"Seraphic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his hesitation did not last long. A piece of pine wood lay near him, and picking it up he drew from under his belt a great keen-bladed bowie-knife, with which he began to whittle long slender shavings that curled beautifully; then a seraphic smile of content spread ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, "Give me money." Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. "Budge's Boots are the Best" simply means "Give me money"; "Use Seraphic Soap" simply means "Give me money." It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... virgins, roses strow, Mingled with Ios as you go. The snowy ox is kill'd, The fane with pros'lyte lads and lasses fill'd, You too may hope the same seraphic joy, Old time cannot destroy, Nor fulnesse cloy; When, like these, you shall stamp by sympathies Thousands of new-born-loves ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... exert, to exterminate himself, to please her in every way, with fondlings and kissings and wrestlings, and all the delicacies and sweet confectionery of love; and that, if she would taste a little of the seraphic joys of these little ways to her unknown, she would believe all the other things of life as not worth a straw; and that, if such were her wish, he would forever be as silent as the grave, and last no scandal would besmear her virtue. And the lewd fellow, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... own melody. Such pure, sweet notes—now rippling softly, now with a gay little quiver of joy, now a tender prolonged note, now a succession of trills, high and low, that set the air throbbing, and every now and then a great burst of seraphic music, as if his little heart was so full of happiness he was compelled to pour it forth to all who chose to listen. Our party would gladly have listened for a long time, and have omitted the story altogether; but after ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... construction. Mr. Browning, with his little son, drove over to the wild, curious town of Bagnorgio, which, though near Orvieto, is very little known. But this was the birthplace of Giovanni da Fidenza, the "Seraphic Doctor," who was canonized as St. Buonaventura, from the exclamation of San Francesco, who, on awakening from a dream communion with Giovanni da Fidenza, exclaimed, "O buona ventura!" Dante introduces this saint into the Divina ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... behind the curtain, gazed at him till he disappeared, and then turned round, with seraphic joy on her countenance. "My darling!" she murmured; "more beautiful than ever! Oh ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... she is a being seraphic, Full of fun, full of frolic and mirth; Who can talk in a manner most graphic Every possible language on earth. When she's roaming in regions Italic, You would think her a fair Florentine; She speaks German like Schiller; and Gallic Better ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... closed behind her a heavy sigh floated through the grating, and the sweet seraphic face of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... three tinkers who were unanimous—that, if sometimes there is a little treachery of this kind amongst the profession, it is no more than would be pronounced 'in reason' by all candid men. And certainly, said one of the three, you wouldn't look for perfection in a tinker? Undoubtedly a seraphic tinker would be an unreasonable postulate; though, perhaps, the man in all England that came nearest to the seraphic character in one century was a tinker—namely, John Bunyan. But, as my triad of tinkers urged, men of all professions do cheat at uncertain times, are traitors ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... must have been the veritable passion: a flame kept alive by vestal ministrants in the yewwood of the forest of Old Romance; planted only in the breasts of very favourite maidens. Love had eyes, love had a voice that night,-love was the explicable magic lifting terrestrial to seraphic. Though, true, she had not Henrietta's golden smoothness of beauty. Henrietta, illumined with such a love, would outdo all legends, all dreams of the tale of love. Would she? For credulous men she would be golden coin of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and dashed through the gate at the far end of the orchard. In five minutes Nobbles was given into his hand, and a seraphic smile lit up his face as he hugged his treasure. His uncle did not smile. He sat down on one of the lowest limbs of the apple-tree ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... that the human voice is capable of producing more different sounds and is more musical and pleasing to the ear than anything else earthly; that it is but little below the seraphic strains. "The Star in The East" referred back to the most glorious night, for the human race, that earth ever knew. A multitude of the heavenly hosts came down in the east of Judea; the darkness of night was driven away and the place became more beautiful than day, ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... to himself the model of this excellent person, who for his piety was named the Seraphic ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... the word, in this sense, in the poem 'At a Solemn Music,' where the 'saintly shout' of the seraphic choir, with 'loud uplifted angel-trumpets,' 'immortal harps of golden wires,' and the singing of psalms and hymns, are collectively called 'that melodious noise.' Also in his Hymn on the Nativity, verse ix., he has 'stringed noise'—i.e., band of stringed instruments. The ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... Something about the seraphic face of Sylvia, chastened by terrible suffering, must have suggested to Mrs. Chilton the idea of caution. "Have you thought of the humiliation this must inflict ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... interest in their own danger is very rarely felt. In writings of fiction, whether novels or biographies, these death-beds are generally depicted as almost seraphic in lucidity of intelligence. Sadly large has been my experience in death-beds, and I can only say that I have seldom or never seen such. Indifference, excepting with regard to bodily suffering, or to some duty the dying man desires to perform, is ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... impassioned fervour, which gave his gentle face a look of inspiration. "Love her! She is my vision by day—my dream by night. When I read, it is her voice that seems to speak to me from the Minnesinger's poesy. When I paint, it is her form that grows under my pencil. When I pray, it is her seraphic smile that seems to beam upon me down from heaven. I wander forth: it is to meet her in her walks. I kneel in the church: it is to breathe the same air as she!" At these words, Magdalena covered her face, and uttered a suppressed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... taught in the very ancient church which stands on the side of the piazza farthest from the Tiber. Ay, to be sure, the name must come very evidently thence. The "mouth of truth" was the mouth of that seraphic or angelic or golden-tongued or other "doctor gentium," and the old church and the piazza still preserve the memory of his eloquence. Not a bit of it! Under the venerable-looking portico of this church there is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... is to imprison forever the intellect of a La Place, whose telescopic eye, piercing the unfenced fields of immensity, systematized more worlds than there are grains of dust in this globe? the heart of a Borromeo, whose seraphic love expanded to the limits of sympathetic being? the soul of a Wycliffe, whose undaunted will, in faithful consecration to duty, faced the fires of martyrdom and never blenched? the genius of a Shakspeare, whose imagination exhausted worlds and then invented new? There is vast incongruity ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles drop a bow or curtsey as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle I can be content to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic doctor. ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... she so often wore about her round, full throat; the white frock, say, with arabesques of blue all over it, that Felix Kennaston said reminded him of Ruskin's tombstone; or that other white-and-blue one—decollete, that was—which I swear seraphic mantua-makers had woven out of mists and the skies of June: when I remember these things, I repeat, almost am I tempted to become a boot-maker and a lapidary and a milliner and, in fine, an adept in all the other arts and trades and sciences that go to make ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... archbishop, since he came back from his exile, has not ceased to wage war on this city. He demanded aid for arresting the religious of the seraphic father St. Francis, who preached in favor of the royal patronage; item, for arresting those who were ministering in Mariquina, the fathers of the Society; item, for seizing Father Cano; and all these acts proceed from the fury ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... him and his pursuit, and can faithfully and steadfastly follow these. These will lead him to victory; whoever it may be that sets him in the way of these,—were it Russian Autocrat, Chartist Parliament, Grand Lama, Force of Public Opinion, Archbishop of Canterbury, M'Croudy the Seraphic Doctor with his Last-evangel of Political Economy,—sets him in the sure way to please the Author of this Universe, and is his friend of friends. And again, whoever does the contrary is, for a like reason, his enemy of enemies. This may ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... plainer or less noticeable than her cap and gown, for there was no weakness of which she was less tolerant than feminine vanity, and the preference of ornament to utility. The family likeness between her and her niece Dinah Morris, with the contrast between her keenness and Dinah's seraphic gentleness of expression, might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion for a Martha and Mary. Their eyes were just of the same color, but a striking test of the difference in their operation was seen in the demeanor ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... O seraphic Sextum! continued Homenas, how necessary are you not to the salvation of poor mortals! O cherubic Clementinae! how perfectly the perfect institution of a true Christian is contained and described in you! O angelical ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... one—derived from seraphic heights, I should imagine! "There shall be only one love in a man's life, and it shall be directed only to ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... God on high; Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that tune the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Alcide exercises to silence by moral force the champion of physical force, that old soldier with a heart, that friend of this very young girl, whom he'll now go and tell that I have a heart of iron!—I, to play Napoleon when I ought to have been seraphic! Good heavens! True, I shall have my friend. Friendship is a beautiful thing. I have kept him, but at what a price! Six millions, that's the cost of it; we can't have many friends if we pay all that ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... she made, the faint golden radiance, a sort of angelic atmosphere hovering about her! Who could have passionate thoughts or wild desires in the presence of that swaying, white-clothed girl with the seraphic head? She played a thing of Schumann's called "Warum?" Then Halliday brought out a flute, and the spell was broken. After this they made Ashurst sing, Stella playing him accompaniments from a book of Schumann songs, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... never finished. Bonny's gaze, distracted from the colonel to his sister, glued itself to the lady's face, while the perplexity in the blue eyes changed to delight. With a seraphic smile upon her dainty lips, a smile that would have made her recognizable anywhere, under any disguise, the little creature propelled herself from Glory's arms to the outstretched arms of Miss Laura, ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... early and almost intuitive acquaintance with the mysteries of religion was wonderful. Every day she meditated on the Incarnation and the Passion of Jesus Christ; and her devotion to the Blessed Virgin increased in proportion to her love for our Lord. Her face flushed with delight, and a seraphic expression beamed in her eyes, when she spoke of the sufferings of Jesus, and the glories of Mary. From the little oratory where she held secret communion with heaven, she went out into the world with the most ardent desire to serve the poor, to console ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... Charles Eliot Norton, Edmund Quincy, Francis H. Underwood, Judge Hoar, J. Elliot Cabot, and others. Lowell and Holmes were the wits par excellence, though Judge Hoar did not fall far behind. Emerson sat always with a seraphic smile upon his face, and Longfellow thoroughly enjoyed every good sally, though not adding to the mirth-making himself. Dr. Appleton, who met Dr. Holmes at the ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... Franciscans were established by the munificence of their great patron, Henry III. Ralph le Porter granted a site of land in that part of the city where the street still retains the name of the founder of the Seraphic Order. In 1308 John le Decer proved a great benefactor to the friars, and erected a very beautiful chapel, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, in which he ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the Priest Whom greater honours do not hurt. Stand off and gaze, if more than this Be more than thou canst understand, Revering him whose power of bliss, Angelic, dares to seize her hand, Or whose seraphic love makes flight To the apprehension of her lips; And think, the sun of such delight From thine own darkness takes eclipse. And, wouldst thou to the same aspire, This is the art thou must employ, Live greatly; so shalt thou ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... the Madonnas and Cherubim of Raffaelle, it seems to shine out in still more truthful vividness from the brow of a young person rapt in religious ecstasy. The hands clasped in prayer,—the upturned eyes,—the expression of humble confidence and seraphic hope, (displayed, let me suggest, on a beautiful face,) constitute a picture of which, having witnessed it, I can never forget the force. Yet I knew it was only a trance. So one knows that village churches are built by common mechanics. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... criticism of any of the doctrines of Catholic piety was a sin to be expiated hardly even by months of penance: there was nothing sacred to his inquiries, from the authority of the Popes of Avignon to the stigma miracle of the Seraphic St. Francis. He was an enfant terrible; Revolutionist Rousseau had infected him; Victor Hugo the Excommunicate was his literary idol; hidden and forbidden sweets made their way by subterranean passages ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... heart-robbing, alluring, enticing; appetizing &c. (exciting) 824; cheering &c. 836; bewitching; enchanting, entrancing, enravishing[obs3]. charming; delightful, felicitous, exquisite; lovely &c. (beautiful) 845; ravishing, rapturous; heartfelt, thrilling, ecstatic; beatic[obs3]; beatific; seraphic; empyrean; elysian &c. (heavenly) 981. palmy, halcyon, Saturnian. Phr. decies repetita placebit[Lat]; "charms strike the sight but merit wins the soul" [Pope]; "sweetness and light" [Swift]; beauty is only ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to go forward; they enter the door,— And there, on the crowded and blood-tainted floor, Close wrapped in his blanket, lies Douglass:—his brow Wore never a look so seraphic as now! She stretches her arms the dear form to enfold,— God help her!..., she shrieks ..., it is silent ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... from its inhabitants. The two professors were in silent ecstasy. In their excitement they had unconsciously seized each other by the hand, and stood like two little children in the presence of a marvel, Challenger's cheeks bunched up into a seraphic smile, and Summerlee's sardonic face softening for the moment into ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... life and beauty, this gay glory and tremorous ecstasy and effort was here for moth-love of one incarnate fever of frail-winged loveliness! Oh! to what unguessed archangelic observation, to what infinite seraphic compassion, may not our own swarming race, who dare not too much pity ourselves, be but just such dainty ephemera! Splendid in purposes, intelligence, and affections as these in colors and grace, glorious when on the wing, and marvellous ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... such elegance of person, such tenderness and feeling as chastened the radiance of her countenance into something that might be termed absolutely divine; such symmetry of form; such harmony of motion; such a seraphic being in the shape of woman, he had, in fact, never seen or dreamt of. She seemed as if surrounded by an atmosphere of light, of dignity, of goodness, of grace; but that which, above all, smote him, heart on, the moment was the ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... high-water mark silently for weeks and know something about it. Had I bothered you with all my troubles you would, I respectfully submit, realize that your proposal is not simple but extraordinarily complicated, even pre-supposing seraphic dispositions on either side. If you determine finally that these two officers are to be independent, I foresee that you will greatly widen the scope of dual control which is now only applicable to my great ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... Matthew Arnold appear to have little or nothing in common. Francis was emotional, mystical, seraphic; Arnold was cultured, cold, and critical. Yet Francis threw an extraordinary spell over the scholarly mind of Arnold, and, dissimilar as were their lives, in death they were ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... answered nothing, nor even raised her eyes from the book! During the silence of some minutes that ensued, I had an excellent opportunity to feast my eyes upon the seraphic loveliness of her face, and the admirable proportions of her queen-like form. She was dressed with studied simplicity, and in a style half neglige, infinitely more fascinating than the most elaborate full dress. ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... lady's eyes, And will each accidental glance Interpret for a kind advance. But what success Vanessa met, Is to the world a secret yet. Whether the nymph, to please her swain, Talks in a high romantic strain; Or whether he at last descends To act with less seraphic ends; Or to compound the business, whether They temper love and books together; Must never to mankind be told, Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold. Meantime the mournful Queen of Love Led but a weary life above. She ventures now to leave the skies, Grown by Vanessa's conduct wise: ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... with a serene and heavenly light, so pure and bright, indeed, that I almost wonder his dazzled servants, sitting along the wall while he read and expounded that morning, did not respectfully petition that a veil, after the manner of Moses, might be suspended over the seraphic effulgence. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... rendered by Justansond, in his translation of the "Memoirs of Louis XV:"— "Tencin, a curse on thy seraphic zeal, Which by persuasion hath contrived the means To make the Scotchman at our altars kneel, Since which we all are poor as Capucines?] On the following day he was elected honorary churchwarden of the parish of St. Roch, upon which ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... mind you—no, no, I may be battered, my dear, but I am seasoned; I have great experience: you would not repent, and shall not, by the Face on the Handkerchief! But happen you see my master, happen he wear his brocade of white and gold—it is all peacocks' eyes, my seraphic heart, in gold and blue upon snowy white—happen again he look, 'Come' at you—why, off you trot as a hound to the platter, and I speed you thither with open heart. Thus walks his world, Guarino Guarini, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... fragments of his conversation have been preserved, the unquestioned judgements which his hearers loyally received. Of the Schoolmen he was contemptuous, with their honorific titles: 'doctor angelic, doctor seraphic, doctor subtle, doctor irrefragable.' 'Was Thomas (Aquinas) a doctor? So am I. Thomas scarcely knew Latin, and that was his only tongue: I have a fair knowledge of the three languages. Thomas saw Aristotle only as ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... knowledge of transmutation applied to the metals; so, doubtless, has many a visionary speculation of magic; so, again, has the ridiculous schwermerey of the Rabbis in particular ages. But those are as transient and even for the moment as partial titles as the titles of Invincible or Seraphic applied to scholastic divines. Out of this idea the truth grew, next ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... houris of an erotic paradise, elemental spirits of nature wantoning in Eden in her prime. To accuse the painter of conscious immorality or of what is stigmatised as sensuality, would be as ridiculous as to class his seraphic beings among the products of the Christian imagination. They belong to the generation of the fauns; like fauns, they combine a certain savage wildness, a dithyrambic ecstasy of inspiration, a delight in rapid movement as they revel amid clouds or flowers, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... story-teller!" cried Edgar. "I will buy season tickets for both your groups, if you will only make your limit of age include me. I am only five feet ten, and I 'll sit very low if you 'll admit me to the charmed circle. Shall you have a stage name? I would suggest 'The Seraphic Sapphira.'" ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... white, was bareheaded and barefooted. The dress, the action, the seraphic face were not infrequent on the water, and especially in the churches; recognition was instantaneous, and through the eager crowded ranks the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... not of a face that 's fair, Nor lip and cheek that 's red, Nor of the tresses of her hair, Nor curls in order laid, Nor of a rare seraphic voice That like an angel sings; Though if I were to take my choice I would have all these things: But if that thou wilt have me love, And it must be a she, The only argument can move Is ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... forms of light, Seraphic and divine, The painter's wand had summoned from The dim Ideal's shrine; And felt within my fevered soul Ambition's wasting fire, And seized the pencil with a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... never-dying torture.—They meanwhile, The caitiff and his puissant guide, on wing Impetuous, skirt creation's flaming waste, And suns innumerable, and with prone flight Descending down, light sheer upon the coast Of outmost Night. The guard seraphic knows. That power ministrant, —— —— and with quick despatch Unfolds the Stygian doors, that jarring hoarse Slow on their adamantine hinges turn'd, And open'd to their ken the dread abyss, Unfathomably deep, mother of woes. Not mountains pil'd on mountains would close up Th' infernal ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... prison's noisome shade; Where chain'd to earth, with eyes to heaven upturn'd, The kneeling Saint in holy anguish mourn'd;— Ray'd from his lucid vest, and halo'd brow 560 O'er the dark roof celestial lustres glow, "PETER, arise!" with cheering voice He calls, And sounds seraphic echo round the walls; Locks, bolts, and chains his potent touch obey, And pleased he leads ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... said Emmeline, who was seated on Paddy's shoulder, holding on tight to him, and gazing upon the island, the green of whose trees was now visible, an oasis of verdure in the sparkling and seraphic blue. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... stir. Starting up, he appeared to be astonished at the situation in which he found himself; but a glance around told the whole truth. Advancing toward Ghita, he was about to inquire after the welfare of Raoul, when, struck by the expression of her seraphic countenance, he turned to the body, and read the truth in the appropriate pall. It was no time for self-upbraidings, or for reproaches to others; but arousing the sleepers, in a subdued and respectful manner, he gave to the place the quiet and seeming sanctity ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... personified, and I've got you now." At which Isidro, pausing in the act of throwing a shell with the top of his head at another shell on the ground, looked up beneath long lashes in a smile absolutely seraphic. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... belonging to an animal never beheld by human eyes, even to the mingling contrasts of scales and wings, of feathers and hair. Through the combined lenses of science and imagination, we look back into ancient times, so dreadful in their incompleteness, that it may well have been the task of seraphic faith, as well as of cherubic imagination, to behold in the wallowing monstrosities of the terror-teeming earth, the prospective, quiet, age-long labour of God preparing the world with all its humble, graceful service for his unborn Man. ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... Surely, if any spot in the world be sacred, it is that in which grief ceases, and for which, if the voice within our hearts mocks us not with an everlasting lie, we spring upon the untiring wings of a pangless and seraphic life—those whom we love around us—our nature, universal intelligence, our ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... obeying the slightest signal of the jewelled hand. As that is her sacred pleasure, I have been inhabiting the most abstract realms of heroic sentiment, living on the most diluted moonshine, and spinning out elaborately all those charming and seraphic distinctions between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee with which these ecstatic creatures delight themselves in certain stages of affaires ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... contributed by a family of a deceased brother in the ministry, he says: 'I received the Spanish and British angels, equalling in number the Apostles, the Graces, and the Elements, with a supernumerary one of the Seraphic order.... I do not rejoice so much in them (although these commutable pieces of money are at present very useful to me) as I do at the renewing of the memory of my deceased friends, and the prospect of our friendship being perpetuated in their posterity, who have given ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... the lot of thousands of innocent men and women at the hands of Philip's soldiers in a country at peace with Philip, at the very moment when that monarch was protesting with a seraphic smile on his expiring lips that he had never in his whole life done injury ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... by him was brought forth what he possessed in the spirit). And he told me further concerning this: that where the universal or general love is born in any one, such would be the true signature and token that this seraphic stone would there be formed and take to itself a bodily shape." (L. G. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... that night was perfect. Crayford fell into a seraphic mood. Beneath his hard enterprise, his fierce energies, his armor of business equipment, there was a strain of romance of which he was half-ashamed, and which he scarcely understood or was at ease with. That night it came rather ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... of this rest beyond the river that lit up the pale cheek of our dear, dying sister, with seraphic brightness and beauty. ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... it was easy to see that a prayer trembled on his lips. As a strain of music fades into silence, his tones fell away, fainter and fainter; and with the same seraphic light on his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... long are alight with mischief, were reverently closed, and as she haltingly uttered the words of the old, yet ever young child's prayer her rapt face, raised occasionally from her dimpled hands, took on an expression almost seraphic ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... us resume our correspondence, but let us speak out. We do not like each other, but we will write, each for his own amusement, setting everything down which may come into our heads. You will tell me your seraphic visions and revelations, and I will treat you with my profane adventures; you again will run into ecstasies upon the dignity of man, yea, and of woman; I into an ingenuous narrative of my various profanations; I hoping to make a convert of you, ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... one point to be urged in Baldy's defense that Mary never learned to allow for. Gin or no gin, the effect of contrast she presented to her surroundings in a place like this, her look of a seraphic visitor gone astray, would have given any one the impulse, at least, to rush to the rescue. To begin with, it was not possible to credit her with the twenty-five years she truly claimed; nineteen, in a soft colored ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... saw two Jews that met by chance, One old, stern-eyed, deep-browed, yet garlanded With living light of love around his head, The other young, with sweet seraphic glance. Around went on the Town's satanic dance, Hunger a-piping while at heart he bled. Shalom Aleichem mournfully each said, Nor eyed the other straight but ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... was the friend of God on high; Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... sees her. She sits in an old chair that he had often praised; her head rests upon her arm, her brow seems pensive; and in her other hand she holds a volume that she scarcely appears to read. Oh! may he gaze upon her for ever! May this celestial scene, this seraphic hour, never pass away. Bright stars! do not fade; thou summer wind that playest upon his brow, perfumed by her flowers, refresh him for ever; beautiful night be for ever the canopy of a scene so sweet and still; let existence glide away in gazing on yon delicate ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Snooks, a Sober, Serious, Staid, Seraphic, and Sentimental Sailoress, Solicited a Situation as Superior Saloon Stewardess on the Splendid Spanish Steamship Salamanca, and Straightway Stipulated with the Sprightly Supercargo to Slyly and Suddenly Sail Southward at Sunrise for Six Shillingsworth of Select ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... wrath of pedestrian poets like Mr. Ichabod Wright, and ferocious pedants like Professor Francis Newman, and conventional worshippers of such idols as Scott and Macaulay, when they found him poking his seraphic fun at the notion that Homer's song was like "an elegant and simple melody from an African of the Gold Coast," or at lines so purely ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... great sensation was when he got into the pulpit. The manner in which he dropped on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, and showed his beautiful rings was, as a young lady said behind me, simply seraphic. We understood his celebrity, from that moment—I wonder whether I can remember ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... her cheek to James, and assumed a seraphic expression while he lightly touched it with ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... of the alcove floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back, fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... source, I had heard of a Mexican priest whose life-springs seemed to be the soul-stirring impulses of the thirteenth century; who was devoted in soul and in body to the service of God and of his fellow-men; in whom, in a word, the seraphic spirit of St. Francis of Assisi seemed to live again. But by this way coming to such tangible evidence of the survival in the present time of forces which were born into the world six hundred years ago, my thoughts took a natural turn to my own especial interests; and, by perhaps ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... and sweep the lyre again With touch seraphic to a Saviour slain; A Saviour, worthy of sublimest verse, A Saviour's love too mighty to rehearse; The purest theme that ever fired the tongue, Gave life to genius,—harmony to song; Fill thy ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... the pitying Infant, the gentle Mother. The Gothic, on the contrary, is less timid, more captivated by the two other Persons and the Virgin; it is the home of less rigorous and more artistic Orders. Bowed shoulders are straightened, downcast eyes are raised, sepulchral voices become seraphic. It is, in fact, the expansion of the spirit, while the Romanesque symbolizes its repression. At least, to me, that is the interpretation of these styles," Durtal ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... hare-brained, fox-hunting Amazon—all that was shocking and unwomanly, but, at the same time, all that was bright, beautiful, entrancing, irresistible. His golden-haired ideal, with the azure eyes and seraphic smile was forgotten, and this gray-eyed enchantress, robed in white, crowned with ivy, dancing desperately the whole night long, set brain and heart reeling in the ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... wink As deep I go into the merit Of this and that distinguished spirit— His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink, As long I dwell on some stupendous And tremendous (Heaven defend us!) Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous Demoniaco-seraphic Penman's latest piece of graphic. Nay, my very wrist grows warm With his dragging weight of arm. E'en so, swimmingly appears, Through one's after-supper musings, Some lost lady of old years With her beauteous vain endeavor And goodness ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... what would Jorrocks' ghost be to this? Could anything be in better taste? Would I not be exposing myself to the chance of injuring my nervous system by interviews with such creatures as my last visitor, unless I decided at once? She gave me a seraphic smile, as if she knew what was passing in my mind. That smile settled the matter. "She will do!" I cried; "I choose this one;" and as, in my enthusiasm, I took a step toward her, I passed over the magic circle ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... began to play on her violin, and Sahwah's discontented thoughts took wing, and she went floating out on a magic sea of music, and sat with closed eyes drinking in those wild, seraphic melodies that flowed from Veronica's enchanted bow until it seemed as if it could be no mere violin making that music, it was the Angel Israel, playing on his own heart strings. As Sahwah sat and listened ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... Miss Morgan's melted heart shone upon her face. Through a seraphic smile she spoke: "It's apple pie, too, Henry—your kind." As she put the supper upon the table, she asked: "Did you have a good time at ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... simple substitution of quantity for value? Surely, X., you are hair-splitting a little in this instance, and mean to amuse yourself with my simplicity, by playing off some logical legerdemain upon me from the "seraphic" or "angelic" doctors. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the altar railing. What dreadful thing was I contemplating, what fearful temptation was assailing me, here under the light of the sanctuary lamp? I looked reproachfully at St. Stanislaus, as if that seraphic youth had betrayed my confidence. I suspected him of being too anxious to rid himself of the ambiguous trust imposed upon him without so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps he was secretly irked at the use to which his painted ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... daughter of the Gods, angel of Light, what seraphic visions thou dost weave for us in thy celestial loom! How beautiful and bright the star that blazes upon thy ethereal brow; yet alas! how oft obscured by the deadly vapors of Doubt and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... seraphic fall upon the ear, From shining ones around th' eternal gates: Glad that man's load of guilt may disappear, Infinite strength ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... while Hans enjoyed the sensation of being carried by somebody else, and lay upon the cushions smoking with a seraphic smile and addressing sarcastic remarks to the bearers, who fortunately did not understand them. Soon, however, he wearied of these novel delights and as he was still determined not to walk until he was obliged, climbed on to the roof of the litter, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... out their suns, and round each radiant goal, Orb over orb, compell'd their train to roll, Bade heaven's own harmony their force combine. Taught all their host symphonious strains to join, Gave to seraphic harps their sounding lays, Their joys to angels, and ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... easily ascertained relative to reprints of the acts of the canonisation of the Seraphic Doctor in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... gazed the more astounding was the impression. He gazed and then he did not gaze at all—it seemed like a profanation. The resemblance, once perceived, positively haunted him; stand where he might his eyes could see nothing but the seraphic head of Miss McCarty upon the unspeakable body of the amazon—and then ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... heart-robbing, alluring, enticing; appetizing &c (exciting) 824; cheering &c 836; bewitching; enchanting, entrancing, enravishing^. charming; delightful, felicitous, exquisite; lovely &c (beautiful) 845; ravishing, rapturous; heartfelt, thrilling, ecstatic; beatic^; beatific; seraphic; empyrean; elysian &c (heavenly) 981. palmy, halcyon, Saturnian. Phr. decies repetita placebit [Lat.]; charms strike the sight but merit wins the soul [Pope]; sweetness and light [Swift]; beauty is ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... often been made of Raphael's personal beauty. Only thirty-seven when he died, his seraphic beauty was ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... before the holy Madonna. She was an exquisite creature. Her head glowing in the sun shine, her feet hidden amid roses and broom-blossom, she rose, tall and fair, from a pale cloud of incense, like some seraphic apparition. Her hair, of velvet blackness, fell in curls half-way down her shoulders; her brow, white as alabaster and polished as a mirror, reflected the rays of the sun; her beautiful and finely arched black eye-brows melted into the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... flower of life is red; Her flesh was the soft, seraphic screen Of a soul that is meant (her parents said) To just see earth, and hardly be seen, And blossom in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... music. It is necessary to keep in mind this plan of the poet lest thinking the lovely lights, and lovely sounds and lovely movements are only terms descriptive of physical, though impalpable phenomena, we lose the deep and beautiful symbolism that is the magic secret of the seraphic poesy of the Paradiso. Of the brilliancy and movement of the spirits of the Sphere of Venus—spirits who in this life failed in Christian ideals because of their amours, Dante says, and his description is that of an expert musician distinguishing between ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... the voices of the angelic seraphims, and this could not be done by the rasping bass voices of the well-fed monks; women were out of the question in the then social stage of church evolution; so that at last a compromise was effected by admitting the eunuch, who could chant in a most seraphic soprano, as his prototype, the mendicant priests of Cybele, had done ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... boars from Hesse Darmstadt; wild boars from Egypt; bush pigs from Africa; peccaries from South America; and two painted pigs from West Africa; all "de grege porci," and in excellent health: to say nothing of two hippopotamuses; four "seraphic" giraffes; antelopes (we did not number them); brush turkeys from Australia; an apteryx from New Zealand; the curious white sheathbills from the South Seas; the refulgent metallic green and purple-tinted monaul, or Impeyan pheasant, strutting with outspread, light-coloured tail, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various |
