"Tantalising" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... understood that we do not seek alone the sympathy of bachelors, in whose objection to loving couples we recognise interested motives and personal considerations. We grant that to that unfortunate class of society there may be something very irritating, tantalising, and provoking, in being compelled to witness those gentle endearments and chaste interchanges which to loving couples are quite the ordinary business of life. But while we recognise the natural character of the prejudice to which these unhappy ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... NETTLESHIP. (ELKIN MATHEWS, Vigo Street.) He advises all other readers to grasp his nettleship boldly. At last the Baron's A.R. thinks he understands "Childe Roland," after reading the twenty-five pages which Mr. NETTLESHIP devotes to the explanation of this noble but tantalising poem. Mr. NETTLESHIP's attitude is that of a fervent, but humble disciple, for whom his Master's every word possesses deep and subtle meanings. He believes with GEORGE ELIOT that "the words of genius bear ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... danced together at various houses; on the other hand, she had seen and heard quite as much evidence to connect the heiress's name with that of Courtenay Youghal. Beyond this meagre and conflicting and altogether tantalising information, her knowledge of the present position of affairs did not go. If either of the young men was seriously "making the running," it was probable that she would hear some sly hint or open comment about it from one of Serena's gossip- laden friends, without having ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... published by Atticus several years after Cicero's death. It must always be a source of regret that he could not, or, at all events, did not, publish the other half of the correspondence; many of the letters, especially the brief confidential notes, have the tantalising interest of a conversation where one of the speakers is inaudible. It is the letters to Atticus that place Cicero at the head of all epistolary stylists. We should hardly guess from the more formal and finished writings what the real man was, with ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... every day and any hour of the day, in the morning or afternoon or whenever they happen to pass. No wonder they look pasty-faced! We are only here for once, so we need have no compunction about our digestions, especially as there is an empty place left after that tantalising bacon-less breakfast. We are soon provided with a plate each and a little implement which looks as if it had started life as a butter-knife and suddenly changed its ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... bushes and trunks of trees on the way, I approached the antelopes without disturbing them. Looking out from the cover I had gained, I watched the beautiful creatures, hoping that one of them would come within range of my rifle. It was tantalising to see them feeding so quietly just out of my reach. Still, though I might not get a shot, I hoped that they might go off towards where my uncle was lying hid. Presently, however, they bounded towards me; ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... enquired in street after street for Mrs Forrester's address. Some had not heard the name. Some knew a public-house kept by one Tony Forrester. Some recollected an old lady who used to keep a costermonger's stall and had a baby with fits. Others, still more tantalising, began by knowing all about it, and ended by showing that they knew nothing. At the police-office they looked at him hard, and demanded what he wanted with anybody of the name of Forrester. At the post-office they told him curtly they could not tell him anything unless he could ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... you think so—really? Ah, yes; you say that. Certainly not! I shouldn't think of it." There followed what I am inclined to believe was intended for a laugh, musical but tantalising. If so, want of practice marred the effort. The performance failed to satisfy even herself. She tried again; it was still ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... detect and follow him, hopping from branch to branch, or swooping with ungainly flight almost on his head, meanwhile hurling at him a thousand abuses. Unless he quickly regained his refuge in the gorse, the blackbirds and the thrushes would join in the tantalising mockery, till it seemed that the whole countryside was aroused by the cry of "Fox! fox!" After such an adventure, it needed the quiet and solitude of night to restore his peace of mind; and even when he had escaped the din, and lay ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Delhi are even more tantalising and unsatisfactory than those which deal with Agra. Mr. Beglar's contribution to Vol. IV of the Archaeological Survey Reports is a little, but very little, better than Mr. Carlleyle's disquisition on Agra in that volume. Sir A. Cunningham's observations in the first and twentieth ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... like to go in—just for a few minutes," she said discontentedly. There are few things that draw the genuine sea-lover more strongly than the longing to plunge into the tantalising, gleaming water and feel the rush and prick of it and its ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... chords, with tantalising pauses and deliberation, approached the magic moment of the waltz itself, she was conscious that his hold of her became firmer and more assertive, and she surrendered to an overmastering influence as one surrenders to chloroform, desperately, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... mysterious withal; and never were there such cunning generalship, and such unfathomable designs, as she brought to bear upon Mr Frank, with the view of ascertaining whether her suspicions were well founded: and if so, of tantalising him into taking her into his confidence and throwing himself upon her merciful consideration. Extensive was the artillery, heavy and light, which Mrs Nickleby brought into play for the furtherance of these great schemes; various and opposite the means which she employed to bring about ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... How tantalising! the singers reappeared, and Valetta was reduced to silence. Nor could the subject be renewed in the interval between the parts, for Major Dennis came and stood in front, and talked to Miss Mohun; and after that Valetta grew ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... against the attraction he appeared to possess. He was not mental, he was not even superficially bookish, and yet because of a certain magnetic quality—a mere dominant virility—she found herself occupied, to the exclusion of her work, with the words he had uttered, with the tantalising ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... boat went on slowly eastward toward the distant coast, as the terrible sense of depression and exhaustion increased with Mark, mingled with a strange desire to scoop up some of the clear, glittering, tantalising water, and drink what he knew would be so horribly salt and bitter that ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... venison—what a good dinner!' says Tenniel, reading menu. Tantalising to Tom Taylor, who has to dine elsewhere; and Thackeray leaves early, to go to an 'episcopal tea-fight,' as he tells us—a jump 'from lively to severe,' to Fulham Palace ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... with a tantalising drawl, "May is my valentine. Come on, now, which do you choose—Nannie or Alida? Ben is good-natured; he'll take whoever ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... I ventured a little note to the famous General. I said I had been the guest of the British Army for six days on our front, and was now the guest of the French Army, for a week, and to pass through Strasbourg without seeing the victor of the "front de Champagne" would be tantalising indeed. Would he spare an Englishwoman, whose love for the French nation had grown with her growth and strengthened with her years, ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of a long series of disappointments, all of a character so painful and exciting, drove the young soldier again to despair; which feeling the tantalising sense that he was now within but a few miles of his companions in exile, and separated from them only by the single obstruction before him, exasperated into a species of fury ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... not enjoy this; Donald Neil was not the right sort of person to torment. He took that sort of thing too indifferently and one was always left in the tantalising doubt as to whether he cared or not. Coonie did not believe in casting his pearls before swine, so he cracked his long whip with the usual admonitory inquiry, ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... going—'rattlesnakes, and all kinds,' says he, with an affluence of promise in his tone that is quite agreeable. Rattlesnakes will be quite enough of a treat, without the vague horrors that may be comprised in the additional 'all kinds.' Jack's account of the game on St. Simon's is really quite tantalising to me, who cannot carry a gun any more than if I were a slave. He says that partridges, woodcocks, snipe, and wild duck abound, so that, at any rate, our table ought to be well supplied. His account of the bears that are still to be found in ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... it about and examine it from every point of view till not a shade or aspect of its beauty has escaped us. In the presence of these brilliant butterflies we are children once more. We want to have them in our hands and feel that they are in our possession. It is tantalising merely to view them from a distance. We want to enjoy their beauty to ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... clear, and concise—what woman could ask for more? Yet there was something beyond it which was out of Miss Thorne's grasp—a tantalising something, which would not be allayed. Then she reflected that the Summer was before tier, and, in reality, now that she was off the paper, she had no business ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... youths of her kindred sing their wild songs around her - the cup of milk and the spoon presented to her by the bridegroom's mother - the arrival of the sages in the morn - the reading of the Ketuba - the night - the half-enjoyment - the old woman - the tantalising knock at the door - and then the festival of fishes which concludes all, and leaves the jaded and wearied couple to repose ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... tantalising. I was so near discovering the truth, and yet my inquiries had only plunged me more deeply into a quagmire of suspicion and horror. The more I tried to extricate ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... of their secret griefs, a tantalising vision of the unattainable. To glide reputably into a grey wig had been for years their dearest desire. As each saw herself getting older and older, saw her complexion fade and the crow's-feet gather, and her eyes grow hollow, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... from Arab and Hebrew poetry than from any other source. But in the Arabian Nights at least, though there are lustful murderesses—eastern Margarets of Burgundy, like Queen Labe of the Magicians,—there is seldom any "cruelty," or even any tantalising, on the part of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... marked with heavy lines. Thick, bushy brows hung over eyes which were keen and bright in spite of all his studying. Looking at his face, a man might judge him to be hard, narrow, strong—perhaps fanatical. Near the window:—one of the slanting windows through which it is tantalising to look—sat a young man, tall beyond the common, well knit, strong—Neal Ward, the minister's son. He had grown hardy in the keen sea air and firm of will under his father's rigid discipline. He had ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... sits talking with him while little Pearl wanders away and plays by the edge of the brook, the child is represented as at last making her way over to the other side of the woodland stream, and disporting herself there in a manner which makes her mother feel herself, "in some indistinct and tantalising manner, estranged from Pearl; as if the child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainly seeking to return to it." And Hawthorne devotes a chapter to this idea of ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... dear," laughed Deb, a little queerly, and she returned the baby in order to hunt for her handkerchief. "And if you must know the truth, so do I. It's tantalising to see you with more than your share, while I have none—and never shall have, worse luck! Well"—blowing her nose cheerfully—"it's no use crying over spilt milk, is it? And I tipped the can over myself, so ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... could imagine the sharp eyes of the lawyer travelling from face to face as each thus gave voice to his cupidity, and the thin curl of his lips as he remarked in a low, tantalising way: ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... watched whenever I was not on duty, that my hours of bliss became rarer than ever. Well, sir, my uncle charges me with indiscretion, and says my ardour aroused unreasonable suspicions. He was constantly anxious, and would baulk me in my happiest and most tantalising moments by making some excuse for breaking up the evening, and then would drive me frantic by asking whether he was to keep up my character for consistency in my absence. However, ten days since, the twelfth of May, after three weeks' ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have no share is apt to be either tantalising or monotonous, I propose to skip the next fortnight and introduce myself to the reader at a moment when I am once more alone. It is about six o'clock on a summer afternoon, I am in Paris, and seated at one of the little marble ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... favours me with a curious but tantalising communication on this subject: "An old man called on me at Kwei-hwa Ch'eng (Tenduc), who said he was neither Chinaman, Mongol, nor Mahomedan, and lived on ground a short distance to the north of the city, especially allotted to his ancestors by the Emperor, and where there now exist several ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... after the second act and proposed a turn in the foyer. To his disgust, Ulstervelt appropriated Constance and left him to follow with Mrs. Rodney and Katherine. He almost hated Edith for the tantalising smile she shot after him as he ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... butterflies came from the forest to settle wherever the skins of fruit were thrown. But he wanted to be free, and it was tiresome, he thought, to be so useless and do nothing better than to idle about the camp and watch the cooking—a tantalising matter when you ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... care which flag floated over its office, James Gordon Bennett, possessing the genuine newspaper genius, had daily evinced a deep, personal dislike of the Tribune's editor, and throughout the discussion of emancipation, the Herald, in bitter editorials, kept its columns in a glow, tantalising the Tribune with a persistency that recalls Cheetham's attacks upon Aaron Burr. The strategical advantage lay with the Herald, since the initiative belonged to the Tribune, but the latter had with it the preponderating sentiment ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... said that men make their own gods and realise that I myself saw something of the birth of such a god. For he was near to being a god then—our McGregor. The thing he did rumbles in the minds of men yet. His long shadow will fall across men's thoughts for ages. The tantalising effort to understand his meaning will tempt ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... became of him. A strange way to write history, and a most imperfect narrative, surely! Yes, unless there be some peculiarity in the purpose of the book, which explains this cold-blooded, inartistic, and tantalising habit of letting men leap upon the stage as if they had dropped from the clouds, and vanish from it as abruptly as if they had ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... conditions view with too uncharitable sentiments the marvellous good fortune of the book-hunters of the last century, at the very outset of a revival of the taste for our own vernacular literature? Does it not seem tantalising to hear that Warton the historian could pick up for sixpence a volume containing Venus and Adonis, 1596, and seven other precious morceaux, off a broker's counter in Salisbury, when the British Museum gave at the Daniel sale L336 for the Shakespeare alone? What a thrill ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... the solitudes of the Pacific I have nothing to relate, save that Miss Onslow's demeanour toward me became, if possible, more perplexing and tantalising than ever. To convey a clear and accurate idea of her varying moods it would be necessary to relate in tolerably minute detail the particulars of our daily intercourse throughout the voyage—a course of procedure which would not only expand my story far beyond its proper limits, but would also ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... reverting to the easy, half-insolent tone she hated. And he tapped his Paris snuff-box and spoke with tantalising slowness. 'Well, if that be the case, I should advise you to see that Mr. ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... cleverly through many a joyous long-to-be-remembered run. That scene had been one of the recurring half-waking dreams of his long days of weakness in the far-away Finnish nursing-home, a dream sometimes of tantalising mockery, sometimes of pleasure in the foretaste of a joy to come. And now it need scarcely be a dream any longer, he had only to go down at the right moment and take an actual part in his oft-rehearsed vision. Everything would be there, exactly as his ...
— When William Came • Saki
... of triumph swept across the face of the woman, who was absolutely on the wrong tack, as she sidled so near that her bare limbs almost touched the flowing cloak which swept round the man. His mind was full of his exquisite, delicate, tantalising, fastidious wife, his body ached for her, his soul fainted for even a touch of her little hand, so that once again he raised his right hand as though to sweep away some pestilential insect from his path, just one little careless gesture which proved ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... much better tonight now that I know there is nothing seriously wrong with my precious darling!" she said, returning beside him to the drawing-room and tantalising him with brief glances from her shy, ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... loved and hated in the same breath," so runs his masculine meditation. "Tantalising open eyes, without a blush in them, and a face ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... it is no darkly romantic thing to do. But it was over the maiden that our Dorothea pondered, until by and by the small shade took features and a place in her leisure time: a very companionable shade, though tantalising; and innocent, though given to mischievously sportive hints. Dorothea sometimes wondered what her own fate would have been, with this naughtiness in her young ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... she felt him all over, gazed at the rosy face whenever a tantalising flash of lamplight permitted, then kissed and kissed, till the boy awoke more fully, with another 'Mamma! Mamma,' putting his hand to feel for her chain, as if to identify her. Then with a coo of content, 'Mite has papa and mamma,' and he seemed ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whatever to do with her affairs, Doctor," said the tantalising woman, who affected all the foibles of the smarter set. "Now that you have forsaken her she is, of course, entirely ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... disconcerted by this interruption. It gave them a sensation of shame for the moment as if they had been caught in a discussion of a forbidden subject; and then a tingling ran through their veins. Even MTutor for the moment found no fine speech in which to express his sense of this sudden momentary tantalising appearance of the mystic woman standing half visible out of the background of the unknown. He did think some very fine things on the subject after a time, with a side glance of philosophical reflection that her light laugh of mockery as she momentarily ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... went on under cloud of night season after season, despite the utmost precautions which the luckless farmers could adopt. The perpetrators were not dimly guessed to be half-famished creatures, taking a mad revenge for their wretchedness by destroying the tantalising stores of grain, too costly for their consumption; the price of wheat in the early years of Her Majesty's reign and for some time previously being very high, and reaching at one moment (1847) the extraordinary figure of a hundred and ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... time, Phil was standing at the kerb-stone, beside his car, when a tall young lady, fashionably attired and using a sunshade to tantalising advantage, crossed the road in front of him and stopped before one of the office windows. She stepped back a little, looked up at the sign over the doorway, "The Langford-Ralston ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... in parts of the Punjab, and it is common throughout the North-west. It is a wary, restless little beast, and requires good shooting, for it does not afford much of a mark. When disturbed they keep constantly shifting, not going far, but hovering about in a most tantalising way. Natives it cares little for, unless it be a shikari with a gun, of which it seems to have intuitive perception; but the ordinary cultivator, with his load of wood and grass, may approach within easy shot; therefore it is not a ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... at Leigh Court surpassed our expectations. Poussin's famous "Land Storm;" "St. John," by Domenichino, the most striking, with a divine head of our SAVIOUR, by Leonardo da Vinci, and many others too tantalising to mention. Mr. King, Emmeline, Mr. Elton, and ourselves, filled the coach. Mr. King in high spirits, talked all the way there and back, and was exceedingly entertaining and instructive. He has great variety of tastes and acquirements, and we ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... heart upon his sleeve, but deep within him was that true affection which caused him to worship her as his idol. To him she was peerless among women, and her beauty was unequalled. Her piquant mischievousness amused him. As a girl, she had always been fond of tantalising him, and did so now. Yet he knew her fine character; how deeply devoted she was to her afflicted father, and how full of discomfort was her dull life, now that she had exchanged her school for the same roof which ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Augustine tells the story of his eager and passionate youth—a youth tossed about by the contending tides of Love, human and divine. Reading it to-day, with a mundane curiosity, we may half regret the space which he gives to theological metaphysics, and his brief tantalising glimpses of what most interests us now—the common life of men when the Church was becoming mistress of the world, when the old Religions were dying of allegory and moral interpretations and occult dreams. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... head with a tantalising laugh. "That you are coming? Alas, no, poor angel! She fancies that she has been sent from the convent to avoid you—as indeed she was, and by the Reverend Mother's own order, who, it seems, had wind of the intrigue this morning. But, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... 'you've a kind heart, and you look as thin as a rod yourself. I hear,' she said confidentially, 'they've got forty-five pounds of meat in there, and puddin' and punch and baccy. Ah! it's a queer world, that it is!' and then she passed on, the smell of the viands becoming more tantalising every minute. ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... wrote, "I esteem his plays beyond any that have ever been published in our language"; while the fourth quoted with approval Dryden's fine phrase: "Shakespeare was the Man who of all Modern and perhaps Ancient Poets had the largest and most comprehensive Soul." But the avowed principles of these tantalising volumes justify no expectation of finding in them solid information. The biographical cataloguers of the seventeenth century did little more than proclaim Shakespeare and the other great poets of the country to be fit subjects ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... district of the Cheviots, and the lower lines of swelling hills into which the land subsides as it nears the sea, is crowded with the memorials of an earlier race; from every hill-top and rocky height they speak with tantalising half-revelations of that race which the Romans found here when their galleys brought them to the land which was to them Ultima Thule. No convincing explanation has yet been found of the concentric circular markings, with radiating ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... little while ago, a sort of an ear-piercing shriek that startled me, and caused me to nick my chin with the razor. I shall have to put a bit of flesh-coloured plaster over it. Was that the whistle?" asked the Honourable John in the most tantalising, nonchalant way, as if he had ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... this point, unhappily, this message broke off. Fragmentary and tantalising as the matter constituting this chapter is, it does nevertheless give a vague, broad impression of an altogether strange and wonderful world—a world with which our own may have to reckon we know not how speedily. This ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... our own day, the documents concerning the personal lives of composers begin to multiply. Of the love of Bach we have only that tantalising allusion to the "stranger maiden." Of Haydn we have amorous documents enough to make a brochure. When we reach Mozart, his letters alone fill two comfortable volumes. Of Beethoven there are still more numerous possessions. By Wagner and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... walked three miles to welcome her, might be able to see her; and on Anna's readily agreeing to this, himself helped the coachman with his own white-gloved hands to put it down. Susie was therefore exposed to the full fury of the blast, and shrank still farther into her corner—an interesting and tantalising object to the school-children, a dark, mysterious combination of fur, cocks' ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... 30th of November, he gained a ridge that he had had in view for some time, though he had been "bothered" by the hills in his efforts to reach it. From this ridge he caught a tantalising view, a glimpse of the outskirts of ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... a transaction in which I was helped by a present of a hundred francs to the concierge, and was now merely waiting for news from my protectors. As I did not wish to press them, my situation became most painfully prolonged, though it was not altogether devoid of pleasant but tantalising incidents. For instance, I had won the special favour of Mlle. Eberty, Meyerbeer's elderly niece. She had been an almost rabid partisan of my cause during the painful episode of the Tannhauser performances, and now seemed earnestly desirous of doing something to brighten my cheerless situation. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... him that he would be a mighty hunter of the same when he grew to a certain age. He had now reached that age, but never a rabbit as yet had he encountered. He might even have concluded that the whole Rabbit story was a myth and a legend were it not that certain scents and odours were for ever tantalising his nose that could, his instinct told him, mean Rabbit and only Rabbit. These scents met him at the most tantalising times, pulling him this way and that, exciting the wildest hopes in him, afterwards condemned to sterility; as ghosts ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the gate of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He had counted them once when he had been lost in dreams. At the time he had put no faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their hideous but daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he had begun to look upon them differently, and, in spite of the monologues in which he jeered at his own impotence and indecision, he had involuntarily come to regard this "hideous" dream ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... her the duty of occasionally replenishing the glasses from the case-bottle; Mr Quilp from that moment keeping one eye constantly upon her, lest she should by any means procure a taste of the same, and thereby tantalising the wretched old lady (who was as much attached to the case-bottle as the cards) in a double degree and most ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... well." Firmstone was purposely tantalising. He was forgetting the cranes, nor was he displeased that the stork ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... would overflow into the great central hall, with its cool palms and statues; and there David would listen to torrents of French artistic theory, anecdote, and blague, till his head whirled, and French cleverness—conveyed to him in what, to the foreigner, is the most exquisite and the most tantalising of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had obeyed his impatient summons, were hastily directed to search for this tantalising siren in every direction. Their master, in the meantime, eager and vehement in every new pursuit, but especially when his vanity was piqued, encouraged their diligence by bribes, and threats, and commands. All was in vain. They found nothing of the Mauritanian Princess, as she ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the counter attraction furnished by the long trial of Dr. Sacheverel—went sorely against the grain with him.[A] The fact was that things at the Hay market were not flourishing, and the prosperity enjoyed by the Drury Lane comedy—and the Sacheverel show—seemed tantalising ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... said she sharply. He put his fingers to his ears somewhat earlier than usual, and she turned away with a tantalising laugh. "I'm going inside," and inside she went. When he followed a few minutes later he ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... distance from the township, a few of the raiders held the main body of the goats. Parrot Cann, with a bag of cabbages on his shoulder, was the centre of attraction, and the dropping of an occasional leaf kept the goats pushing about him, some uprearing and straining toward the tantalising bag, others baa-ing in his face a piteous appeal. Suddenly, however, an astute billy with a flowing beard came to the rescue. He drove at Cann from the rear with masterly strategy and uncommon force, and brought him down; then in a flash boy and bag were hidden ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... honest men, meaning that they are glad whenever they can assist another in securing the recreation which makes fishermen kin all the world over. My chief trouble was that I could make no manner of use of a tantalising list of kindly invitations to cast a fly in Long Island. Then there is another and smaller island at a greater distance, Martha's Vineyard, beloved of old whalers, where there are well stocked trout streams; but it goes quite without saying that all the water near New York City is ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... was capable of chicane, so was I; and I knew that if she had anything to tell me, she would not be able to keep it to herself for long. If, on the other hand, I began to ask questions, she would certainly take a pleasure in tantalising me. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... assemblage of rocky mountains towering several hundred feet above the level of the sea. It was barren, except at the summit of the hills, where some trees formed a coronet, at once beautiful and refreshing, but tantalising to look at, as they appeared utterly inaccessible; and even supposing I could have discovered a landing-place, I was in great doubt whether I should have availed myself of it, as the island appeared to produce nothing which could have added to our ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... time, a great hippo at last made his appearance and came splashing along in our direction, but unfortunately took up his position behind a tree which, in the most tantalising way, completely hid him from view. Here he stood tooting and snorting and splashing about to his heart's content. For what seemed hours I watched for this ungainly creature to emerge from his covert, but as he seemed determined not to show himself I lost patience and made ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... Gentleman leant back in his easy chair, and began dictating from his notes with tantalising deliberateness. This was the last will and testament of him, Marmaduke Courtney Ashurst. Its verbiage wearied me. I was eager for him to come to the point about Harold. Instead of that, he did what it seems is usual in such cases—set out with a number of unimportant legacies to old family servants ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... and Beer Sellers," the purpose of which was to prove that the beer sellers were England's most indispensable patriots; that the beer cellars were England's best citadels; and that the beer trade in general was the very backbone of England's stability. It was horribly tantalising to the men in face of such teaching to find that there had been placed on board for them not so much as a solitary barrel of this much belauded beverage. Through all the voyage every man remained perforce a total abstainer. Yet there ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... GAZETTE.—"To read this fine book makes us eager to visit every hill and every valley that Mr. Bradley describes with such tantalising enthusiasm. It is a work of inspiration, vivid, sparkling, and eloquent—a deep well of pleasure to ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Dick, after they had sat staring at the beautiful but tantalising scene for full five minutes, "it's no use meeting trouble halfway, or wondering how we are going to get across the bridge until we come to it; let's push on and get as close up as we can; then we'll get ashore, walk up along, and have a look at the place. Perhaps when we come to it, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... to go upstairs, and Betty crossing the threshold stood a moment irresolute. Her basket, full of purchases recently made at the shop a mile away, was heavy enough, and her feet were weary; but Jenny's tantalising red head gleamed like a beacon twenty yards away from her, and curiosity silenced the pleadings of fatigue. Hitching up her basket she proceeded in the wake of the young couple, who were walking slowly enough, the girl's bright head ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... is good. But the power of diversifying the matter infinitely in your own mind, and of applying it to every occasion that arises, is far better; so don't suppress the vivida vis." We have no more of Burke's doings than obscure and tantalising glimpses, tantalising, because he was then at the age when character usually either fritters itself away, or grows strong on the inward sustenance of solid and resolute aspirations. Writing from Battersea to his old comrade, Shackleton, in 1757, he begins with an apology ...
— Burke • John Morley
... continuous. The bed of air in contact with the surface of stones scorched by the blazing sun becomes rarified and dilated, so that the horizon appears to be fringed on all sides with lakes of rippling water, most deceptive and tantalising to the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... been in the direction of Montenegro, and my upward gaze had turned hourly towards the path which leads thither, issuing forth from the gate of the town in a zigzag form, and mounting till it seems lost in the clouds. It was so tantalising to know that three hours' ascent on one of the stout mules of the country, would bring one to the heart of the Black Mountain, and to the palace of its chivalrous Vladika, or Prince-Bishop, the feared and adored monarch of a hundred and twenty thousand Montenegrins. His praises and his exploits ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... upon the wall clanged the first stroke of the hour. At the sixth the lady sprang up and turned on the Major one of the queerest and yet most attractive faces he had ever seen in his life; open, and yet tantalising, the ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... miserable and tantalising a thought, Miss Lavington, to those who know that a priceless spirit is near them, which might be one with theirs through all eternity, like twin stars in one common atmosphere, for ever giving and receiving wisdom and might, beauty and bliss, and yet are barred from their bliss ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... fear your ridicule more than that of others? You are brighter, more bewitching, more tantalising than any woman I have ever known—you are maddening—do you hear? Ah, I crave your pardon for so far forgetting myself as to dwell upon a matter which I should have forgotten in your displeasure. By the way, I should like to tell you why I will not accommodate these young fools with a duel, ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... remarkable book.... We are plunged into a delicious and tantalising romance; incident follows incident like a panorama of exciting pictures. Fertility of imagination is everywhere apparent, and the denouement is artfully concealed till it bursts upon the reader with a suddenness that fairly takes away ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... clear vision, which came about a week after the first, the interval having yielded nothing but tantalising glimpses and some useful experience, showed him the view down the length of the valley. The view was different, but he had a curious persuasion, which his subsequent observations abundantly confirmed, that he was regarding the strange world from exactly the same spot, although he was looking in a ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... tantalising trait in her character she was popular—every one liked her, for her natural kindness of heart, combined with great charm of manner and more than ordinary good looks, made her ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... a fascinating, tantalising dream. Larmor suggested in 1900 that the electron is a tiny whirlpool, or "vortex," in ether; and, as such a vortex may turn in either of two opposite ways, we seem to see a possibility of explaining positive and negative electricity. But the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... about half-way to Gavarnie, a fine, though tantalising view of the Breche is obtained. I gazed at the object of my expedition with anxious eyes, wondering how I was to get to its cloud land amidst the eternal snow-crowned Tours de Marbore; and I longed for the wings of one of the many eagles which sailed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... and took a few steps up and down the room. "Listen to me, dear friend," he began, in low, earnest tones. "There was a time—far be it from me to take undue advantage of these reminiscences—when you and I were thrown considerably together. At that time, that far-off, happy, and yet most tantalising time, I was bold enough to cherish certain aspirations." Here he took up his position behind a chair, resting his hands lightly on the back of it. "That those aspirations were not wholly unsuspected by you ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... also, to risk the suggestion that to the author of Some Remarks should go the honor of the earliest adumbration of the "Hamlet problem." For here, before Francis Gentleman or Steevens or Richardson, Anonymous has raised the tantalising question of the why of Hamlet's conduct, the problem of his delay in effecting his revenge, and has glanced at an answer. Anonymous in no wise approves of Hamlet's madness: it was, he thinks, the best possible way to thwart his design of revenge and ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... love through an open window is, no doubt, a delightful occupation, if a somewhat tantalising one; but if Eustace's ears had been as good as his eyes, and he could have heard the conversation that was proceeding in the drawing-room, he would ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... a purple filbert that the court was not in its usual good temper at present, the cause being the tantalising heart of the Duke of Christmas Daisies. He was an Oriental fairy, very poorly of a dreadful complaint, namely, inability to love, and though he had tried many ladies in many lands he could not fall in love with one of them. Queen Mab, who rules in the Gardens, had been confident that ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... unfortunately combined in a confused and discordant whole. If, of all little cities of Provence, Forcalquier is one of the least unique and least holding, its Cathedral is also one of the least satisfying. It is not beautiful in situation nor in its own essential harmony, and the fine but tantalising perspectives of its interior may be found again in ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... reduced to this extremity the young officers themselves did not despond, nor did their men, who looked to them for example, do so either. Murray calculated that if they could but get a breeze, they might reach the port for which they were steering in less than twenty-four hours. It was very tantalising to be so near it, and yet not to be able to get there. Had they had any fish-hooks, they would, they thought, be able to catch some fish, but none were to be found, nor had they a file with which to ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... something? If Manrico has one, he invariably leaves it outside. Probably doesn't see why, with so many competent musicians in the orchestra, he should take the trouble of playing his own accompaniments. And why does the Curtain invariably come down as soon as swords are drawn? Tantalising to have all the duels and fighting done ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... been tried with the other poisoners. His widow gave some account of his habits, and of his wonderful apparatus, such as 'a ring which would open like a watch;' but the glimpse obtained of him is brief and mysteriously tantalising. We remember that, about twenty-five years ago, this man was made the hero of a novel called Forman, which contains much effective writing, but did not somehow fit the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... he sat on the piazza of the hotel nursing his confusion and discontent, Sis Poteet rode by. It was a tantalising vision, though a fleeting one. It seemed to be merely the flash of a red feather, the wave of a white hand, to which Woodward lifted his hat; but these were sufficient. The red feather nodded gaily to him, the ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... but no one was in sight. He was not to be baulked, however, and made a fresh attempt to get alongside the pony. But each time the sailor forged a little ahead, and this tantalising game continued for half-an-hour. ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... letter was very interesting to me, but the glimpses into your new views which it affords are very tantalising—and I want more. What you say about the development of the Amnion in your last letter still more nearly brought "Donner und Blitz!" to my lips—and I shall look out anxiously for your new facts. Lankester tells me you have been giving lectures ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... would be nothing less than folly to let Adrian and her aunt meet, Rachel decided. In imagination, she could follow the process of his growing dismay; she could see his puzzled stare as he watched Miss Deane, and struggled to fix that tantalising suggestion of likeness to some one he knew; his flash of illumination as he solved the puzzle and turned with that gentle, winning smile of his to herself; and then the progress of his disillusionment as, day by ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... irritated and disappointed, and that made her head ache, and the headache sent down her spirits again, and eclipsed the brightness of the morning. If Aunt Margaret refused to call, she could not make the acquaintance of the fair unknown, and it would be a tantalising experience to see her every day, and, yet be as far removed from friendship as if they ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... had opened and a young lady in a very stunning street dress, with a huge hat and a tantalising veil, stood in it for a moment, hesitated, and then was about to shut it with an apology for ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... could guess. But he could not alter his nature. He went through his day's work very wretched and dejected, yet with an ineffable touch of secret comfort behind all, which sometimes would look him in the face for a moment like a passing sunbeam, yet sometimes seemed to exasperate beyond bearing the tantalising misery of his fate. A more agitated, disturbed, passionate, and self-consuming man than the doctor was not in Carlingford, nor within a hundred miles; yet it was not perfect wretchedness ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... this; but of the beautiful bird which was flitting about among the trees—still keeping out of the range of his gun. He was in a bent attitude, crouching along under the bank—which he was using as a cover, to enable him to approach the tantalising game. ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... another, and is beside himself with rage as they deftly escape from his clasp just as he fancies he has at last caught them. The fair nymphs, who know they have nothing to fear from so infatuated a lover, swim hither and thither, tantalising him by their nearness, and lure him up and down the ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... no more than brief, tantalising glimpses of the vast treasury of folk-tales and ballads that existed before literature became an art and that lived on side by side with it, vitalising and enriching it continually. Yet here and there we catch sudden gleams like the fragment in ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... [1] A tantalising reference to one such acquaintance occurs in Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors. Vol. v. p. 357. In notes made by Lord Camden's nephew, George Hardinge, for a proposed Life of the Lord Chancellor there is this entry: "formed ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... if he will walk to the water he will get cured, and be able to walk afterwards. Why, he could not even roll himself into the pond, and so there he had lain, a type of the hopeless efforts at self-healing which we sick men put forth, a type of the tantalising gospels which the world preaches to its subjects when it says to a paralysed man: 'Walk that you may be healed; keep the commandments that you may enter ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... extravagant cigar cold between his fingers. In others two young men were confabulating quietly but with a most dissipated air, heads together over a brace of glasses. At a corner service table a negro in a white jacket was busy with a silver chafing-dish which exhaled a tantalising aroma. This last, at the entrance of P. Sybarite, glanced quickly over his shoulder, and seeing a strange face, clapped the cover on the steaming chafing-dish and discovered a round black countenance bisected by a complete mouthful of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... week he stubbornly resisted the desire to repeat the trip down-town. In the meantime, Simmy had developed into a most unsatisfactory informant. He suddenly revealed an astonishing streak of uncommunicativeness, totally unnatural in him and tantalising in the extreme. He rarely mentioned Anne's name and never discussed her movements. Thorpe was obliged to content himself with an occasional word from Lutie,—who was also painfully reticent,—and now and then a scrap of news in the society columns of the newspapers. Once he saw her in ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... not bright enough to read a small and delicate handwriting by. The Captain found himself in a tantalising position. He gave Paul some more brandy, laid down the packet of letters, and turned to the portfolio. It was large and official in appearance, and it had an ingenious clasp which baffled Dieppe. ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... on the forehead—both of them chaste, stony, saint-like, tantalising things. But I'd be content for the time being if I were only sure your heart were perfectly free. I couldn't bear the thought of your making love ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... aimed at the same easy, degage mode of communicating his thoughts to the world, has quite spoiled his matter, which is sometimes valuable, by his manner, in which he carries a certain flaunting, flowery, figurative, flirting style of amicable condescension to the reader, to an excess more tantalising than the most starched and ridiculous formality of the age of James I. There is nothing so tormenting as the affectation of ease and freedom ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... got on board her. Still, we could scarcely blame ourselves for not sailing after her; for had the breeze again caught her, she would have gone away and left us in the lurch. Yet it must be owned that it was very tantalising to see our ship still in sight; for we did not suppose that, had we got up to her, Captain Gunnel would have ventured to refuse to admit us on board. He would probably have tried to turn the tables on us, and have abused us for remaining so long ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... roofs and green palmetto fronds gave her mind wings for a moment and a world to fly through. Not the world we live in, but the world worth living in. Old sailor-stories, old scraps of thought and dreams from nowhere pursued her, haunted her during that delightful and tantalising moment, and then she was herself again and Miss ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... of the moon presented to our view affords such remarkable indications of volcanic phenomena of a special kind, that we are justified in devoting a chapter to their consideration. It is very tantalising that our beautiful satellite only permits us to look at and admire one half of her sphere; but it is not a very far-fetched inference if we feel satisfied that the other half bears a general resemblance to that which is presented to the earth. It is scarcely necessary to ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... Travellers of every time! Ye Quartos published upon every clime! 0 say, shall dull Romaika's heavy round, Fandango's wriggle, or Bolero's bound; Can Egypt's Almas [13]—tantalising group— Columbia's caperers to the warlike Whoop— Can aught from cold Kamschatka to Cape Horn With Waltz compare, or after Waltz be born? 130 Ah, no! from Morier's pages down to Galt's, [14] Each tourist pens ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron |
