"Solemnity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rising with due solemnity, he proposed the health of the "worthy president," prefacing his speech with the modest avowal of his inability to do what he still persisted in ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... origin is not easy to trace; Hugo seems to be a corruption of the Cornish word fogou, meaning a cave. Johns, who wrote a very interesting book about the Lizard some sixty years since, said that "of all the caves that I have ever inspected, this wears the most perfect air of mysteriousness and solemnity. At the entrance it is large enough to admit a six-oared boat, but soon contracts to so small a size that a swimmer alone could explore it. Its termination is lost in gloom, but as far as the eye can discriminate ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... the worth and solemnity of what is at stake will be careless as to his progress. ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... Morning: we dined at Grantham, had the annual solemnity (this being the first time the coach passed the road in May), and the coachman and horses being decked with ribbons and flowers, the town music and young people in couples before us; we lodged at Stamford, a scurvy, dear town. 5th May: had other passengers, which, though females, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... her kind lessons and instructions, and Urad, with a decent solemnity, attended both her labours and her teacher, who was so pleased with the fruits which she saw spring forth from the seeds of virtue that she had sown in the breast of her pupil, that she now began to leave her more to herself, and exhorted ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... now compel by oppression to be enemies, may be wanted as friends. What has been, may be again. There is a point beyond which human endurance cannot go. The crushed worm may yet turn under the heel of the oppressor. I warn them, then, with all solemnity, and in the name of retributive justice, to look to their ways; for in an evil hour, those sable arms that have, for the last two centuries, been engaged in cultivating and adorning the fair fields of our country, may yet become the instruments of terror, desolation, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... and press themselves with remorseless vigour upon his understanding—original sin, justification by faith, eternal damnation for even honest error of belief,—doctrines that throw an atmosphere of solemnity, if not gloom, about national thought, in which no fairy mythology can flourish. It is no longer questions of material ease and gain that are of the chief concern; and consequently the fairies and their doings, from their own triviality, fall far into the background, and their ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... seen with grown-up eyes, since that day, of which the burden has been the same childish burden. Making game. Real affliction, real grief and solemnity, have been outraged, and the funeral has been 'performed.' The waste for which the funeral customs of many tribes of savages are conspicuous, has attended these civilised obsequies; and once, and twice, have I wished in my soul that ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... it, therefore, at all times in this enlightened land. And not only in the fleeting years of his existence, but equally when he lay down under the common hand of death. The dog, in those forgotten days, received embalmment, just as his master and mistress, and was then carried with some solemnity to the burial-ground that was set apart for dogs in every town. And when the last good-bye had been said, the family to which he had belonged returned again to their house, and put on mourning for their friend and faithful ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... the High Street, and at a certain spot where he would be sure in digging to find a "mallard, imprisoned but well fattened, in the sewer." He hesitated, but all whom he consulted advised him to make the trial, and accordingly, on a fixed day after mass, with due solemnity the digging began. They had not dug long, the story relates, before they heard "amid the earth horrid strugglings and flutterings and violent quackings of the distressed mallard." When he was brought out he ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... the low archway. Why did not he come out from it and give her some counsel as to the future? There she stood looking out of the window till she was called by her aunt's voice—"Linda, Linda, come down to me." Her aunt's voice was very solemn, almost as though it came from the grave; but then solemnity was common to her aunt, and Linda, as she descended, had not on her ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... poor Tetty was taken from me. My thoughts were disturbed in bed. I remembered that it was my wife's dying day, and begged pardon for all our sins, and commended her; but resolved to mix little of my own sorrows or cares with the great solemnity. Having taken only tea without milk I went to church; had time before service to commend my wife, and wished to join quietly in the service, but I did not hear well, and my mind grew unsettled and perplexed. Having rested ill in the night I slumbered ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... feet, holding themselves together, and the girls and younger children sat stupefied in the positions they had held when coming down the hill, from the throats of the latter going up the lively wail referred to. Billy looked across at Jack and grinned again, this time with great solemnity, and Jack himself looked just ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... making twisted colours upon the waves, elongated or squat, as the waves stretched or humped themselves. The beam from the lighthouse strode rapidly across the water. Infinite millions of miles away powdered stars twinkled; but the waves slapped the boat, and crashed, with regular and appalling solemnity, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the universe; it is not a human invention, but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aristophanes or Shakspeare. How curious it is that we always consider solemnity and the absence of all gay surprises and encounter of wits as essential to the idea of the future life of those whom we thus deprive of half their faculties and then call BLESSED! There are not a few who, even in this life, seem to be ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Cortona pictures, is that of the angel's visit to Mary. Its motive is simple and clear, as it was transmitted from early Christian art; the general lines are unchanged, but the expression greatly so. Fra Angelico did not disturb the religious solemnity of the apparition with useless accessories; faithful to his own sentiment, he has clothed Mary with humility. She sits beneath the portico, the book neglected on her lap, her hands crossed, and her drooping head inclined ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... the context of other lines; you cannot take it abstractly with entire truth. It is, however, possible to find verbal equivalents for the character of the main types of lines. Horizontal lines convey a feeling of repose, of quiet, as in the wall-paintings of Puvis de Chavannes; vertical lines, of solemnity, dignity, aspiration, as in so much of the work of Boecklin; crooked lines of conflict and activity, as in the woodcuts of Durer; while curved lines have always been recognized as soft and voluptuous and tender, as in Correggio and Renoir. The supposition that the curved ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... court-yard of Fort Garry harmonised with the cheerful spirit of the morning. Tom Whyte, with that upright solemnity which constituted one of his characteristic features, was standing in the centre of a group of horses, whose energy he endeavoured to restrain with the help of a small Indian boy, to whom meanwhile he imparted a variety of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... feet high, as he later learned, supported a metal framework upon which squatted two men and the driver of the monstrosity. With the ponderous solemnity of a tank it came ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... there in the old ungolden times had had their own joys, their own sorrows, apart from the joys and sorrows of the multitude: so, in like manner, was it now cloistered off from the eager leaning and brotherhood of the golden dwellings: so now it had its own gaiety, its own solemnity, apart from theirs; unchanged, and changeable, were its marble walls, whatever ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... settlements and compromises among parties, made at the expense of justice and true policy. But this act of 1780, not properly distinguishing judicial process from executive arrangements, requires in effect nearly the same degree of solemnity, delay, and detail for removing a political inconvenience which attends a criminal proceeding for the punishment of offences. It goes further, and gives the same tenure to all who shall succeed to vacancies which was given to those whom the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... October 27th, Queen Margaret died on board a ship in the harbor of Flensburg, at the age of fifty-nine, after an active and notable reign of thirty-seven years. Her funeral was attended with the greatest solemnity, and her corpse was brought to the Cathedral of Roeskilde, where Eric of Pomerania, her successor, in 1423, caused her likeness to be carved in alabaster. Her acts show her character. She displayed judiciousness united with circumspection; wisdom in devising plans, and perseverance in executing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... this solemnity, declare your investiture into that office, solemnly charging you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of his Church, who walks in the midst of his golden candlesticks, with eyes as of a flame of fire, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... state of heart, without prayer, without true repentance, without faith, without knowledge of the plan of salvation, I was confirmed, and took the Lord's supper, on the Sunday after Easter 1820. Yet I was not without some feeling about the solemnity of the thing, and I stayed at home in the afternoon and evening, whilst the other boys and girls, who had been confirmed with me, walked about in the fields I also made resolutions to turn from those vices in which I was living, and to study more. But as I had no regard to God, ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... much solemnity. The masculine character of the mind of Sophia had rendered her particularly attached to the grace of action. When she drank the health of any of her guests, she accompanied it with a most profound conge. When she invited them to partake of any dish, she ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... short, fat, and dressed with great neatness and taste. He had a short black moustache, a head nearly bald, and a round chubby face with small smiling eyes. He was a Chinovnik, and held his position in some Government office with great pride and solemnity. It was his chief aim, I found, to be considered cosmopolitan, and when he discovered the feeble quality of my French he insisted in speaking always to me in his strange confused English, a language ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... of architecture that I have ever seen has so impressed me with its intrinsic gravity, and I may say solemnity, as that of the Norman. There is a serious earnestness in its grave simplicity that has a peculiar influence upon the mind; and I have little doubt that this was felt, and understood by those true ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... happiness as with light. At last she knew that she was loved, that the things he said when they met on the marshes were not said as they had been when she was a child, and that there had lately been solemnity throned in his eyes' levity. He made no motion for her to come down, nor when Tom turned his head again did he throw any furtive look at the window. It was enough for him to have seen her; and soon he went away with bent head followed ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... after high mass had been performed with the greatest solemnity of which circumstances rendered the ceremony capable, and after the most repeated and fervent prayers had been offered to Heaven by the crowded assembly, that preparations were made for appealing to the direct judgment of Heaven on the mysterious ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... a salver, and laid on the salver was one of Jan's lavender bags. He presented it solemnly to his master, who with almost equal solemnity ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... dangling from it, an ancient marriage symbol, was thrust into the opening at her breast. Her head was covered with a curious white cap like the "luggage" of Christmas crackers. She was seated rigidly at the edge of her uncomfortable chair; and her personality seemed to be overpowered by the solemnity of the occasion. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... had a fan-like shield of silver to be used as a shade on one side, bearing the arms of the Braccio family in high boss, and attached to the oil vessel by a movable curved arm. The furniture of the room was very simple, but there was nevertheless a certain ecclesiastical solemnity about the high-backed, carved, and gilt chairs, the black and white marble pavement, the great portrait of his Holiness, Gregory the Sixteenth, in its massive gilt frame, the superb silver crucifix which stood on the writing-table, and, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... warranted him in maintaining that the King had an absolute right to direct the forms of the ceremonial to be used on such an occasion, and he declared that he would not allow the Queen to take any part in the solemnity or even to be present during its performance. The Queen wrote letters to the King which she sent to him through his Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool. George sent back the letters unopened to Lord Liverpool, with the announcement that the King would read ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... said, turning to Chrysler, who rose and advanced to him surprised. Haviland took him, and passing over to De La Lande, placed the hand of the Ontario gentleman in that of the high-spirited schoolmaster, who accepted it, puzzled. "There!" cried Haviland, raising his voice to a pitch of solemnity. "Say whatever you can in that position. That is the position of ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... retained still many of the terms and names belonging to religion. They remained, but they remained only such as they could be when the departing spirit of that religion was leaving them void of their import and solemnity, and so rendered applicable to purposes of deception and mischief. They were as holy vessels, in which the original contents might, as they were escaping, be clandestinely replaced by the most malignant preparations. ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... the breezy background of blue sky and sea, contrasting as strangely with the dark solemnity of the other portraits as did the figure itself in its incongruous sailor dress, the face of the eighth baronet looked down in melancholy gravity upon the group gathered in judgment ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... to suggest an hypothesis, as regards this latter point, I saw something that made me rise, with a certain solemnity, from my chair. This was nothing less than the neat little figure of Mrs. Church—a perfect model of the femme comme il faut—approaching our table with an impatient step, and followed most unexpectedly in her advance by the pre-eminent form of Mr. Ruck. She ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... are fictions beneficial only to women and the vulgar; yet, since they are the objects of the national superstition, it is needless to procure one's self disfavour by openly deriding them. It will therefore be better for the sage to treat them with apparent solemnity, or at least with outward respect, though he may laugh at the imposition in his heart. As to the fear of death, he will be especially careful to rid himself from it, remembering that death is only a deliverer from ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... a magician, who promised to transport them thither in a trice. He made them in the night to ascend magnificent thrones that were borne up by swans, which in a moment arrived at Yamtcheou. The Emperor saw at his leisure all the solemnity, being carried upon a cloud that hovered over the city and descended by degrees; and came back again with the same speed and equipage, nobody at court perceiving his absence."—The Present State of China," ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood. And I stood in the morass among the tall and the rain fell upon my head—and the lilies sighed one unto the other in the solemnity of their desolation. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... making you so ridiculous." While he uttered these ingenious ejaculations, the old gentleman bowed alternately to him and the monkey, that seemed to grin and chatter in imitation of the beau, and, with an arch solemnity of visage, pronounced, "Gentlemen, as I have not the honour to understand your compliments, they will be much better bestowed on each other." So saying, he seated himself, and had the satisfaction to see the laugh returned upon the aggressor, who remained confounded and abashed, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the word BANK painted on one facade. Several times in the course of an evening Mr. Jaffrey would rise from his chair without interrupting the conversation, and gravely drop a nickel into the scuttle of the bank. It was pleasant to observe the solemnity of his countenance as he approached the edifice, and the air of triumph with which he resumed his seat by the fireplace. One night I missed the tin bank. It had disappeared, deposits and all, like a real bank. Evidently ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... more or less popular. The history of the world cannot, probably, furnish another instance of the settlement of the fundamental contract of a great nation under circumstances of so much obvious justice. This gives unusual solemnity and authority to the Constitution of 1787, and invests it with additional claims to our admiration ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... are wise; they are honorable; they are virtuous; their cultivation is not merely innocent pleasure, it is incumbent duty. Obedient to their dictates, you, my fellow-citizens, have instituted and paid frequent observance to this annual solemnity, and what event of weightier intrinsic importance, or of more extensive consequences, was ever selected for ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... the clutches of the medicine-man. Each of these despots has his own little following, and wields a distinctive influence, it being a point of honour with him that his teaching should differ in some way (usually in but a trivial detail) from the teaching of any other of his kind. The solemnity of their discussions and the heat of their dissensions about the minutiae of their creeds would be laughable were ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... went, answering all of Steger's and Shannon's searching questions with the most engaging frankness, and you could have sworn from the solemnity with which he took it all—the serious business attention—that he was the soul of so-called commercial honor. And to say truly, he did believe in the justice as well as the necessity and the importance of all that he had done and now described. He wanted ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... agitated for the first time in his life—took leave of his superior officer, with a singular mixture of solemnity ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... Mapes may be one of mere amusement, of which there are few books fuller. The agreeable effrontery with which the question "whether to kiss Rose or Agnes" is put side by side with that "whether it is better to eat flesh cooked in the cauldron or little fishes driven into the net;" the intense solemnity and sorrow for self with which Golias discourses in trochaic mono-rhymed laisses of irregular length, De suo Infortunio; the galloping dactylics of the "Apocalypse"; the concentrated scandal against a venerated sex of the De Conjuge ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... genially but with an undertone of solemnity in his rich, jury-swaying baritone. "Looks like we've got a sensational murder on our hands. It's not every day Hamilton can rate a headline like 'BROADWAY BELLE MURDERED AT BRIDGE'—to quote a Chicago ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... palace of his good old patron, Lomellino, here he lived in the closest retirement, studied the most valuable parts of ancient and modern literature, remained for whole days together in his own apartment, and was seldom to be seen in public except upon some great solemnity. ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... joyful, and the bridegroom old, ridden with disease and crabbed;—whatever the case, it concerns not the representative of the State or the Church; it is not for them to look into that. The marriage bond is "blessed,"—as a rule, blessed with all the greater solemnity in proportion to the size of the fee ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... it his fate to become a pilgrim very early in life. This was a great favour of Heaven, and it could not have been bestowed upon a man who prized it more, or who made himself more worthy of it by the unswerving piety of his heart and by the religious solemnity of his demeanour. Later on it became clear that the book of his destiny contained the programme of a wandering life. He visited Bombay and Calcutta, looked in at the Persian Gulf, beheld in due course the high and barren coasts of the Gulf of Suez, and this was the limit of his wanderings ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... the affairs of the tributary nations, and their negotiations with the French and English colonies. All their proceedings were conducted with great deliberation, and were distinguished for order, decorum, and solemnity. In eloquence, in dignity, and in all the characteristics of profound policy, they surpassed the assembly of feudal barons, and perhaps were not inferior to the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... joke!" he growled in feigned solemnity. "Anyhow, it would be too bad if something that important couldn't take a little ribbing. Shucks—we've ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... suit, by telling her, that he has bound himself to her, not by the pretty protestations usual among lovers, but by vows of greater solemnity. She then makes a proper ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... can trace the process, from the old proverb that "to see God is death," down to that remarkable passage in Jeremiah where the approaching advent, or rather restoration, of spiritual religion, is announced with all the solemnity due to so glorious a message. "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah.... After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... May morning in the midst of a great forest of pine trees, one of those forests whose floors are moss-covered ruins that give to them the solemnity of age and demand humility from those who walk within their silences. There was not much there to tell of the springtime, for the pines are unsympathetic, but it seemed as if all the more wealth had been flung about on the carpeting beneath. Where the moss was not were flowing beds of fern, ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... we approached grinned amiably and kept it up till, in answer to his perfunctory question, "Sign off and on again?" my Captain answered, "No! Signing off for good." And then his grin vanished in sudden solemnity. He did not look at me again till he handed me my papers with a sorrowful expression, as if they had been ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... prince," he says, "has a puppet theatre which is certainly unique in character. Here the grandest operas are produced. One knows not whether to be amazed or to laugh at seeing 'Alceste,' 'Alcides,' etc., put on the stage with all due solemnity, and played by puppets. His orchestra is one of the best I ever heard, and the great Haydn is his court and theatre composer. He employs a poet for his singular theatre, whose humour and skill in suiting the grandest subjects for the stage, and in parodying ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... message to his mother. 'Tell mother I am coming.' The ruins yet smoked. A relative of the lady whose home was in ashes, and whose son said, 'I am coming,' stood by the 'survivors.' 'Well, then,' he said, 'it must be true that General Lee has surrendered.' The solemnity of the remark, coupled with the certainty in the minds of the 'survivors,' was almost amusing. The relative pointed out the temporary residence of the mother, and thither the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... remarkable episode on a key of solemnity, but alas! If I am to be loyal to the truth, I must record that some of the other little boys presently complained to Mary Grace that I put out my tongue at them in mockery, during the service in the Room, to remind ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... festivals of the Church was to her far more than the consecration of a remembrance. She beheld in the historical foundation of each solemnity an act of the Almighty, done in time for the reparation of fallen humanity. Although these divine acts appeared to her stamped with the character of eternity, yet she was well aware that in order for man to profit by them in the bounded and narrow sphere of time, ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... be some hidden and vital relation between these three words, Salvation, Neglect, and Escape—some reasonable, essential, and indissoluble connection. Why are these words so linked together as to weight this clause with all the authority and solemnity of a ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... rustle of the wire-grass creeping over them in a dry tide. The boy had taken off his cap; the sea-wind moving under the mat of his damp hair gave it the look of some somber, outlandish cowl. With the night coming on, his solemnity had an elfin quality. He found what he was looking for at last, and his fingers had ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... ride home in the cart, and sat holding Tuttu's hand, his eyes round with solemnity, the traces of tears still ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... been growing dark and drowsy; the afternoon sun sent one heavy shaft of powdered gold across it, which fell with an intangible solemnity upon the empty seat of Mary Gray, for the younger women had left the court before the more recent of the investigations. Mrs. Duke was still asleep, and Innocent Smith, looking like a large hunchback in the twilight, was bending ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... ages, which foretold the invasion and conquest of the country by a fierce people from Africa; and potent were the spells and talismans constructed to ward off the danger, "by the Greek kings who reigned in old times." Several of these are described with due solemnity; and among them we find the tale of the visit paid by Roderic[5] to the magic tower at Toledo, which has been rendered familiar by the pages of Scott and Southey. We shall not here recapitulate the well-known incidents of the wrongs and revenge of Count Yllan, or Julian, the first landing of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... tenderness or in passion, the melodies of love; he can fill his lines with the fire, the stress, the culminating fury, of prophetic denunciation; he can utter the sad and secret questionings of the human spirit, and give voice to the solemnity of Fate. In the long roll and vast swell of his verse there is something of the ocean—a moving profundity of power. His sonorous music, with its absolute sureness of purpose, and its contrapuntal art, recalls the vision in Paradise ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... back, and sent out a long beam of smoke that flew straight up and hit the ceiling. After which he stared at me in unutterable solemnity. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... palace of the Elysee Bourbon, escorted by a squadron of dragoons and lancers. The cannon of the Invalides were discharged as a salute at the moment. General Changarnier attended on the occasion, and directed the proceedings. It was remarked that, on the occasion of this solemnity, all the enthusiasm of the assembly was shown to General Cavaignac, and the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... "prologuiser" as the author or his representative, seems gradually to have been departed from, and prologues came to be delivered by one of the chief actors in the play, in the character he was about to undertake, or in some other assumed for the occasion. A certain solemnity of tone, however, was usually preserved in the prologue to tragedy—the goodwill and merciful consideration of the audience being still entreated for the author and his work, although considerable licence was permitted to the comedy prologue. And the prologues ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... hand, the bared head, the earnest accents, with which these words were spoken, gave to this simple utterance of good-will all the solemnity of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... of bead form, and on the slipping from their threading bough one by one, the fancy is content to lose the heart of the thing, the solemnity of prayer: or perhaps I do the glorious poet wrong in saying this, for the sense of a sun worship and orison in beginning its race, may have been in his mind; and so far as it was so, the passage is imaginative ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... been small enough and intimate enough to decide on the guilt or innocence of its members grew to difficult proportions, there developed this system of selecting by lot a number of its common citizens who were sworn, who were then specially instructed and prepared, and who, in an atmosphere of solemnity and responsibility in absolute contrast with the uproar of a public polling, considered the case and condemned or discharged the accused. Let me point out that this method is so universally recognized as superior to the common electoral ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... listened well; one of his chief enjoyments was, to give and receive from his fellow-creatures in that way. I hope, and indeed have evidence, that he required good sense as the staple; but in the form, he allowed great latitude. He by no means affected solemnity, rather the reverse; goes much upon the bantering vein; far too much, according to the complaining parties. Took pleasure (cruel mortal!) in stirring up his company by the whip, and even by the whip applied to RAWS; for we find he had ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... placation or for the averting of death, or defeat, or plague, sometimes merely in fulfilment of some long-standing custom of forgotten origin—the flayings and floggings and burnings and crucifixions of victims without end, carried out in all deliberation and solemnity of established ritual. I have mentioned some cases connected with the sowing of the corn. The Bible is full of such things, from the intended sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham, to the actual crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews. ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... with the utmost solemnity, "Mary never left the house all night. I'd swear that's the truth on a pile of Bibles ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... behind, and many an old-timed family observes the custom until now. The town meeting was opened by prayer by the town minister, and much decorum and orderliness was observed by the citizens. The day was jovial, however, despite the solemnity attending it. ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... atmosphere of solemnity, of stillness in the home; they had each had a boiled egg at the last meal, and Sivert stood outside all ready to go down with his brother and carry his things. It was ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... one behind another. If church ceremonials are still open to amendment, I would suggest, in no spirit of irreverence, that a study of pelican processionals would be certain to yield edifying results. Nothing done in any cathedral could be more solemn. Indeed, their solemnity was so great that I came at last to find it almost ridiculous; but that, of course, was only from a want of faith on the part of the beholder. The birds, as I say, were brown pelicans. Had they been of the other species, in churchly ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... the box, descended the carpeted stairway which led to the bottom of the trench, and with due solemnity deposited his burden in the hollow of the stone already laid. The curate took the sprinkler and sprinkled the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... it is scarcely necessary to say that the young man accepts it with a gratitude which proves that he believes his patron capable of conferring further favours. From this time forward he begins to abandon the merely frivolous air that has hitherto distinguished him. He lays in a mixed stock of solemnity, mystery, and importance, and occasionally awes the friends of his flippant days by assuming the reticent look and the shake of the head of one who is marked off from common mortals by the possession of secrets the revelation of which might, perhaps, imperil the peace of the world. In country-houses, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... Park: and, privately speaking, he had a grudge against official heaven-expounders, or clergymen. He would rather, however, have been with a crowd that he disliked, than felt himself alone. He said to me one day, with a face of great solemnity, "What must have been that man's feelings, who thought himself the first deist?" Finding no footing in certainty, he delighted to confound the borders of theoretical truth and falsehood. He was fond ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Athens after the battle of Leuktra, because it recognized that place, along with the townships of Triphylia, as having the right of self-government. Every year he made a splendid sacrifice, from the tenth of all the fruits of the property; to which solemnity not only all the Skilluntines, but also all the neighboring villages, were invited. Booths were erected for the visitors, to whom the goddess furnished (this is the language of Xenophon) an ample dinner of ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... 'Squire; And from these, where it is least to be expected, you are surpriz'd with the most high and delicious Repast;— Nothing can be more pregnant with Mirth, than the Opposition continually working between the grave Solemnity and Dignity of Quixote, and the arch Ribaldry and Meanness of Sancho; And the Contrast can never be sufficiently admir'd, between the excellent fine Sense of the ONE, and the dangerous common ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... and was forgotten, and that same man and that same multitude stood in altered relations— they were again a reverent flock, and he once more a solemn pastor; the natural play of his nation's mirthful sarcasm was absorbed in a moment in the sacredness of his office; and with a solemnity befitting the highest occasion, he placed his hands together before his breast, and raising his eyes to Heaven he poured forth his sweet voice, with a tone of the deepest devotion, in that reverential call to prayer, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... their noise to the consternation of the Indians. Refreshments were also liberally provided, that the troops should be in condition for the conflict. These arrangements being completed, mass was performed with great solemnity by the ecclesiastics who attended the expedition; the God of battles was invoked to spread his shield over the soldiers who were fighting to extend the empire of the cross; and all joined with enthusiasm ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... a voice of deep solemnity, "these Turks are cruel, vindictive, and revengeful. The last Englishman who refused was, by order of the pasha, skinned alive, placed on the sunny side of a wall, and blown ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... of the solemnity of the place and the occasion, the mourners were struck by the dazzling beauty of that young female, who had thus appeared so strangely amongst them; but respect still retained at a distance those persons who were merely present from curiosity to witness the obsequies ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... All began that very charming air at the moment. Sobs and sighs stole in between the pauses of the harmony. Their rich and practised voices gave it the sweetness and solemnity of a hymn. Fine eyes were lifted to heaven; fine faces were buried in their clasped hands; and the whole finished like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... tray again and crossed the room to go, his solemnity returned. "Missy," he said earnestly, "ef dat young gelmun fall in love wid you, w'ich I knows he will ef he ketch sight er you, lemme say dis, an' please fo' to ba'h in mine: better have nuttin' do wid him fo' he own sake; an' 'bove all, keep him fur sway f'um dese p'emises. Don' ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... which came upon us with the final bars. Fancies of this sort, however, were not permitted during the "strictly classical" performance, under the veteran Capellmeister, at the Munich Odeon; the proceedings, there, were carried on with a degree of solemnity, enough to make one's flesh creep, with a sensation akin to a ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... priest, whose name was Pierre Barre, was exactly the man whom Mignon needed in such a crisis. He was of melancholy temperament, and dreamed dreams and saw visions; his one ambition was to gain a reputation for asceticism and holiness. Desiring to surround his visit with the solemnity befitting such an important event, he set out for Loudun at the head of all his parishioners, the whole procession going on foot, in order to arouse interest and curiosity; but this measure was quite needless it took less than that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... thought, particularly plain with his solid form, his long thin nose, light whiskers, and square massive chin. Also he looked particularly imposing in contrast to the youths and maidens and domesticated clergymen. There was a gravity, almost a solemnity, about his bronzed countenance and deliberate ordered conversation, which did not, however, favourably impress the aforesaid youths and maidens, if a judgment might be formed from such samples of conversational criticism as Mr. Quest heard going on on ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... florid complexion, sparkling eye, heavy bushy suit of snow-white hair, and a certain indefinable expression of mischievous audacity, made him a very attractive figure. In his eulogy upon Calhoun he marred the solemnity of the occasion by pronouncing the world "always" as if written "allers," and by kindred evidences of "life among the lowly." The wit of John P. Hale was effective and unfailing, and gave him a decided advantage over ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... am in a serious Humour, I very often walk by my self in Westminster Abbey; where the Gloominess of the Place, and the Use to which it is applied, with the Solemnity of the Building, and the Condition of the People who lye in it, are apt to fill the Mind with a kind of Melancholy, or rather Thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I Yesterday pass'd a whole Afternoon in the Church-yard, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Helen. Could Miss Howard have chosen two who, placed beside each other, would have formed a more pronounced contrast? Not even the solemnity of the occasion could overcome Ruth's ruling passion, curiosity: she was determined to see all to be seen if it rested with her to do so. Nor were the pert pansy blossoms upon her hat, nodding a welcome to all, more on the alert. Or could those which ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... chin, ordered his head cook to be sent in to him. The head cook instantly appeared attended by a couple of footmen, who carried each a silver salver of prodigious size, on which were cups containing sauces of every different flavour which could be devised. The gentleman, with the greatest solemnity, used to dip a bit of bread in each, and taste it, giving his orders upon the subject with as much earnestness and precision as if he had been signing papers for the government of a kingdom. When this important affair was thus concluded, he would throw himself upon a ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... thunder, to indicate he produced meteors, to typify the electric fluid that is called lightning. He married the winds, which were designated under the name of Juno, therefore called the Goddess of the Winds, their nuptials were celebrated with great solemnity; all the gods, the entire brute creation, the whole of mankind attended, except one young woman named Chelone, who laughed at the ceremonies, for which impiety she was changed by Mercury into a tortoise, and condemned to perpetual ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... where Saint Veronica held out the cloth which took the miraculous likeness. We examined our souls before Good Friday; we went to the special yearly Holy Communion now invested with a strange and awful solemnity. There was the prostration before the Cross at Golgotha on Good Friday, the receiving of the Sacred Fire, symbol of the Resurrection, on Holy Saturday, and then the night of the year and the Great Morning. It seemed when we all kissed one another on Easter Morning that we had ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... astonishment to one or two enlightened beholders. A patient ass stood near a house, and a family of not much more rational animals was grouped around it. A father was passing his little son under the donkey, and lifting him over its back a certain number of times, with as much solemnity and precision as if engaged in the performance of a sacred duty. This done, the father took a piece of bread, cut from an untasted loaf, which he offered the animal to bite at. Nothing loath, the Jerusalem poney laid hold of the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... impressed by the savagery of fiords, by the prettiness of blouses and sabots, by the blue mountain in the distance and the purple mountain in the foreground, by the narrow shade of the street, and the solemnity of a burnous or the grace of a haik floating in the wind. The painter brings back these sights and scenes as a child brings back shells from the shore—they seemed very strange and curious, and, therefore, like ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... conversation that a messenger arrived from London with letters, announcing that King Charles had been crowned in Scotland, with great solemnity and magnificence. ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... these words, he reverently kneeled upon the floor. His colleagues and the delegates of the churches followed his example. A deep solemnity fell upon the assembly. According to one account of the scene, even the Roman cardinals stood with uncovered heads while the Huguenot minister prayed. Catharine de' Medici joined with still greater devotion, while King Charles ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... scene to be remembered. Had anything been lacking in its awful solemnity, it was supplied with a tender potency reaching all hearts, in the knowledge of the dead child, who lay ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... they would make no appeal to the world at large. The monuments of the German mind are no more robbed of their intellectual value by the national crime of this war than German mountains are robbed of their natural grandeur, German forests of their solemnity, or German rivers of ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... object was to try their patience and provoke his uncle to an outburst of indignation which might bring him into trouble. The service was so high that a German visitor at the English Court declared it was not a whit behind the solemnity of the Mass but for the absence of the adoration of the Host. The snare set for Melville on this occasion succeeded, for it was a satirical verse on this service that was afterwards made the pretext for sending him ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... I charge thee," he said in mock solemnity. "Thou shalt embroider for me with thine own hands—thou that carest not for squaw's needles—a robe of raccoon skin in quills and ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... downstairs to the empty flat of the Staceys, where that impenetrable pastor took a large red-leather chair in the very entrance, from which he could see the stairs and landings, and waited. He did not wait very long. In about four minutes three figures descended the stairs, alike only in their solemnity. The first was Joan Stacey, the sister of the dead woman—evidently she had been upstairs in the temporary temple of Apollo; the second was the priest of Apollo himself, his litany finished, sweeping down the empty ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... nearer, larger, and brighter than in our cooler latitudes—the sultry atmosphere—and most of all, perhaps, the sense of the near vicinity of death in this infected region—oppressed my spirit with an ominous feeling of solemnity ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... surrounded me when I opened my eyes and realized that the end was not yet. Hillis, of Kentucky, Campbell, of Ohio, Reyburn, of Texas, and many others were grouped about my desk in mock solemnity. A loud laugh arose as I staggered to my feet; for I alone, of a vast gathering, had slept soundly through one of the most exciting debates in parliamentary history! Through it all—the battle raging around me, and the ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe; and, as an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the untamable wildness and inaccessible solemnity from ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... dawn was flowing in at the window. The solemnity of the hour moved Clelia like the strangeness of the time. It hushed her ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... thing to behold the business-like air with which they climb into their seats in the parquet, and the gravity with which they immediately begin to read the play-bill upside down. Then, between the acts, the solemnity with which they extract the juice from an orange, through a hole made with a lead-pencil, is also ...
— The Little Violinist • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... sallow-faced personage, of some note among the brethren for zeal and impiety. By this we mean that awful and profane use of Scripture phraseology with which many of these gifted preachers affected to interlard their everyday discourse, attaching a ludicrous solemnity to matters the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... too unhappy to eat. There was a lofty, stern resignation in the accomplishment of these last duties of rustic hospitality. The Tascherons, men of the olden time, ended their days in that house as they had begun them, by doing its honors. This scene, without pretension, though full of solemnity, met the eyes of the bishop's secretary when he approached the village rector to ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... Immediately the solemnity of the moment was jarred by a laugh. The vicomte was standing, all piety gone from his face; and a rollicking devil shone from ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... said he with great solemnity, as soon as he was seated, "of the very shocking discovery that took ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... comparatively short time that I had been below. It was clear enough that if the unhappy people aboard her were to be rescued there was not a moment to lose; I therefore staggered aft and, approaching Danton with drunken solemnity, touched my forehead and, wavering upon my legs and speaking thickly, asked him to come for'ard and down below and tell me whether he could smell fire. The scoundrel's face blanched at the word, as he probably pictured to himself the frightful predicament of all hands—himself included—should ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... it passed, a jangle in shops and factories, a racket and hurry of traffic, war and business, which the coming of the gloom hushed in its turn. As God's eyes pierced the shadow they found, between the dotted lines of street-lamps and under the roofs where the windows glimmered—revelry or solemnity. In denser shadows there was a murmur of the voices of lovers and of families ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... good-natured enough, after the first astonishment was over, to yield in the most cheerful manner to Petrea's proposal, and zealously to declare that the affair should be managed just as she would. He accordingly set himself, with an appearance of great accuracy and solemnity, to measure the length of both limbs of the merrythought, and then counted three; the mother all this time hoping within herself that he would so manage it that he himself should retain the head—but no! the head remained ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... tower an unusually striking group. What then would be the feelings aroused in the spectator were the great church, a cathedral in magnitude and splendour, still visible, rising majestically above roofs and spires. To us the Abbey which is gone can do no more than add solemnity to the scene which once it graced. It matters little by which entrance we approach the churchyard, for from every side the buildings group harmoniously; each of the steeples acting as it were as a foil to the other: and both the spires unite in adding dignity to the bell tower. The churchyard ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... and I often met him and listened to him in the chapel of the Seminary. I have seen few more striking figures in my life than his, as I remember it. Tall, lean, with strong, bold features, a keen, scholarly, accipitrine nose, thin, expressive lips, great solemnity and impressiveness of voice and manner, he was my early model of a classic orator. His air was Roman, his neck long and bare like Cicero's, and his toga,—that is his broadcloth cloak,—was carried on his arm, whatever might have been the weather, with such a ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to stroke him, he would grunt, strike with his fore-feet, spring forward, and bite. He was, however, very entertaining in his way, even his surliness was matter of mirth, and in his play he preserved such an air of gravity, and performed his feats with such a solemnity of manner, that in him, too, I had ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... the third hour, the hour at which the Paraclete originally descended upon the Apostles, and which, when times of persecution were passed, was appointed in the West for the solemn mass of the day. In that early age, indeed, the time of the solemnity was generally midnight, in order to elude observation; but even then such an hour was considered of but temporary arrangement. Pope Telesphorus is said to have prescribed the hour, afterwards in use, as early even as the second century; and in a place ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... more remarkable in Mr Stevenson than his extraordinary youthfulness of mind. At an age when other young men affect to be blase and world weary he was delightfully and fearlessly boyish. Boyish even in his occasional half-comic solemnity of appearance; he was boyish likewise in his charming jests and jokes, and, above all, in his hearty delight in any outdoor 'ploy' that ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... least three entire cucumbers for the vegetarian's dinner, was left before him. Another pause, and still our soup did not come; but the girl returned, this time bearing a glass dish on a long spiral stand filled with red stewed fruit, which, with all solemnity, she deposited ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... produce thrills. One of the first nights after mobilization 10,000 Frenchmen filled the street beneath the windows of THE NEW YORK TIMES office, where I was at work. They sang the "Marseillaise" for two hours, with a solemn hatred of their national enemy sounding in every note. The solemnity changed to a wild passion as the night wore on. Finally, cuirassiers of the guard rode through the street to disperse the mob. It was a ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that no man may discerne in which the king himselfe is placed. [Sidenote: The idolatrous religion of the king.] He followeth in religion especially the opinions of the Magistrates, attributing diuine power vnto heauen and earth as vnto the parents of all, and with great solemnity sacrificing vnto them. He hath diuers most sumptuous Temples dedicated vnto his ancestours, whereunto likewise he ascribeth diuine honour, and yet ceaseth hee not to fauour Priests of other sects, yea, hee erecteth Temples vnto their Patrons, endowing them with most rich reuenues; and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... in plundering these holy men, giving them the precedence in relieving their wants. Out of respect to the cloth, they omit the ceremony of searching, to which the other passengers are subjected; nor do they compel him to lie down like the others. But with mock solemnity a robber approaches the sacred personage, and dropping on one knee, presents his hat for alms, which the priest understands to be a reverential mode of demanding all the valuables that he carries about him: his reverence ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... of solemnity which had hung about the men for days, and which lifted from time to time only temporarily, now silenced them again. Indeed, had there been anybody present to observe, he doubtless would have been impressed most of all with the unwonted soberness of the wagon's ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... succeeding draught. For while the banquet proceeded in this very genial manner business was by no means neglected; the negotiations for the surrender of the city being conducted on both sides with a fuddled solemnity very edifying for the attendants ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was a continual struggle, between his efforts to preserve his clerical solemnity and to make himself agreeable. His formal manner of pursing up his face into smiles, for this purpose, had produced a regular set of small wrinkles, folds, and plies, that inevitably reminded those who were not accustomed ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... itself not improbable, it was composed, not to be read, but to be heard. It was not to the slow circulation of a few copies, which the rich only could possess, that the aspiring author looked for his reward. The great Olympian festival,—the solemnity which collected multitudes, proud of the Grecian name, from the wildest mountains of Doris, and the remotest colonies of Italy and Libya,—was to witness his triumph. The interest of the narrative, and the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... appreciate, and which he did not imagine could be fascinating to a woman. Knowing well how magnetic passion is in its guise of Southern fervor, he did not know that it is also potent under the cloak of Northern solemnity. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... visit to that cloister of Notre-Dame, and the meaning of the things he had seen there came into his mind. The three unknown and silent men, whose dress, attitude, and stillness acted powerfully upon him, were no doubt boarders like the priest. The solemnity of Madame de la Chanterie now seemed to him a secret dignity with which she bore some great misfortune. But still, in spite of the explanations which Godefroid gave himself, he could not help fancying there was an air of ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... abstraction. They moan over its ruin as though it were a human being, and far then be it from me to laugh at them for doing so. When, however, I find persons dressing themselves up in all the paraphernalia of war, visiting tombs and statues in order to register with due solemnity that they intend to die rather than yield, and when, after all this nonsense, these same persons decline to take their share in the common danger on the score that they have a mother, or a sister, or a wife, or a child, dependent upon them, and when month after month ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... visitor. He himself was no coward, no shrinker from the great issues. He, too, had dealt in life and death. Yet there was something in the deliberate preciseness of Sogrange's words, as he sat there only a few feet away, unspeakably thrilling. It was like a death sentence pronounced in all solemnity upon some shivering criminal. There was something inevitable and tragical about the whole affair. A pronouncement had been made from which there was no ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... scarlet, the pope hunted up four false witnesses who declared that Caesar was the son of Count Ferdinand of Castile; who was, as we know, that valuable person Don Manuel Melchior, and who played the father's part with just as much solemnity as ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... bargain, but the time was not long[322].' The bargain was concerning that undertaking; but his tender conscience seems alarmed lest it should have intruded too much on his devout preparation for the solemnity of the ensuing day. But, indeed, very little time was necessary for Johnson's concluding a treaty with the booksellers; as he had, I believe, less attention to profit from his labours than any man to whom literature has been a profession.[323] I shall here insert ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... the Channel the inventions of M. Venizelos, it would seem, were accepted as discoveries with equal solemnity. During the Paris pourparlers, according to the French Ambassador in London at all events, England was much annoyed by the Greek Government's hesitations, which she attributed to King Constantine's opposition, and asked herself whether she could either then or in the future treat with a ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... General O'Hara's funeral took place; on which occasion the boats of the squadron, joined by those of the foreign men-of-war, rowed in procession to the Ragged Staff, while minute-guns were fired by the flag-ship and the garrison. The solemnity of this scene could not but be rendered more impressive by the recollection of the investiture of Sir James with the Order of the Bath, in which the venerable and gallant general had performed so distinguished a part only a short ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... dumb brutes; took Buffalo Bill, and all his scouts; took the garrison—to the last man; and in forty-eight hours the Indian encampment was hers, illustrious old Thunder-Bird and all. Do I seem to have lost my solemnity, my gravity, my poise, my dignity? You would lose your own, in my circumstances. Mother, you never saw such a winning little devil. She is all energy, and spirit, and sunshine, and interest in everybody and everything, and pours out her prodigal love upon every creature that will take ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... Wallace for a few minutes was riveted to the ground; then moving forward with a breathless caution, not to disturb the nocturnal bard, he gently approached. He was, however, descried! The venerable figure clasped his hands, and in a voice of mournful solemnity exclaimed: ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... spirit out of the meeting. Giggles from Luther and the younger element interfered with the solemnity of Mr. Perley's closing remarks, and no one else was brave enough to "testify" under the circumstances. They sang again, and the meeting broke up. The nervous young man was the first one ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... themselves to call upon God on civil occasions, they render his name so familiar to them, that they are likely to lose the reverence due to it, or so to blend religious with secular considerations, that they become in danger of losing sight of the dignity, solemnity, and awfulness of devotion. And it is not an unusual remark, that persons, most accustomed to oaths, are the most likely to perjury. A custom-house oath has become proverbial in our own country. I do not ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... table drawn up close to the coke fire, Willy slowly and with much care made pencil notes, which he slowly and with great solemnity copied into ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... garment enclosed his noble limbs, his shoulders were covered by gleaming locks of black hair; and as he stood there, sure and secure, a sublime divinity, and played the violin, it seemed as if the whole creation obeyed his melodies. He was the man-planet about which the universe moved with measured solemnity and ringing out beatific rhythms. Those great lights, which so quietly gleaming swept around, were they stars of heaven, and that melodious harmony which arose from their movements, was it the song of the spheres, of which poets and seers have reported so many ravishing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... hopeful,—in looking on to Future Years. The more happy you are, the more there is of awe in the thought how frail are the foundations of your earthly happiness,—what havoc may be made of them by the chances of even a single day. It is no wonder that the solemnity and awfuluess of the Future have been felt so much, that the languages of Northern Europe have, as I dare say you know, no word which expresses the essential notion of Futurity. You think, perhaps, of shall and will. Well, these words have come now to convey the notion ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... charge was to maintain a grand moral crusade, to stimulate and to vindicate a great uprising in the cause of humanity and of justice. His full appreciation of this is entirely manifest in the tone of his speeches. They have an earnestness, a gravity, at times even a solemnity, unusual in such encounters in any era or before any audiences, but unprecedented "on the stump" before the uproarious gatherings of the West at that day. Repeatedly he stigmatized slavery as "a moral, a social, a political evil." Very impressively he denounced the positions of an opponent ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... irrepressible spirits, a good voice and ear, and a special delight in the exercise of them. To county magnate or parson or stranger seated by him on the box he could be as decorous as a churchwarden, and talk of politics or cattle or county business with all due solemnity. But he was only at his best when "the front" was occupied by boys, or at any rate with a strong sprinkling of boys, amongst whom he was quite at his ease, and who were even more eager to hear than he to sing and talk. And of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... justification of his policy a plea so repugnant to morality and intelligence, and that it should be quietly accepted by men and women calling themselves radical revolutionists. Some years ago a well-known American capitalist announced with great solemnity that he and men like himself were the agents of Providence, charged with managing industry "for the good of the people." Naturally, his naive claim provoked the scornful laughter of every radical in the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... that sly epicurean twinkle which indicates the cautious voluptuary. In other respects, his profession and situation had taught him a ready command over his countenance, which he could contract at pleasure into solemnity, although its natural expression was that of good-humoured social indulgence. In defiance of conventual rules, and the edicts of popes and councils, the sleeves of this dignitary were lined and turned up with rich furs, his mantle secured at the throat with a golden clasp, and the whole dress ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... that of Marie de Medicis, as having been followed by the assassination of her husband, was regarded by many as a bad omen. If Marie Antoinette had herself expressed any wish to be her husband's partner in the solemnity, it would certainly have been complied with, and their subsequent fate would have been regarded as a confirmation of the evil augury. But she was indifferent on the subject, and quite contented to behold it as a spectator. It took place on Sunday, the 11th of June, in the grand Cathedral ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... the sum for me to give Mrs. Jewkes, and I would not give Mrs. Jervis less, because I loved her better; nor more could I give her, on that occasion, without making such a difference between two persons equal in station, on a solemnity too where one was present and assisting, the other not, as would have shewn such a partiality, as might have induced their master to conclude, I was not so sincere in my forgiveness, as he hoped from me, and ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson |
