth of those who engage in the seductive play are ladies—or rather women, though they include not a few of ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... had spent so many years in solitude, addicted to prayers and ascetic practices, that the gods dreaded his growing power, which was making him like unto them, and to break it they sent down to him some of the seductive apsaras. But the saint held a flower-stalk to his loins, and Urvasi was born, a girl more beautiful than the celestial bayaderes who had been sent to tempt him. He gave this girl to the apsaras to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... as though, after long journeying, his own roof-tree had received him once more—had received him when his quest had been accomplished, when all that he wished for had been gained, when his travelling-staff had been laid aside with the words "It is finished." And of this seductive frame of mind the true source had been the eloquent discourse of his hospitable host. Yes, for every man there exist certain things which, instantly that they are said, seem to touch him more closely, more intimately, than anything has done before. Nor is it an uncommon occurrence ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... is his persistent curiosity. There is hardly anything in the world which Godfrey will not find out if he is given time. A secret has the same attraction for him that cheese has for a mouse. Some day, I hope, he will find a trap baited with a seductive mystery. ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... battle of New Orleans," did not see that the Republican party of the old school had been snuffed out by the same event. The new democracy, whose claims to rule were based, not on the policy of peace or restricted powers, but on the seductive glitter of military glory, was in the ascendant, and General Jackson was the favorite of the hour. New combinations became necessary, and Mr. Gallatin was requested to withdraw from the ticket, and make room for Mr. Clay, whose great western influence ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... was not wholly to be accounted for by the fact that he had inveigled his feet into shoes a size too small for them. I misgave more than ever, and having once launched Reginald on to the McKillops' lawn, I established him near a seductive dish of marrons glaces, and as far from the Archdeacon's wife as possible; as I drifted away to a diplomatic distance I heard with painful distinctness the eldest Mawkby girl asking him if he ...
— Reginald • Saki
... dangerous. Here was another proof that he was no coward, or he would surely not have placed himself in the hands of Pauline Vaison. She was dark, her figure rather full, voluptuous yet perfect in contour. Her movements were quick, virile, full of life, seductive yet passionate. She was a beautiful young animal, her graces all unstudied, nature's gifts, a dangerous animal if roused, love concealing sharp claws ready to tear in pieces if love were spurned. Her personality might have raised her to power ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... give any, even the weakest idea of how he narrated that incident,—the struggle that he portrayed between duty and temptation, and the apologetic tone of his voice in which he explained that the frame of mind that succeeds to any yielding to seductive influences, is often, in the main, more profitable to a man than is the vain-glorious sense of having resisted a temptation. "Meekness is the mother of all the virtues," said he, "and there is no being meek without frailty." The story, told as he told it, was too much for the diplomatist's ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... difference existed between their passions and our own. One would like them to open their lips and tell their history, tell us everything they used to do, no matter how futile, and what their cares and pleasures used to be. It is an irritating and seductive curiosity, a dreamy desire for knowledge, such as one feels regarding the past life of a mistress.... But they are deaf to the questions our eyes put to them, they remain dumb and motionless in their wooden ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... recreations, and as yet called for no suffering, or no sacrifice, while it opened to the eyes of men a dazzling and delightful perspective. The eighteenth century was, beyond all question, the most tempting and seductive of ages, for it promised to satisfy at once the strength and weakness of human nature; elevating and enervating the mind at the same time; flattering alternately the noblest sentiments and the most grovelling propensities; intoxicating with exalted hopes, and nursing with effeminate concessions. ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... you, therefore, to the hardships and perils of a soldier's life in a time of peace. The noise and the necessities of war drive men in upon themselves and keep their faculties awake and alert; but the seductive influence of peace, when a soldier must spend his time in preparation for the duties of his profession rather than in their practice, this is indeed a peril to which the horrors of warfare are subordinate. It is ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... married a million or so," suggested Portlaw, mollified under the seductive appeal of a fruit salad dressed with a mixture containing nearly a hundred different ingredients. "If he has I don't see why he shouldn't build a camp next to mine. I'll give him the land—if he doesn't care to pay for it," he ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... gown, soft, slinky, seductive. A light Egyptian scarf lay across her bare shoulders. The slim, white neck and the soft dark hair—but she sighed! He heard that faint, quick- drawn sigh and started ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... there is a third of quite a different cast, which tends to throw the sunshine of good-humor over the whole neighborhood. It meets once a week at a little old-fashioned house kept by a jolly publican of the name of Wagstaff, and bearing for insignia a resplendent half-moon, with a most seductive bunch of grapes. The whole edifice is covered with inscriptions to catch the eye of the thirsty wayfarer; such as "Truman, Hanbury, and Co's Entire," "Wine, Rum, and Brandy Vaults," "Old Tom, Rum, and Compounds," etc. This ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... sat listening with delight to the seductive tongue of that monstrous clever fellow, Jurgen. For this plump brown-haired bright-eyed little creature, this Chloris, he was honestly sorry. Into the uneventful life of a hamadryad, here in this uncultured forest, could not possibly have entered much pleasurable excitement, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... deep silence for a moment. The stream gurgled and splashed; the breeze whispered through the cottonwoods; and over all, or under all, was the vague, insistent, seductive sound that the summer makes in the fulness ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... occupants. Above these, again, were hung a number of exquisite pictures in water-colour. The floor was covered with a very rich and handsome Turkey carpet, into which one sank almost to the ankles, as into a thick bed of soft moss; chairs, couches, and divans of exquisite shape and seductive capacity were scattered here and there about the apartment, and at its fore or wider end stood, close together, a grand piano and a chamber organ, both in superbly modelled aethereum cases, and both, it need scarcely be said, of the finest quality and workmanship obtainable; while the ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... fact at the outset that my soft and seductive tones could never penetrate Millie's stone-deafness. Only the loudest and angriest remarks are audible to Millie, so I preserve an attitude of silent facial amiability in all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... thought she could read the motive at the back of Elisabeth's proposal—the spirit which, putting up a gallant fight even in the very face of defeat, could make yet a final effort to secure success by throwing Tim and the woman he loved together in the dangerously seductive intimacy of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... enter the arena as the champion of common sense, against what in my soul I believe to be the most tremendous enemy of God, morals, and religion, that ever found foothold on the earth;—the most seductive, hence the most dangerous, form of sensualism that ever cursed a nation, age, or people. I was a medium about eight years, during which time I made three thousand speeches, and traveled over several different countries, proclaiming its new gospel. I now regret that so much excellent ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... sagacity, as her constancy in supporting them did of her firmness. If a conduct less rigorous, less imperious, and more indulgent would have thrown greater lustre over her character, let it be remembered that some good qualities appear to be incompatible with others; nor let the seductive and corrupting nature of power be left out in the account. Her insincerity was perhaps the greatest blot in her character and the fruitful source of all the vexatious incidents of her reign. Though unacquainted with philosophical toleration, the only ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... he had threatened to pull out a revolver, she, so accustomed to revolvers, should have taken a girlish alarm! That queer detail of her behaviour was extraordinarily seductive. But far beyond everything else it was the grand loyalty of her nature that drew him. He wanted to sink into it as into a bed of down. He really needed it. Enveloped in that loving loyalty of a creature who gave all and demanded nothing, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... Allston, beware! The sin is not lessened that the tempter is so near to thee. Like the sparkle of the red wine to the inebriate are the seductive influences of the ballroom. Thy foot will fall upon roses, but they will be roses of this world, not those that bloom for eternity. Thou wilt lose the fervor and purity of thy love, the promptness of thy obedience, ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... great thing to have a mind of such power and such influence, whose recognitions of right and wrong, of virtue and vice, were, in most cases, so clear and determined. He never enlists our sympathies in favor of vice, by drawing those seductive pictures, in which it comes so near the shape and form of virtue that the mind is puzzled as to the boundary line. He never makes young ladies feel that they would like to marry corsairs, pirates, or sentimental villains ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... adequately recognised and rewarded makes them contented and happy. Under the system existing before my reign this was not so,—the most beautiful were often the most discontented; they were more easily acted upon by evil spirits, who assumed the fairest and most seductive appearances to lure their victims; they were often the most susceptible to flattery, and easiest led astray; and when once drawn from the proper path, they were the most cruelly persecuted by a class of inferior persons, who, had their ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... ladyship; she was pale as marble, but how superbly beautiful! Her glossy hair, all disordered, hung in rich masses upon her uncovered shoulders; her seductive night-dress but imperfectly concealed the glories of her divine form,—her heaving bosom, so voluptuous and fair, was more than half disclosed to my gaze. With a palpitating heart I laid my trembling hand upon one of her plump, white shoulders. Never shall I forget the majestic rage and scorn ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... men stood up to the march with their heavy loads splendidly, thanks to the excellent physical training they had undergone on board ship. At the first halt a number lit up cigarettes, and as soon as they started a chorus of coughs showed where the seductive weed was getting in its deadly work on the lungs and bronchial tubes. The Commanding Officers passed the word along to try and not smoke, and not to use the water bottles, and the men did their best for the rest of the march. About an hour before we came to our camp we ran full ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... rude and uncertain accompaniment, she was dancing it with a grace, precision, and lightness that was wonderful; in spite of its doubtful poses and seductive languors she was dancing it with the artless gayety and innocence—perhaps from the suggestion of her tiny figure—of a mere child among an audience of children. Dancing it alone she assumed the parts of the man and woman; advancing, retreating, coquetting, rejecting, coyly bewitching, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... asked himself that question several times during the considerable interval of his waiting. The sunset was coming to its final splendor behind mountains that were ash of violet. Through the blossom-laden air stole a seductive intoxication that mounted to his head. The voices of the Red Gods had mastered him, and ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... he wearied his body under the labour which kills thought. He sought to fly from the seductive image. He did not go out, for fear of seeing her. He rushed upon every hard and unfruitful labour that he could find. He rooted up his trees in order to re-plant them elsewhere; dug useless banks in ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... explain in another Romance entitled "The Bible Devil," the book of Genesis makes not even the remotest allusion to such a personage. If, however, the tempter was the Devil, what chance had the poor woman against his seductive wiles? And even if he was only a serpent, he was very "subtil" as we are told, and able to talk like a book, and we know that these creatures have fatal powers of fascination. Surely Mother Eve was heavily ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... the ice cream progressed, I became more indifferent to my eventual fate; and, invariably, before a drop of that precious reward had dripped from the saucer, I had eaten enough of the dinner to prove my title to the seductive dessert. Moreover, during its enjoyment, I no longer cared a whit for charges or convictions of all the crimes in the calendar. This fact is less trifling than it seems; for it proves the value of strategy as opposed to brute and sometimes brutal force, of which ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Miss Molly, that Mrs. Dupont, and those connected with her, think otherwise. They are presuming on Gaskins' being in love with you. Mrs. Dupont can be very seductive. Little by little she has drawn the Lieutenant into her net. Believing him engaged to you, they have him now where he must either pay money for silence or be exposed. Just how it was worked, I do not know. The shooting last night was done to convince him they were serious. The fact that ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... and you so much the old sabreur! Perhaps your people marched to the flageolet—a seductive instrument, I assure you." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Tom Slade that this altogether sensational disclosure and startling announcement did not greatly agitate him, nor even make him especially curious. The fact that this seductive stranger was his friend seemed the one outstanding reality to him. If he had any other feelings, of humiliation at being so completely deceived, or of disappointment, he did not show them. But he did reiterate ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... viewed in the aspect of baby stories, and has a great mind to discuss the expediency of using up the whole of ancient history, for the same purpose. I do not know what he means to do with himself after leaving college, but trust that, by dabbling so early with the dangerous and seductive business of authorship, he will not be tempted to become an author by profession. If so I shall be very sorry for the little that I have had to do with the matter, ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him. Weak- kneed, he passed a trembling hand over his incredulous eyes; with the courage of despair, he feebly pinched himself. Then for sixty sickening seconds he closed his eyes and pressed both hands over his ears. But when he took his hands away and opened his terrified eyes, the exquisitely seductive melody, wind blown from the water, thrilled him in every fiber; his wild gaze fell upon a distant, glittering shape—white-armed, golden- haired, fish-tailed, slender body glittering ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... to make the best of their days, Thursday is the day that the Chateau de Stael is open to visitors. Learning, however, that the d'Haussonvilles were not at present in residence, we concluded to take our courage, and some silver, in our hands, trusting to its seductive influence upon the caretaker. After a short stroll through the quaint old town of Coppet we ascended the steep hill that leads to the Chateau de Stael. As we drew near the entrance gate, Walter, manlike, retired to the rear of the procession, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... herself. In due course of time she proudly presented us with five kittens. Educated in the belief that one cat was all that was compatible with respectability, I had four immediately disposed of, keeping the prettiest one, which grew up into the beautiful, fascinating, and seductive maltese "Pretty Lady," with white trimmings to her coat. The mother of Pretty Lady used to catch two mice at a time, and bringing them in together, lay one at my feet and say as plainly as cat language can say, "There, you eat that one, and ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... broad divided by a pebbly island, running over seductive riffles and swirling into deep, quiet pools where the good salmon goes to smoke his pipe ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... at this session of the General Assembly that Mr. Toombs displayed the skill and sagacity of a statesman in fearlessly exposing a seductive scheme for popular relief. He was called upon to confront public clamor and to fight in the face of fearful odds, but ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... She saw Chirac with his wistful smile. She saw him whipped over the roof of the Gare du Nord at the tail of a balloon. She saw old Niepce. She felt his lecherous arm round her. She was as old now as Niepce had been then. Could she excite lust now? Ah! the irony of such a question! To be young and seductive, to be able to kindle a man's eye—that seemed to her the sole thing desirable. Once she had been so! ... Niepce must certainly have been dead for years. Niepce, the obstinate and hopeful voluptuary, was nothing but a few bones ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... religious life must be put down. In such moments, the feeling of deliverance was awakened in every heart: nobler powers, intellectual activities were stirred up; but mingled at the same time with hereditary weakness, seductive vices and passions, whose charms he, who is born of earth, can not wholly resist; and the brave man, who called the movement into life, had soon to contend less with old enemies, already half conquered, than with the new ones ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... come over here and settled in Kentucky, and commenced makin' whiskey, payin' a tax of $2.00 per gallon, and sellin' the seductive flooid for $1.50 per gallon, gettin' rich at that, which may surprise you, altho' it doesen't our Eternal Revenoo Offisers, who, as Mr. ANTONY remarked of H. BEECHER STOW when she stabbed Lord Byron, "are all ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... to have no general aim, the opinions and efforts of the authors being seldom consistent with themselves for any length of time. No one can deny that this literature engages the reader's most intense interest by the seductive sagacity of the movement, the variety of incident, and the most perfect command of those means calculated to ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... almost equally of course, the binder, durus arator, will cut them down with his abominable plough. One is almost tempted to say that margins should always be left untouched, for if once the binder begins to clip he is unable to resist the seductive joy, and cuts the paper to the quick, even into the printed matter. Mr. Blades tells a very sad story of a nobleman who handed over some Caxtons to a provincial binder, and received them back MINUS 500 pounds worth of margin. Margins make a book worth perhaps 400 ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... totally new moral order of things, founded on the teaching of Proudhon and other socialists regarding the annihilation of the power of capital, by immediately productive labour, dispensing with the middleman. Little by little he converted me, by most seductive arguments, to his own views, to such an extent that I began to rebuild my hopes for the realisation of my ideal in art upon them. Thus there were two questions which concerned me very nearly: he wished to abolish ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... are not so seductive or, usually, so serious as those we have been considering; but for that reason they are perhaps more pervasive - we are less on our guard against them. What are the reasons for the obligation of truthfulness? Truthfulness means ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... concert, the book, or the public meeting. Then there is no time left, and small temptation, for pleasures less pure. It gives an innocent answer to that first demand for evening excitement which perils the soul of the homeless boy in the seductive city. The companions whom he meets at the gymnasium are not the ones whose pursuits of later nocturnal hours entice him to sin. The honest fatigue of his exercises calls for honest rest. It is the nervous exhaustion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... seductive St.-Ange, "Miguel and Joe is church- member'—certainlee! They love to talk about rilligion. Come at Miguel and talk about some rilligion. I am nearly expire for ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... holding, each man for himself, by some faith which shall anchor him. It must not be taken up by chance. We must fight for it, for only so will it become OUR faith. The halt in indifference or in hostility is easy enough and seductive enough. The half-hearted thinks that when he has attained that stage he has completed the term of human wisdom. I say go on: do not stay there; do not take it for granted that there is nothing beyond; incessantly attempt an advance, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... country, on condition that they should fight against the Picts; and they did fight, and had the victory wheresoever they came. And then they sent for the Angles, and told them of the worthlessness of the people and the excellences of the land. This is the Saxon narrative. The seductive graces of Rowena, the daughter of Horsa, who corrupted the King of the Britons by love and wine, is an ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... come out and dry the dishes, but they said tables instead of talking of the seductive party. Mr. Leverett had to go out for an hour. Betty sat down and took up her knitting. She felt rather tired and sleepy, for she had gone on with the party the night before, after she was in bed. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas |
