"Shapely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of his lively fancy had died out of his face, that the speech of Uriel and Ianthe took a tenderer tone for fear of disturbing him. Presently, too, their hands came together, and—such was the swift sympathy between these shapely creatures—did not dispart. And suddenly, kindled to passion by her warm touch and breathing presence, stabbed with the fear that this was the last time he would see her, he told her that for the first time in his life he knew ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... accessible to any but the sheep and goats that fed upon its sides, and there, stood a mound of green, sloping and tapering off so delicately, and merging so gently into the level ground, that you could scarce define its limits. Hills swelling above each other; and undulations shapely and uncouth, smooth and rugged, graceful and grotesque, thrown negligently side by side, bounded the view in each direction; while frequently, with unexpected noise, there uprose from the ground a flight of crows, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... in a vein of eulogy. Lynde loved Flemming; but Flemming as a topic of conversation possessed no particular advantage over landscape. Miss Denham had never looked so lovely to Lynde as she did this day; he was glad to get her again in that closely fitting drab travelling-dress, laced up to the shapely white throat. A sense of great comfort had stolen over him the two or three times when she had sunk back in the carriage cushions and let her eyes dwell upon him contemplatively for a moment. He was ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... fly and drop—a rough, brutal business it seems at first, the hewing off great masses of stone, so firmly compacted, fused and concreted together. At first it seems unintelligible enough; but the dints become minuter and minuter, here a grain and there an atom, till the smooth and shapely limbs begin to take shape. At first it seems a mere bewildered loss, a sharp pang as one parts with what seems one's very self. How long before the barest structure becomes visible! but when one once gets a dim inkling of what is going on, as the stubborn ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... than once to peep at the light green shoes with secret misgivings as to their appropriateness. The wool stockings made them such a tight fit that they pinched considerably, but the pinching was more than compensated for by the shapely appearance of her trim little feet. Besides there was a vast amount of satisfaction to the wilful child in the mere knowledge that she was having ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... drifted on. Archy was become a handsome, shapely, athletic youth, courteous, dignified, companionable, pleasant in his ways, and looking perhaps a trifle older than he was, which was sixteen. One evening his mother said she had something of grave importance ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... "Weapon shapely, naked, wan, Head from the mother's bowels drawn, Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one, Gray blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown, Resting the grass amid and upon, To be ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... Ymir saw Audhumla breathe upon a cliff of ice and lick with her tongue the place she breathed on. As her tongue went over and over the place he saw that a figure was being formed. It was not like a Giant's form; it was more shapely and more beautiful. A head appeared in the cliff and golden hair fell over the ice. As Ymir looked upon the being that was being formed he ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... indeed a changed and chastened Ned, to all outward appearance, that entered meekly with the pedagogue a few minutes later. His tread was so soft, his demeanour so tame, that one would scarce have known him but for a second look at his shapely face and burly figure. The face was now somewhat hollowed out, darkened, lined, and blotched; and elongated with meek resignation. His clothes—claret-coloured cloth coat and breeches, flowered waistcoat, silk stockings, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... my Israelitish princess—my Mary!" he exclaimed with all the interest she had not shown. "Draw up thy skirt for with my own hand would I fit it to thy white and shapely ankle," and his narrow black eyes shone with the ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... Person it behoves me now to speak. In the year 1660, he appeared to be about seven-and-thirty years of age, tall, shapely, well-knit in his limbs, which captivity had rather tended to make full of flesh than to waste away; for there were no yards, nor spacious outlying walls to this Castle; and but for a narrow ledge that ran along the surrounding border, and where he was but rarely suffered to walk, there ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... shutter fell full upon her rebellious little figure. She had stiffened herself in a large easy-chair into the attitude in which she had been evidently deposited there by the nurse whose torn-off apron she still held rigidly in one hand. Her shapely legs stood out before her, jointless and inflexible to the point of her tiny shoes—a POSE copied with pathetic fidelity by the French doll at her feet. The attitude must have been dreadfully uncomfortable, and maintained only as being replete with some vague insults to the person who had put ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... chagrin in his heart, remembered that Anita had probably seen him standing in the passage-way of Lawrence's quarters, with Mrs. Lawrence's shapely hand on his shoulder. He remained calm and smiling, nevertheless, and exerted to the utmost his power to please. But Anita remained calm and smiling, and maddeningly aloof. Broussard, inwardly cursing himself, made up his mind to have it ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... Tall and shapely is the Deathcup; beautiful to look upon and smelling like a mushroom. But beware of it, a very little is enough, a morsel of the cup; the next night or maybe a day later the poison pangs set in. Too late perhaps for medicine to help, and Amanita, the Deathcup, the child ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... stood silent. She gazed at the long high hull of the steamer, she looked up at the black smokestack, and at the masts which ran up so shapely and so far, and her soul rose higher than it had been uplifted even by the visions of the future ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... straw comes up to the very jambs of the richly carved Norman doorway of the church. Or sometimes 'tis a splendid collegiate church, untouched by restoring parson and architect, standing amid an island of shapely trees and flower-beset cottages of thatched grey stone and cob, amidst the narrow stretch of bright green water-meadows that wind between the sweeping Wiltshire downs, so well beloved of William Cobbett. Or some new-seen and yet familiar cluster of ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... air; And here, within our winter palaces, Mimic the glorious daybreak." Then she told How, when the wind, in the long winter nights, Swept the light snows into the hollow dell, She and her comrades guided to its place Each wandering flake, and piled them quaintly up, In shapely colonnade and glistening arch, With shadowy aisles between, or bade them grow Beneath their little hands, to bowery walks In gardens such as these, and, o'er them all, Built the broad roof. "But thou ...
— The Little People of the Snow • William Cullen Bryant
... mother, politely listened to her scandalous budget of gossip, shook hands cordially with her big, handsome daughter, Catharine, a strapping girl, with the shyly honest eyes of her brother and the rather heavy but shapely body and limbs of an indolent Juno. A harsh voice pronounced his name; old Mr. Tappan extended a dry hand and bored him through with eyes like holes burnt in ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... Gilbert's letter tonight, Anna?" asked Alma Williams, standing in the pantry doorway, tall, fair, and grey-eyed, with the sunset light coming down over the dark firs, through the window behind her, and making a primrose nimbus around her shapely head. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... an angel!" said Giles, pushing nearer where stood a maid young and shapely, trembling in the close grasp of one Gurth, a ragged, red-haired giant, whose glowing eyes stared lustfully upon ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... LA VALLIERE was tall, shapely, and extremely pretty, with as sweet and even a temper as one could possibly imagine, which eminently fitted her for dreamy, contemplative love-making, such as one reads of in idyls and romances. She would willingly have spent her life ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... at the shapely brig with a lively curiosity, as if here was something really interesting. Presently a boat splashed into the water and was tied alongside the vessel while a dozen of the crew tumbled in to sprawl upon ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... extraordinary beauty and lustre. He wore a small black velvet cap, but his white hair latterly touched his shoulders in curls almost as flowing as in his boyhood. His extremities were delicate and well-formed, and his leg, at his last hour, as shapely as in his youth, which showed the vigour of his frame. Latterly he had become corpulent. He did not excel in conversation, though in his domestic circle he was garrulous. Everything interested him; and blind, and eighty-two, he was still ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... tired." I look sideways at the boyish face. He is German, I think to myself, making a mental note of his complexion, strangely fair for a yachtsman the eyes—heavily fringed blue eyes—the full-lipped, sensuous mouth, shapely of its kind, shadowed ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... be imagined than was shown by these almost inseparable friends. Alcibiades was tall, shapely, remarkably handsome, fond of showy attire and luxurious surroundings, full of animal spirits, rapid and animated in speech, and aristocratic in sentiment; Socrates short, thick-set, remarkably ugly, careless in ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... smiled her thanks, then she pushed and shook and crammed the sawdust in place, taking a childlike eager interest in seeing the limp form grow shapely and firm. This done, she consented to take luncheon and a nap, after which Miss Drayton brought Anne to make her acquaintance. When Mrs. Patterson sent them out "for a whiff of fresh air," she thrust into her sister's hand a workbag with frilly white things ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... become a part of it, in fact;—"Paul," said she, earnestly enough, "you're an awfully good fellow, and I like you so much; I shall always like you; but if you had been fool enough to propose to me I should have despised you. Shake!" And she extended a most shapely hand that clasped his warmly and firmly. While he still held ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... to come. She would feel better afterward! June stroked the short hair of that shapely head; and all the scattered mother-sense in her focussed itself and passed through the tips of her fingers into the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... We rejoiced in such a pretty and distinctive ornament to our garden, and never troubled ourselves about the desecration; and certainly ours was one of the most delightful gardens that ever existed, what with green turf, bright flowers, shapely shrubs, and the grand beech-trees enclosing it with their stately white pillars, green foliage, and the russet arcades beneath them. The stillness was wonderful to ears accustomed to the London roar—almost a new sensation. Emily was found, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... taken his way above stairs to the room set apart for him. He dined to his satisfaction, and thereafter, his shapely, silk-clad legs thrown over a second chair, his waistcoat all unbuttoned, for the day was of an almost midsummer warmth—he sat mightily at his ease, a decanter of sherry at his elbow, a pipe in one hand ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... however, by no means the most shapely or the biggest personages who endure hardship the best. Some very shabby-looking men have extraordinary stamina. Sickly-looking and puny residents in towns may have a more suitable constitution for the special conditions of their lives, and may in some sense be better knit and ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... equal; and the round shoulders and neat waist, that an hour ago had been so fatal to the peace of mind of Four Forks, had utterly disappeared. The face above it was very pretty: the foot below, albeit shapely, was not small. "The flowers, as a general thing, don't raise their heads MUCH to look after me," she had said with superb frankness to ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... have a respite, and may clothe ourselves in white garments; loose, soft, and in some degree shapely; but in the winter—the sombre winter, the depressing winter, the cheerless winter, when white clothes and bright colors are especially needed to brighten our spirits and lift them up—we all conform to the prevailing insanity, and go about in dreary black, each man ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... style. In height about five feet ten, broad-shouldered, clean-built, a model of strength, agility, and grace. His face fair, fresh, and healthy-looking; his large eyes hazel; the crisp curling hair on his shapely head a wonderful brown in the mass, but with one thin streak of gold above the forehead, and all the loose hairs glittering golden. A short clipped mustache saved him from looking too feminine, yet did not hide his expressive mouth. He had white ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Hwa-mei generously; "nor is a locked door any obstacle to your discovering eye. Let this arisement be submitted to a facile test. Dependent from my ill-formed ears are rings of priceless jade that have ever tinged your thoughts, while about your shapely neck is a crystal charm, to which an unclouded background would doubtless give some lustre. I will set aside the rings and thou shalt set aside the charm. Then, at a chosen time, this vaunted one shall attend before us here, and I having disclosed the ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... dream, O splendid bird! Me o'er the waters bear: Never was tranquil ocean stirred By ship so shapely fair! Nor ever whiteness found a dress In which on earth to go, So true, profound, and rich, unless It was ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... past the bloom of her cheek on to her shoulder. The lights in it blazed. From beneath the brim of her small tight-fitting hat her great grave eyes held mine expectantly. The stars in them seemed upon the edge of dancing. Her heightened colour, the poise of her shapely head, the parted lips lent to that exquisite face the air of an elf. All the sweet grace of a child was welling out of her maidenhood. Her apple-green frock fitted the form of a shepherdess. Her pretty grey legs and tiny feet were those of a fairy. Its very artlessness trebled ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... the rich red lips bent like a bow, the cruel smile of the mouth, the broad forehead on which the hair grew low, the delicately arched eyebrows and the long curving lashes of the heavy lids beneath them, the rounded cheeks, smooth as a ripe fruit, the firm, shapely chin, the snake-like poise of the head, the long bending neck, and the feline smile; all of these combined made such a dream-vision as he had never seen before, and to tell the truth, notwithstanding its beauty, for that could not be doubted, never wished to see again. Somehow he felt ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... obverse of the medals struck for the Duke Cosimo for their wedding, twelve years before, the Signora is represented as a finely-developed woman, with the proud profile of a true daughter of Florence, a high brow, a shapely nose, full cheeks, and a dimpled chin. Her attire is rich, she wears costly jewels, and her hair is ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... he was a slave and much wiser than his masters, but whether he was a fine, shapely man or a hunchback and a cripple we cannot be sure, for different people have written very ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... now that I had, on the whole, seen very little of her. What I remember best is the even, olive pallor of her complexion, and the intense blue-black gleams of her hair, flowing abundantly from under a small crimson cap she wore far back on her shapely head. Her movements were free, assured, and she blushed a dusky red. While Jim and I were talking, she would come and go with rapid glances at us, leaving on her passage an impression of grace and charm and a distinct suggestion of watchfulness. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... him she would wed and none else. And when her father saw how resolute she was, he gave a formal consent in their fashion, that she should marry whom she list and when she list. The lady was so tall and muscular, so stout and shapely withal, that she was almost like a giantess. She had distributed her challenges over all the kingdoms, declaring that whosoever should come to try a fall with her, it should be on these conditions, viz., that if she vanquished ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... dark, shapely cloud, stood that reflected being in the sky; for several minutes it remained thus, and though Wagner could trace no particular outline of features, yet it seemed to him as if the female were standing in a pensive attitude. But as the twilight gradually ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... lips, the startled, searching scrutiny of a pair of eyes from which, for a moment, all the languor and coquetry of her trade were gone. Then she passed him, smiling again, nodding, sweeping a hand and arm effectively through her handsome curls as she flung a shapely limb over the broad back of the bear. In a garish sort of way the woman was beautiful, and this night, as on all others, her beauty had nearly filled the silken coin-bag suspended from her neck. As she rode down the street Aldous recalled Blackton's words: ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... on the floor now, and the baby, still roaring, had rolled on to its face on the ground beside her. Still she took not the smallest notice of it; she laid one shapely hand on the small of its back, as if to make sure it was there, and continued her conversation tranquilly with Morley. How she could hear what he said I could not tell. I could hear nothing but the appalling row ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... revolutionary party one moment as of a perfectly disciplined army, where the word of chiefs was supreme, and at another as if it had been the loosest association of desperate brigands that ever camped in a mountain gorge. Once Mr Verloc had opened his mouth for a protest, but the raising of a shapely, large white hand arrested him. Very soon he became too appalled to even try to protest. He listened in a stillness of dread which resembled the immobility of ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... which binds the slender zone Of fair Aurora, daughter of the Dawn. Deep eyes more tender had no timid fawn; Of perfect form was every graceful limb; The tapering flank symmetrical and slim, The head erect, the nostril fine of curve, The shapely shoulders flawless, and the swerve Of stately neck a marvel to behold. This was the stag a woodland nymph of old To swift Diana gave, remembering she Had been her friend in dire extremity. This stag it was that brave ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... always in pairs, but often of unequal height. Some have professed to see in them the emblem of Amen, the Generator; or a finger of the god; or a ray of the sun. In sober truth, they are a more shapely form of the standing stone, or menhir, which is raised by semi-civilised peoples in commemoration of their gods or their dead. Small obelisks, about three feet in height, are found in tombs as early as the Fourth Dynasty. They are placed to right and left of the ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... dress—the thing had mere straps over the shoulders—an all but discarded vanity of pre-war days. I had never before noticed what beautiful arms she had. Perhaps in her girlhood, when I had often seen her in such exiguous finery, they had not been so shapely. I have told you already of the softening touch of her womanhood. An exquisite curve from arm to neck faded into the shadow of her hair. She had a single string of pearls round her neck. The fatigue of last week's night duty had cast an added spirituality ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... like snow even against her white and gold-embroidered 'kaf', or toga. And as for her sweet face, all I can say is, that it was one that few men could look on and forget. Her hair, a veritable crown of gold, clustered in short ringlets over her shapely head, half hiding the ivory brow, beneath which eyes of deep and glorious grey flashed out in tender majesty. I cannot attempt to describe her other features, only the mouth was most sweet, and curved like Cupid's bow, and over the whole countenance there shone ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... a conflict of strong emotions. Sore beset, he forced them all aside for the moment and yielded only to a grateful wonder as he looked upon his pretty mother with her lap full of spring flowers. For the first time in their acquaintance her shapely ear was not waiting to receive, nor her refined lips to reject, his usual rough apologies. Her tone of resignation was almost playful as she said that the first news of his return had come to her through ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... at me!" she pleaded. "That's what I've wanted 'ee to do all along. Take my hands: they'm shapely to look at and strong ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... on her. She was a handsome girl, and there was plenty of excuse for the male youth of Birralong losing their hearts to her. She was both tall and well formed, with a figure that made her look like a Venus posing as a bush-bred girl. The wealth of glorious hair surmounted a shapely head, and although her features were not of classical regularity, there was character in every one, and character that was pleasing to the masculine eye, albeit it savoured strongly ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... her eyebrows and eyelashes, which were darker than her hair. And she wore high corsets, because her bosom, although firm, was inclined to be over-flowing. The bodice of her dress fitted closely and emphasised what was still a very shapely figure. She was what would be called a fine woman. Her eyes were full and clear; her lips were well-moulded; her teeth, rather protruding, were unimpaired. Sally was filled with renewed envy of her personal advantages. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... the Bloodhound, but long from the apex to the frontal bones, eyebrows very prominent, cheeks cut clean from the eye to the nostril, ears set low and in their natural condition thin and shapely, but not large, nose large, jaw strong and level, and small dewlaps, expression fierce, and with the best often repellent. EYES—Very bright and deeply set, full of determination, and with a very steady expression. The look of the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... heard whispering below. Then a head was thrust out of the window—a woman's head, soft haired and shapely. "Here I am," I whispered. The head twisted round, and the face was that of the young woman who had received the messenger at the postern the day before. But it was clear that she had not been sobbing, though her face wore ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Dawtie threw her shapely arms above her head—straight up, her head fell back, and she seemed to gaze into the unseen. Then she gave a gasp, her arms dropped to her sides, and she would have fallen had ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... unhappy captives into the holds of their ships, to carry home as evidence of the reality of their discoveries, and to be sold as slaves. These savages are described by those who saw them in Portugal as of shapely form and gentle manner, though uncouth and even dirty in person. They wore otter skins, and their faces were marked with lines. The description would answer to any of the Algonquin tribes of the eastern coast. Among the natives seen on the coast there was a boy who had in ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... handkerchief round her neck, and without a word, showed me her right breast. I looked at and examined it carefully—she and James watching me, and Rab eyeing all three. What could I say? there it was, that had once been so soft, so shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful, so "full of all blessed conditions,"—hard as a stone, a centre of horrid pain, making that pale face with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet resolved mouth, express the full measure of suffering ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... dimmed her appreciation for the little turquois and pearl affair which adorned her finger, and at which handsome Harry Langdon had glanced so contemptuously only the evening before, and then down at the elegant monogrammed diamond ring which glistened on his own white, shapely hand. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... Italy is all "meridional" flourished for some time before being refuted by grumbling tourists. And yet amid this cold comfort you feel the incongruous presence of a constant intuitive regard for beauty. The shapely spring of the vaulted ceilings; the richly figured walls, coarse and hard in substance as they are; the charming shapes of the great platters and flagons in the deep recesses of the quaintly carved ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... there to pace around until their turn arrived. A few minutes later we saw the grooms leading them into the yard, encased from top to bottom as in a pillow-slip. Only the soft eyes were visible through the slit; and from below, the shapely feet that seemed wrought in steel. They were followed by Webb and our little home-bred Englishman, Jack Goose, in a new overcoat, which concealed his silks and jockey-boots. I called out to him through ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the remaining members of the party in the other. Isabel Bretherton had thrown off the wrap which she always carried with her, and which she had gathered round her in the cathedral, and it lay about her in green fur-edged folds, bringing her white dress into relief, the shapely fall of the shoulders and all the round slimness of her form. As Kendal took the stroke oar, after he had arranged everything for her comfort, he asked her if Oxford was what ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... arrangements were only worn by the gilded youth of a lower class, because I noticed that the chieftains and indunas, or headmen of the villages, never wore such frivolities. They wore indeed numerous slender rings of brass or silver wire on their straight, shapely legs, and also necklaces of lions' or tigers' claws and teeth round their throats, but these were trophies of the chase as well as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... and pausing beneath it, began to pick up the fallen fruit. . . . There were so many berries, each containing a shapely nut, that Honoria ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... snug-built man, sixty-two inches high, with small, shapely hands and feet. Towering above him stood this great, strange creature, barefooted, ragged, ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... rose in his saddle at this remark and spoke out sharp and strong, was the same pale-faced city lad who had come in the stage three years ago, homeless and friendless. The mountains had done wonders for him; the pallor had gone from his cheeks; the sun had tanned his shapely limbs; the wild life of nature and the still rougher world of humanity had roused all his temper and passion. Yet, withal, there was the touch of another world in his face. No stranger, at second view, would have taken him for a native born. He had known a different realm, and it had left its trace ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... cool, gray serge, and, a miracle here in this desert, it was touched here and there with immaculate white, how, after that cruel ninety miles, none but a woman might tell. A cool, gray veil was rolled about her hatbrim. Her hands, shapely and good, were gloved in gray. Her foot, trim and well shaped,—for even a desolate pariah might note so much,—was shod in no ultra fashion, but in good feminine gear with high and girlish heels, all ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... dying, and he was glad that she should not have to see or know the awful tragedy that was shortly to be enacted. He took her hand and raised it to his cracked and swollen lips. For a long time he lay caressing the emaciated, clawlike thing that had once been the beautiful, shapely white hand of ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... shirts, green sleeveless velvet coats, red plush knickers, silk stockings and shoes with scarlet bows, while the girls wore gay skirts, striped sashes, lace fichus, and aprons, and gold beads round their shapely throats. They danced several sprightly measures, waving tambourines and rattling castanets, or twining silk scarves together, while the musicians fiddled and strummed their hardest; then six of them stood ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... sea-swallows that with their sharp white wings even now were hovering round her. Built for use she was too, not merely to take the eye. Although small of size more bales of goods could be stowed away under her shapely decks than in many another larger clumsier vessel. Who should know this better than Robert, her maker, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... with fine, shapely prows as they dart over the smooth waters of the bays and rivers, these canoes present a picture of unrivalled ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... or red young tent-like, brutally masculine, knobby-sticked umbrellas, but a fair, lady-like parasol, which, being carefully rolled up, is carried handle foremost right in the middle of the head, also for dandy. Then a few strings of turquoise-blue beads, or imitation gold ones, worn round the shapely throat; and I will back my Igalwa or M'pongwe belle against any of those South Sea Island young ladies we nowadays hear so much about, thanks to Mr. Stevenson, yea, even though these may be wreathed with fragrant flowers, and the African ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... enkindled a roaring fire from the decayed and fallen branches of trees, and while his supper of venison broiled upon its embers, he flung himself upon the turf, wearied with his march. The Indian was a noble specimen of his race. His shapely limbs indicated the presence of extraordinary strength and activity. He was clad in a buckskin hunting-frock, handsomely ornamented with quills and feathers. His deer-skin leggins were fringed with the red-stained hair of some wild animal, and his neat ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Sheepfell. This Thorolf was a great hero, and in a very good position, and his kinsmen often went to him for protection. Vigdis had married more for money than high station. Thord had a thrall who had come to Iceland with him, named Asgaut. He was a big man, and shapely of body; and though he was called a thrall, yet few could be found his equal amongst those called freemen, and he knew well how to serve his master. Thord had many other thralls, though this one is the only one ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... later the poet sat by Geraldine's side—sweet proximity!—in the stern of one of Her Majesty's boats, while two "minions," as he was wont in verse to term his subordinates, rowed them towards a shapely barque that had just dropped anchor not ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that was almost a smile. What was it about her that had attracted Ditmar? No other man had ever noticed it. She had never thought herself good looking, and now—it was astonishing!—she seemed to have changed, and she saw with pride that her arms and neck were shapely, that her dark hair fell down in a cascade over her white shoulders to her waist. She caressed it; it was fine. When she looked again, a radiancy seemed to envelop her. She braided her hair slowly, in two long plaits, looking shyly in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cried to those who were present, "I will discover to you a favour as it were a full moon breaking forth from under a cloud-bank." They replied, "Do so;" whereupon he unveiled the damsel's face and behold, she was like the shining sun, with shapely shape and dawn-bright cheeks and thready waist and heavy hips; brief, she was endowed with an elegance, whose description is unfound, and was even as ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... low bodice of her dress Mrs Lambert wore a thick white kerchief, fastened close to the throat by a gold pin. On her arms she wore thick mittens, which reached the elbow of her short sleeves, and on her thin but shapely fingers she wore two or three ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... hurtful doubt, ashamed fear, and she steadied herself by the wall with hands that shook. She had stopped to put on a white gown that her father loved and her lustrous hair lay banded closely, a halo, about her shapely head. Her face looked like ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... Indians urge their horses down a steep, winding trail and arrive at the river's bank. Here they ford, follow the course of the stream for a while, and then at a bend reach an open flat dotted here and there with shapely live-oaks. In this park-like opening the long straggling line ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... that she was a charming little creature. The straight hair was as fine as silk, and hung in funny little braids down her back; there was not a flaw in her soft brown skin, and her mouth was tender and shapely. But her particular charm lay in a look which she habitually had, of seeming to know curious things—such as it is not allotted to ordinary persons to know. One felt tempted to say ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... of thee is simple brown, yet somewhat more golden than dark; and ah! now thou lettest it loose it waveth softly past thy fair smooth forehead and on to thy shoulders, and is not stayed by thy girdlestead, but hideth nought of thy knees, and thy legs shapely thin, and thy strong and clean-wrought ankles and feet, which are with thee as full of thine heart and thy soul and as wise and deft as be thy wrists and thine hands, and their very fellows. Now as to thy ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... widely in character and appearance. Some were well-grown, smooth-skinned, shapely, handsome fellows, others rough, short, and ugly; some apparently made of gold, others of common cheap stuff. Among them some were found with wings, and other strange variations; others again were like the mummers in a pageant, tricked out as kings or Gods ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... would have made a splendid racing yacht, though she had never participated in any of the yacht races either on the North American or British coasts. The height of her masts, the extent of the canvas she carried, her shapely, raking hull, denoted her to be a craft of great speed, and her general lines showed that she was also built to weather the roughest gales at sea. In a favorable wind she would probably make ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... fir-trees, oval faced, regular featured, fair skinned, blue eyed, and bright haired. During those long dreary hours, Edgar often beguiled the time with sketches of them, and the outlines—whether of chiselled profiles, shapely heads, or Cupid's-bow lips—were still almost exactly similar; yet it had become impossible to mistake one twin for the other, even when Alda had dressed the tresses on Wilmet's passive head in perfect ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I could pursue the question some one knocked at the door, and in answer to our herein! appeared a handsome, laughing face, and a head of wavy hair, which, with a tall, shapely figure, I recognized as those ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... indifferent towards them. He will then just as soon choose creatures that are irregular, ill-shapen, mischievous, unhappy, chaos everlasting, monsters everywhere, [431] scoundrels as sole inhabitants of the earth, devils filling the whole universe, all this rather than excellent systems, shapely forms, upright persons, good angels! No, the author will say, God, when once he had resolved to create men, resolved at the same time to give them all the advantages possible in the world, and it is the same with regard to creatures of other kinds. I answer, that if this advantage were connected ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... the taller one, he of the short trousers, was saying, as he dropped his shapely wrist over the iron arm of the bench, "the hardest thing for the individual, under the present system, is the arbitrariness of the assignments of life. The chief advantage of the Bellamy scheme seems to me to be in its harmonious ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... about nineteen years of age, a little above medium height, her form slight but almost perfect in its proportions. A wealth of hair, matching the color of her eyes, crowned a small, shapely head, and contrasted beautifully with a creamy complexion, the delicacy of which was relieved chiefly by the vivid scarlet of her lips. Her features were clear-cut and very attractive—at least so thought Miss ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... whom the shapely hand and musical voice belonged, conducted the student along the narrow passage to a turning where she halted, under a lamp with a reflector which threw them in that position into the shade. The passage was divided by the first lobby, and on the ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... beneath a burden of life, or to the pull of fate. He looked out musingly, and there was no hint of rebellion in the contours of the regular features. The hair was brushed back, soft and thick, straight from his fine brow. His nose was small and shapely, his chin rounded, cleft, rather beautifully moulded. Byrne gazed also at the photo. His ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... the life of a vine is devoted to developing a vigorous root system; the next two or three years to building up a shapely trunk and head, and a like period to forming the full complement of arms. At the end of from five to nine years the framework of the vine is complete and should undergo no particular change of shape except a gradual ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... mother is often very much concerned over the misshapen head of the child as a result of a prolonged labor; and it does seem quite miraculous to see a head, more nearly resembling an egg than anything else, become beautifully round and shapely by the end of two or ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... squatted that she might have been mistaken for a work of art carved in antique bas-relief. Lifting his eyes to heaven to implore a remedy for the misfortunes of the state, an old rat perceived this pretty mouse, so gentle and shapely, and declared that the State might be saved by her. All the muzzles turned to this Lady of Good Help, became silent, and agreed to let her loose upon the shrew-mouse, and in spite of the anger of certain envious mice, she was triumphantly marched around the cellar, where, seeing ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... meet across her bosom. Yet, odd as it might be, in this costume Eve looked wonderfully beautiful, perhaps because it was so scant and the leathern strap about her waist caused it to cling close to her shapely form. ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... and pledge thee in mine own liquor, and change a bit of my tender crane shot yesterday for a leg of thy goose." So saying, Standish smote the sailor upon his shoulder, and took his great paw into the grasp of a hand small and shapely, but of such iron grip that the burly fellow winced, and wringing ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Miss Grandiere, a tall, handsome and dignified maiden lady of about forty years of age. She had a shapely head, regular features, fair complexion, blue eyes and brown hair, brushed away from her forehead, and twisted into a roll on the top of ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... out Markham came forward, but Hermia waved him aside, and, going to the open window, stood silent, her head bent forward, her gaze fixed on Olga's diminishing back. It seemed more than usually shapely, that back, more than usually careless and disdainful. Her feet spurned the ground and tripped lightly among the grasses, her shoulders swinging easily, the feather in her hat nodding, mischievously defiant. After she had melted into the thicket, Hermia still ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... is drunk with sweetness, and I see now how great joy is sib to great pain!" He shook himself. "Come back to earth and daylight, Alexander Jardine!" He put a hand, large, strong, and shapely, over Mrs. Alison's slender ivory one. "She, too, has long fingers, though her hand is brown. But it is an artist hand—a picture ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... and sudden verdure rise; And start, amidst the thirsty wilds, to hear New falls of water murmuring in his ear. 70 On rifted rocks, the dragons' late abodes, The green reed trembles, and the bulrush nods, Waste sandy valleys, once perplex'd with thorn, The spiry fir, and shapely box adorn: To leafless shrubs the flowering palms succeed, And odorous myrtle to the noisome weed. The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead, And boys in flowery bands the tiger lead; The steer and lion at one crib shall meet, And harmless serpents lick the pilgrim's ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... frowzy gray; her coiffure was not a la Marcel, but as Letty described it, "all anyway." A short, stout, practical Frenchwoman, she had progressed beyond the need to consider looks, and no longer considered them. The two shapely subordinates with whom Steptoe had been negotiating followed her ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... average Spaniard. But this difference, marked though it was, was not so great as that between their cast of features and that of the negro; the features of these people were, for the most part, clean cut, shapely, and in many cases actually handsome, their noses especially being exceedingly well formed. Then their head covering was hair, not wool, that of the men being worn close-cropped, while the women allowed ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... have nice hands. It isn't size and color that counts; it's shape, and from an artist's standpoint you have shapely hands. Now will you be good, and shake hands with me in a perfectly ladylike ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... at Westbury, further down the line, represents a horse in a standing position. He reflects the utmost credit on his grooms; for not only are his shapely limbs "beautifully and wonderfully made," but the greatest care is taken of him. The Westbury horse is not in reality nearly so large as this one at Uffington, but he is a very beautiful feature of the country. I paid him a visit the other day, and was surprised ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... of the forenoon, as we were jogging along, I saw a deer standing just at the edge of the road and looking across it, as if in fear of its blazing publicity. It seemed for a moment as if he were an optical illusion, so beautiful, so shapely, and so palpitant was he. I had no desire to shoot him, but, turning to Burton, called in a low ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the mirror makes one vain, and it's wicked to be vain. One way in which Tippy guarded her against the sin of vanity was to mention some of her bad points, such as her mouth being a trifle too large, or her nose not quite so shapely as her mother's, each time anyone unwisely called attention ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... blown over these people for so many generations that it has left them bare as the hills. A playhouse for these people! What defiance of nature's law! And watching the shapely sods of turf melting into white ash I thought of the dim people building the playhouse, obedient to the priest, unsuspicious of a new idea. A playhouse must have seemed to them as useless as a road that ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... took off his hat again, showing his shapely head, with a line of wholesome sunburn ceasing where the recently and closely clipped hair began. He was dressed in a fine summer check, with a blue white- dotted neckerchief, and he had a white hat, in which he looked very well when he put it back on his head. His whole dress seemed very ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... behold a sprightly and enlivening ballet of shapely silken hosiery, fitting its sculptured models to perfection, ranging in tints from the first tender green of spring foliage to the rose-pink of the spring ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... clearly, had not been lost on the builder of this one. Its proportions had a homely grandeur. It was long and wide and low. It was quite a yard long. It had three admirable gables. It had a substantial and shapely chimney-stack. I liked the look that it had of honest solidity all over, nothing anywhere scamped in the workmanship of it. It looked as though it had been built for all time. But this was not so. For it was built on sand, and of sand; and the tide ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... words Reynolds told her all, and when he had ended she sat for some time lost in thought. Her right arm rested upon the table, and her sunbrowned, shapely fingers lightly pressed her chin and cheek. She was looking out of the window which fronted the lake, as if she saw something there. The young man, watching, thought he never saw her look more beautiful. Presently a tremor shook her body. Then ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... helmet was loosened with supple, nervous fingers, disclosing a face pale, strong and soulful. The face might have been that of a man—an artist, or a poet; but the hair, lying in loose, dusky waves about the brows, and low, in rich clinging coils at the back of the shapely head, could only belong ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... had gained something by the change from her outdoor attire to the clinging evening dress, but it was with characteristic unconcern that she disregarded the fact that the thin skirt fell well away from one shapely ankle effectively displayed by a stocking ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... these evidences of greatness that took hold upon my mind, even contrasted, as they were, with the present depopulation and decay of that great house. It was rather the parable of family life that I read in this succession of fair faces and shapely bodies. Never before had I so realised the miracle of the continued race, the creation and re-creation, the weaving and changing and handing down of fleshly elements. That a child should be born of its mother, that it should grow and clothe itself (we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... way of showing your gladness," commented the other drily, shrugging her shapely shoulders. "Why, I can hardly keep still. La-la-la-la! La-la-la-la! La-la-la!" She hummed the air of a Viennese waltz song, meanwhile whirling gracefully about with extended arms, her dress floating about ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... to you that he must have been sitting still for a considerable period. He was not stout—you might even have called him slender; but the muscles about his cheeks and chin hung a little loose from the bony framework, and his figure, shapely enough when he stood upright, yielded in a sitting posture to the pressure of the railway cushions. That indicated muscular tissue, once developed by outdoor exercise, and subsequently deteriorated by sedentary pursuits. The lines on his forehead suggested that he was now a brain-worker ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... Aucassin was the name of the damoiseau: fair was he, goodly, and great, and featly fashioned of his body and limbs. His hair was yellow, in little curls, his eyes blue-gray and laughing, his face beautiful and shapely, his nose high and well set, and so richly seen was he in all things good, that in him was none evil at all. But so suddenly was he overtaken of Love, who is a great master, that he would not, of his will, be a knight, nor take arms, nor follow ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... through the signal glasses, another sigh, and then she came, this girl of seventeen, in her dainty white frock, and plumped herself dejectedly down on the top step, with two very shapely, slender, slippered feet displayed on the second below, two dimpled elbows planted on her knees, two flushed, soft, rounded cheeks buried in two long and slender hands. Away over at the stables she could ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... ance was i' the foremost rank, A filly buirdly, steeve, an' swank, [stately, compact, limber] An' set weel down a shapely shank, As e'er tread yird; [earth] An' could hae flown out-owre a ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... caught her slender wrist, And held it so, crushed in his cruel fist; But proud she faced him, shapely head raised high. "Most loathed, my lord!" she, scornful, made reply. "For rather than I'd wed myself with thee, The wife of poorest, humblest slave I'd be, Or sorriest fool that tramps the dusty way—" "Ha! Dare thou scorn me so?" Sir Gui did say, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... very easily. Then he shapes his hull with knife and saw, according to the best of his ability. On this process the success of the whole undertaking depends. If the bottom is not cut perfectly true on both sides, if the bow is not shapely and even, if the stern is not rounded off and cut up in the orthodox fashion, his ship will never sail well, no matter how admirably he may execute the rest of his work. If there is a ship or boat builder's establishment anywhere within reasonable ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... air of authority which comes from long and recognised position. Her dressing-gown of pale blue flannel fell amply around her tall form; her white hair was still coiled and puffed in an elaborate fashion, and there was at the wrist-bands of her sleeves a fall of lace which half covered her long, shapely white hands. She was pinching its plaits mechanically, and watching the effect as she idly turned them in the firelight to catch the gleam of opal and amethyst rings. But this accompaniment to her thoughts was hardly a conscious ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... mute agony in the quiet eyes watching him, he would have tried to hide the disgust, the physical repulsion that showed itself so plainly in his face, in the involuntary movement with which he drew away from her. They were small and shapely with rounded curves, but raw and seared as with hot irons, with a growth of red, angry-coloured warts, and the nails all ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... in the history of literature, which is for the most part like the catalogue of a cabinet of deformities; the spirit in which they keep the longest is pigskin. We do not need to look there for the few who have been born shapely; they are still alive, and we come across them in every part of the world, like immortals whose youth is ever fresh. They alone form what I have distinguished as real literature, the history of which, although poor in persons, we ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... only a-feeling for your wings," returned Elizabeth in a droll voice, and then they both laughed, for this was a standing joke between them ever since Dinah had repeated poor old Becky Brent's speech, when the wrinkled hand of the blind and doited old creature had fumbled about her shapely shoulders. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... But presently came a sound of shots and then German soldiers running. They disappeared among the houses, and then came two engineers in blue shirts and trousers hotly pursued by three Japanese swordsman. The foremost of the two fugitives was a shapely man, and ran lightly and well; the second was a sturdy little man, and rather fat. He ran comically in leaps and bounds, with his plump arms bent up by his side and his head thrown back. The pursuers ran with uniforms and dark thin ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... already changed into a soldier's gray greatcoat, did not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired soldier, with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward from the ranks, went up to the commander ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... tatters, a pontiff in shabby small-clothes, solemn as a God, blesses the soil, more majestic than the bishop in his glory at Easter-tide." (11/9.) It is there that he finds his "Ideal," in the incense of the perfumes "which are softly exhaled from the shapely flowers, from their censers of gold," in the heart of all creatures, "chaffinch and siskin, skylark and goldfinch, tiny choristers" piping and trilling, "elaborating their motets" to the glory of Him ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... never lasted long: she would end by pretending that she had been mistaken; she would try to believe it, and for a moment or two would actually succeed in thinking her nose quite ordinary and almost shapely. Her instinct made her attempt, though very clumsily, certain childish tricks, a way of doing her hair so as not so much to show her forehead and so accentuate the disproportion of her face. And yet, there was no coquetry ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... service to you, do not hesitate to command me." He eyed her thoughtfully. Everything attached to her person suggested elegance. Her skin was as fine as vellum; her hair had a dash of golden bronze in it; her hands were white and shapely, and the horn on the tips of the fingers shone rosily. Now, what in the world was there to trouble a young woman who possessed these favors, who wore jewels on her fingers and sable on her shoulders? "Talk to me just as you would to a ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath |
