"Voluptuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... obeyed, yielding anew to the sense of indolent luxury and voluptuous ease his surroundings engendered,—and presently the aroma of rising incense mingled itself with the scent of the strewn rose-petals,—the pages had replenished the incense-burner, and now, these duties done so far, they brought each a broad, long stalked palm-leaf, and placing themselves ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the Voltaire of Germany, and very much more than the Voltaire; for his romantic and legendary poems are above the level of Voltaire. But, on the other hand, he was a Voltaire in sensual impurity. To work, to carry on a plot, to affect his readers by voluptuous impressions,—these were the unworthy aims of Wieland; and though a good-natured critic would not refuse to make some allowance for a youthful poet's aberrations in this respect, yet the indulgence cannot extend itself to mature years. An old man corrupting his ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... yet enigmatical—and something wild and voluptuous seemed to stir in Gervase's pulses as he touched the small hand, loaded with quaint Egyptian gems, which she graciously extended ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... complexion was at that time clear, and even bright. His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with darkened lustre.... His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin good-humored and round, but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing—like what he has done." And Dorothy Wordsworth (to close with a contemporary and sympathetic impression) set him down ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... we should see the poverty of the earlier ages, humble, modest, frugal, robust, industrious, and laborious. Then, indeed, the fable of Plato might be realised: Poverty might be embraced by the god of Riches; and if she did not produce the voluptuous offspring of Love, she would become the fertile mother of Agriculture, and the ingenious parent of the Arts ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Bacon upon the legends of the Syren coast "When the wise Ulysses passed," says he, "he caused his mariners to stop their ears, with wax, knowing there was in them no power to resist the lure of that voluptuous song. But he, the much experienced man, who wished to be experienced in all, and use all to the service of wisdom, desired to hear the song that he might understand its meaning. Yet, distrusting his own power to be firm in his better ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... I heard a mellow sound, Gathering up from all the lower ground; [2] Narrowing in to where they sat assembled Low voluptuous music winding trembled, Wov'n in circles: they that heard it sigh'd, Panted hand in hand with faces pale, Swung themselves, and in low tones replied; Till the fountain spouted, showering wide Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail; Then the music touch'd the gates and died; Rose again from where ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... translucent texture, and just encircling the outline of her oval face. This scarf, hanging down below the waist, but half concealed her white rounded arms, and only partially hindered the view of a figure of the most elegantly voluptuous tournure. Around her waist another scarf of bright scarlet formed a sort of cincture or belt, leaving its long fringed ends to hang over the skirt of her silken robe, and blending its colours with those of the light veil that fell down from her shoulders. It was a costume that seemed well-suited ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... improvisation; they stamped their feet to the slow measure; they shouted in chorus the one word "Leap!" raising a ferocious roar; and between whiles the song of voice and strings came to me from a distance, softened and lingering in a voluptuous and pitiless cadence that wrung my heart, and seemed to eat up the remnants of my strength. But what could I have done, even if I had had the strength of a giant, and a most fearless resolution? I should have been shot dead before I had crawled halfway ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... cercus—that uncanny white witch of a creature, with its petals moulded in wax or ivory, its golden-brown leaf-sheathings, and its unequalled emerald (is it a tint, or is it but a shadow?) far down within the lovely cup, with that overpowering voluptuous odor, burdening the atmosphere, permeating the innermost fibres of sensation, steeping the soul in lethargy! What more fit exponent can there be for this weird plant's expression than the song of the serpent-charmer, the singing which can root the feet unto the ground ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... would double their joy; to defy both heaven and earth in snatching the boldest of all kisses; to say no word that would not lead to death or at least to sanguinary combat if overheard,—all these voluptuous images and romantic dangers decided the young man. However slight might be the guerdon of his enterprise, could he only kiss once more the hand of his lady, he still resolved to venture all, impelled by the chivalrous and passionate spirit of those days. He ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... moderate, flowing, and by no means stereotyped. Liszt tells of the capricious life infused into its courtly measures by the Polish aristocracy. It is at once the symbol of war and love, a vivid pageant of martial splendor, a weaving, cadenced, voluptuous dance, the pursuit of shy, coquettish ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... least voluptuous of flowers; the legend of Juno's myrtle-sheltered bath seems not unnaturally suggested by the vigorous, fresh, and healthy beauty of the plant, and the purity of its snowy blossoms. The exquisite quality, too, which myrtle ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a multitude of Ephesian children. Then, with flying feet and swinging, voluptuous forms, the ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... fascinating person, her smiling eyes, her faultlessly sloping shoulders and rosy-tinged white hands, her light and yet languid movements, the very sound of her voice, slow and sweet, there was an impalpable, subtle charm, like a faint perfume, voluptuous, tender, soft, though still modest, something which is hard to translate into words, but which moved and kindled—and timidity! was not the feeing it kindled. Lavretsky turned the conversation on the theater, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... nature. This doctrine inculcates a steady perseverance in one uniform and temperate course of life, and an abstinence from particular kinds of foods, as well as from all indulgence of the carnal appetite, and it restrains the intemperate and voluptuous part within due bounds, and at the same time habituates her votaries to undergo those austere and rigid ceremonies which their religion obliges them to observe. The end and aim of all these toils and labours is the attainment of the knowledge ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... them in the grand promenade. Forestier remarked upon the motley appearance of the throng, but Duroy did not listen to him. A woman, leaning her arms upon the edge of her loge, was staring at him. She was a tall, voluptuous brunette, her face whitened with enamel, her black eyes penciled, and her lips painted. With a movement of her head, she summoned a friend who was passing, a blonde with auburn hair, likewise inclined to embonpoint, and said to her in a whisper intended ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... to avoid injuring the unborn child. Rhythmic movements of the two individuals, especially of the man, gradually increase the excitation of the mucous membrane or skin of the genital organs of each party, till voluptuous sensations, arising chiefly in the glans penis and clitoris, spread to the whole nervous system and the entire body, constituting what is called the venereal orgasm, and terminating in the man by ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... road, and reached home by one that was much more circuitous, and as the latter thought also more safe. Here, after Waiting for the arrival of the mail coach, which he resolved to meet on its way to the metropolis, he partook of a lunch, which, even to his voluptuous palate, was one that he could not but admit to be excellent. He received four hundred pounds from the proctor, for which he merely gave him a note of hand, and in a short time was on his ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... hosts of butterflies in their sunny outskirts, light-winged Psyches hovering in the warm, rich air, stained and spotted and splashed with every bright hue of yellow and scarlet and russet, set off against brilliant blacks and whites; dark, cool woods carpeted with mosses thick, soft, voluptuous with the silent tribute of ages, and in their luxurious depths your willing feet are cushioned,—more blessed than feet of Persian princess crushing her woven lilies and roses; the tender, sweet-scented woods ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... ate a-bed in most voluptuous disorder, Charles got up, and taking a passionate leave of me for a few hours, went to town, where concerting matters with a young sharp lawyer, they went together to my late venerable mistress's, from whence I had, but the day before, made ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... the Fourth, Long live this valiant King! What a distance there was between the times which this tune reminded one of, and the present period! Two little chubby girls of ten years old finished the ballet by the Russian step: this dance sometimes assumes the voluptuous character of love, but executed by children, the innocence of that age was mingled with the' national originality. It is impossible to paint: the interest inspired by these amiable talents, cultivated by the delicate and generous hand of a female ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... this osculation of intellects, and shrugged their shoulders, and decided once more that men were incomprehensible. These great ones in London, falling in love like the rest! But no! Love was a ribald and voluptuous word to use in such a matter as this. It was generally felt that the Reverend Archibald Jones and Miss Chetwynd the elder would lift marriage to what would now be termed ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... genius, it was decreed, that "Scribere est agere."—"The book of Telemachus," says Madame de Stael, "was a courageous action." To insist with such ardour on the duties of a sovereign, and to paint with such truth a voluptuous reign, disgraced Fenelon at the court of Louis XIV., but the virtuous author raised a statue for himself in all hearts. MASSILLON'S Petit Careme was another of these animated recals of man to the sympathies of his nature, which proves the influence of an author; for, during the contests of Louis ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... during the Renaissance, in England under the restoration, in France under the Convention and Directory, man becomes as pagan as in the first century; the same causes render him the same as in the times of Augustus and Tiberius, that is to say voluptuous and cruel: he abuses himself and victimizes others; a brutal, calculating egoism resumes its ascendancy, depravity and sensuality spread, and society becomes a den of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is it at judgment, whether you be to answer for the life of a rich man or a poor man? Is Dives, then, any better than Lazarus? Oh, that men knew what poor, deceiving shadow they grasp at while they let go the everlasting substance! The strongest, and richest, and most voluptuous sinners do but lay in fuel for their sorrows, while they think they are gathering together a treasure. Alas! they are asleep, and dream that they are happy; but when they awake, what a change will they find! Their crown is made of thorns; their pleasure ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... tapestry. And around her and above, Dolores's amazed eyes lighted upon gems of the painter's art such as few collections might boast. The entire ceiling was covered with a colossal "Battle of the Amazons," by Rubens, each figure thrown out in startling distinctness, full of voluptuous life and action; the walls were mantled by vast golden frames holding the best of Titian, Correggio and Giorgione, Raphael and Ribera. And jewels flashed everywhere; cunningly placed lamps, themselves encrusted with the reddest ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... poem called "Lucretius on Life and Death," and was partly suggested by the vogue acquired by Fitzgerald's rendering of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The doctrine of Omar is, as everybody knows, a doctrine of voluptuous pessimism. There is no life other than this. Let us kiss and drink while it lasts. The doctrine of Lucretius is to a certain extent similar, but is sterner and more intellectual in its form. I accordingly selected from ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... yielding, pleasure-seeking favorite of the empress—you saw him devoted only to amusement and enjoyment, and you said to yourself: 'That is the man I need. As I cannot myself be made regent, let it be him! I will govern through him; and while this voluptuous devotee of pleasure gives himself up to the intoxication of enjoyments, I will rule in his stead.' Well, Mr. Field-Marshal, were ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... is fatal to the subsequent power of abstinence. True it is, that generations have used laudanum as an anodyne, (for instance, hospital patients,) who have not afterwards courted its powers as a voluptuous stimulant; but that, be sure, has arisen from no abstinence in them. There are, in fact, two classes of temperaments as to this terrific drug—those which are, and those which are not, preconformed ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... mercie shall haue compased the in on euery syde with temptacions/ tribulacions/ aduersities & combraunce/ to bringe [the] home agayne vn to thyne awne herte/ & to set thy sinnes wich thou woldest so fayne couer & put out of mynd with delectacion of voluptuous pastymes/ before [the] eyes of thy conscience: then call [the] faithfull ensample of Ionas & all lyke stories vn to thy remembraunce/ and with Ionas turne vn to thi father that smote [the]: not to cast [the] awaye/ but to laye a corosie and a freatinge playster vn to [the] ...
— The prophete Ionas with an introduccion • William Tyndale
... hanging near me caught my eye. The countenance really smiled and laughed and varied from moment to moment. Her figure became rounded and living and seemed to stir in the frame. The face was beautiful but ghastly. I seemed to be borne along on a sea of pleasure by currents of voluptuous happiness. ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... closed his eyes, as though gazing in fancy upon the glossy draperies and rosy flesh of those voluptuous ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... communicative. He could talk of nothing but the beautiful coast of Leghorn; the superb bay of Naples; pleasant trips to Rome; visits to Tripoli; and other interesting parts on the African coast; and, on the voluptuous city of Palermo, with its amiable ladies and incessant festivities—he was quite as eloquent as could reasonably be expected from a smart post-captain ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... as the Platonic ideas are divided into three species, of which one tends to the contemplative or speculative life, one to active morality, and the third to the idle and voluptuous, so are there three species of love, of which one raises itself from the contemplation of bodily form to the consideration of the spiritual and divine; the other only continues in the delight of seeing and conversing; the third from seeing proceeds to precipitate ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... encounters was, that he dreamed day and night, absorbedly, of a voluptuous woman and of the meeting with a small, withered foreigner of ancient breeding. No sooner was his mind free, no sooner had he left his own companions, than he began to imagine an intimacy with fine-textured, subtle-mannered people such as the foreigner at Matlock, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution. James II., the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colonies and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic of tyranny—a ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he gave himself over for a few moments to the almost voluptuous delight of giving free rein to his grief. The hot Latin blood in him, tempestuous in all its passions, was firing his heart and brain now with the glow of devotion and ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... priest about a woman? When you take your vows of celibacy you pretend to dislike anything that wears petticoats. But I doubt whether even you could resist the temptation of a handsome face and voluptuous form." ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... ladies always attended his progress, and were always brought to the splendid and multiplied entertainments with which he regaled his Council. In these festivities, whilst his guests were engaged with the seductions of beauty, the intoxications of the most delicious wines of France, and the voluptuous vapor of perfumed India smoke, uniting the vivid satisfactions of Europe with the torpid blandishments of Asia, the great magician himself, chaste in the midst of dissoluteness, sober in the centre of debauch, vigilant in the lap of negligence and oblivion, attended ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, should run thenceforward in our ears like the noise of ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old Irish air so simply and tunably that Rolfe leaned back in his chair, with half closed eyes, in soft voluptuous ecstasy. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... the least," Chia Cheng continued; "so that there's no necessity of changing it; but it's evident that Pao-yue doesn't apply his mind to legitimate pursuits, but mainly devotes his energies to such voluptuous expressions and wanton verses!" And as he finished these words, he abruptly shouted out: "You brute-like child of retribution! Don't you yet get ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... characterization would well apply both to the appearance and voice of Mlle. Alboni, when she burst on the European world in the splendid heyday of her youth and charms—the face, with its broad, sunny Italian beauty, incapable of frown; the figure, wrought in lines of voluptuous symmetry, though the embonpoint became finally too pronounced; the voice, a rich, deep, genuine contralto of more than two octaves, as sweet as honey, and "with that tremulous quality which reminds fanciful spectators of the quiver in the air of the calm, blazing summer's noon"; a voice luscious ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... sworn soldiers of the cross, fighting the Paynim in the Holy Land, or scouring the Mediterranean, and scourging the Barbary coasts with their galleys, or feeding the poor, and attending upon the sick at their hospitals, they led a life of luxury and libertinism, and were to be found in the most voluptuous courts of Europe. The order, in fact, had become a mode of providing for the needy branches of the Catholic aristocracy of Europe. "A commandery," we are told, was a splendid provision for a younger brother; and men of rank, however ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... sensations in animals and plants, and buzzing sounds prove that the gloomy recesses of the woods are full of life and motion. Love-sighs are breathed through the fragrant perfumes of newly collapsed flowers, and all animated nature feels the influence of this moment of voluptuous tranquillity. Scattered gleams of light, reflected splendours of the departed sun, still float upon the woodland ridges; while, amidst a refreshing coolness, the mild moon arises in calm and silent grandeur, and diffusing her silver light over the dark forest, imparts to every object a new ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... first had gathered, and the whole sublime congregation of mountains was bathed at once in warm sunshine. They seemed more like some luxurious vision of Eastern romance than like a reality of that wilderness; all were melted together into a soft delicious blue, as voluptuous as the sky of Naples or the transparent sea that washes the sunny cliffs of Capri. On the left the whole sky was still of an inky blackness; but two concentric rainbows stood in brilliant relief against it, while far in front the ragged cloud still streamed ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... relentless closing To grief—the woman-shame no art can heal— To that small life beneath my heart reposing! Man, man, the wild beast for its young can feel! Proud flew the sails—receding from the land, I watch'd them waning from the wistful eye, Round the gay maids on Seine's voluptuous strand, Breathes the false incense ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... mutual love it did not exist apparently, either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adelaida Ivanovna's beauty. This was, perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to run after any petticoat on the slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman who made no particular appeal ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... landing just this side of itself could drop down into her state of ecstatic coma with hardly a plop. She had neither capacity for exactitude nor tireless fidelity to tone. It made her neck ache. She had never graduated from musical sensation to cerebration; a theme washed her over with all the voluptuous abandon of a Henner sea siren letting the water tickling up the beach to roll over ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... first-floor room in the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, Amedee perceived through a cloud of tobacco-smoke the elegant Maurice in a scarlet jacket lying upon a large divan. Everything was rich and voluptuous, heavy carpets, handsomely bound volumes of poems, an open piano, and an odor of perfumery mingled with that of cigarettes. Upon the velvet-covered mantel Mademoiselle Irma, the favorite of the master of the apartment, had left the last fashionable novel, marking, with one of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... authority of the Press of England. Occasionally, when a publisher or author makes too free with the good name of an English citizen, the restraint of a prison cell is imposed upon the audacious libeller. Sometimes when a book offends against the public morals, and contains the outpourings of a voluptuous imagination, its author is condemned to lament in confinement over his indecorous pages. The world knows that Vizetelly, the publisher, was imprisoned for translating and publishing some of Zola's novels. Nana and L'Assommoir ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... venerable sage examined into the sources of happiness. It does not consist, he affirms, in voluptuous pleasures, for they are transient, brutalizing, and injurious to the mind; nor in public honours, for they depend on those who bestow them, and it is not felicity to be the recipient of an uncertain bounty; nor yet does happiness consist in riches, for the care of them is but a toil; ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... is quite right," his companion answered; "the sooner we march the better. I have always said it; I will get all the accounts in. Hannibal has been living like a voluptuous Carthaginian prince. One, two, three champagne-bottles! There will be a deuce of ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... would have been that spectator. Too well she knew that she would have analyzed what she thought and felt. She would have rated even the second before eternity in its degree as a frisson; and, no doubt, would have been aware of a voluptuous satiety, while anticipating the second after. She hated herself, and she hated too the smart, ultra-refined life that had brought her to it. How many of those past years, or of the years to come would she not give to shed a few tears ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... another being—not in the fleeting moment of a voluptuous contact, but by the organic and psychical sacrifices of pregnancy, childbirth and giving suck—cannot preserve for herself as much strength, physical and mental, as man whose only function in the reproduction of the species is ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... a Sphinx, after the Greek rather than the Egyptian conception. A voluptuous, soft, round, feline body, graceful, cruel paws, a wonderful bosom as if hewn out of marble, and above it all Pilar's regally poised head with its crown of shimmering gold hair, shrewd eyes, and blood-red vampire lips. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... suggesting, under the metaphor of a dream, that her lover should compass the deaths of his duchess and her husband. The dream is told with deadly energy and ghastly picturesqueness. The cruel sneer at its conclusion, murmured by a voluptuous woman in the ears of an impassioned paramour, chills us with the sense of concentrated vice. Her next appearance is before the court, on trial for her husband's murder. The scene is celebrated, and has been much disputed by critics. Relying on her own dauntlessness, on her beauty, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... preface, was very eulogistic. "We have the pleasure," he said, "of seeing united in one collection the sweet Romanic tongue which the South of France has adopted, like the privileged children of her lovely sky and voluptuous climate; and her lyrical songs, whose masculine vigour and energetic sentiments have more than once excited patriotic transports and awakened popular enthusiasm. For Jasmin is above all a poet of the people. He is not ashamed ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... fragrant, and delicious, and the larboard watch of the tired crew of the Gentile, after a boisterous passage of forty days from Gibralter, yielded to its somnolent influence, and lay stretched about the forecastle and waists, enjoying the voluptuous languor which overcomes men suddenly emerging from a cold ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... propose," said the third demon who came forward, "is involved in the general cultivation of music, which I contend would render men effeminate, indolent, voluptuous, and finally vicious and corrupt, so that whole nations might eventually be kept out of heaven and secured for hell ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... him. He had a luxurious boyhood, he was sent to college, pampered and spoilt, and passed on to a dissipated manhood. He spent a great fortune, ruined a magnificent business. He lived, month by month, hour by hour, for just the voluptuous pleasures which his wealth made possible to him. That was the man I met on the canal bank that afternoon. You know the state I was in. You know very well the ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven—an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... peple eek al aboute Wolde of it seye? It is ful light to arede. 1570 They wolden seye, and swere it, out of doute, That love ne droof yow nought to doon this dede, But lust voluptuous and coward drede. Thus were al lost, y-wis, myn herte dere, Your honour, which that ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of the emperors were written in hieroglyphics.[35] Half a century later that true dilettante, Hadrian, caused the luxuries of Canopus to be reproduced, along with the vale of Tempe, in his immense villa at Tibur, to enable him to celebrate his voluptuous feasts under the friendly eyes of Serapis. He extolled the merits of the deified Antinous in inscriptions couched in the ancient language of the Pharaohs, and set the fashion of statues hewn out of black basalt in the ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... full and certain and fixed, one could be sure of finding them the same a hundred years from now. Nobody ever was in a hurry. The brown bees came along there, when their work was over, and hummed into the great purple thistles on the roadside in a voluptuous stupor of delight. The cows sauntered through the clover by the fences, until they wound up by lying down in it and sleeping outright. The country-people, jogging along to the mill, walked their fat old nags through the stillness and warmth so slowly that even Margaret left ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... surprise as sorrow—"A new Receipt for preparing Sherbet." Some lines pointed out the method of composing a liquor, of which one drop only being infused in a bowl of Sherbet, would give it a taste and perfume hitherto unknown to the most voluptuous Asiatics. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... justice which history itself withholds. Thus the King Henry of The White Ship is governed by lust of dominion more than by parental affection; and the Prince, his son, is a lawless, shameless youth; intolerant, tyrannical, luxurious, voluptuous, yet capable of self-sacrifice even ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... beautiful Apollino; the spotted Faun; the Remouleur or figure which is in the act of whetting a sickle. All these were in Paris, and are now restored to this Gallery. In this chamber two pictures struck me in particular: the one the Venus of Titian, a most voluptuous figure; the other a portrait of the mistress of Rafaello, called "La Fornarina," from her ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Toggenburg, and your own ancestor, I dare say, Burkhart von Hohenfels. They were always singing of the gentle summer-time. They seem to have lived poetry, as well as sung it; like the birds who make their marriage beds in the voluptuous trees." ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Sooloo chief, whose ambitious or restless temper will not permit him to remain an idle man at home, where his passions for cruelty and voluptuous excess could scarcely fail to ruin him in a few years—surrounded as he is there by slavish dependents, and fearless of any higher power, whose authority might act as a check on his temper, or force him to control his passions—finds ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... render possible. But more frequently it is rather like acting than like what we Occidentals call dancing—acting accompanied with extraordinary waving of sleeves and fans, and with a play of eyes and features, sweet, subtle, subdued, wholly Oriental. There are more voluptuous dances known to geisha, but upon ordinary occasions and before refined audiences they portray beautiful old Japanese traditions, like the legend of the fisher Urashima, beloved by the Sea God's daughter; and at intervals they sing ancient ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... And northward to the lake of Pewaukee let us hie! To-night we'll lay us down to dreams of calm and cool delight, Where owls and dogs and Kipp make solemn music all the night; But with our fill of satisfying, big voluptuous cakes, Such only as that prince of cooks friend Louis Auer makes, We'll sleep and dream sweet dreams despite that roaring pack, So come, let's off with Auer to his ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... (says the writer before quoted) an air impregnated with the odours of innumerable flowers of the greatest fragrance, of which there is a perpetual succession throughout the year, the sweet flavour of which captivates the soul, and inspires the most voluptuous sensations." Although this luxurious picture may be drawn in too-warm tints it is not however without its degree of justness. The people of the country are fond of flowers in the ornament of their persons, and encourage their growth, as well as that of various ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... singer sat down to the instrument and struck a ringing chord. He had a pure and infinitely powerful tenor voice, clear as crystal, loud as a clarion, strong, rich, and rippling. He sang a love-song he had composed himself. He called it 'The Homage of King Pan to the Princess.' It was voluptuous and vehement and sweet as honey, full of bold conceits and audacious turns and trills, which startled the audience and took their breath away. He sang his song with almost devilish skill and power; ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... to become a power in politics in the period that we are considering was Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I., a type of the voluptuous and licentious female of the sixteenth century. Her pernicious activity first manifested itself when, having conceived a violent passion for Charles of Bourbon, she set her heart upon marrying him, and commenced intrigues and plots ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Lewis, transferred from the field to the cabinet, was soon exasperated by a private feud. In talents, temper, manners and opinions, the rivals were diametrically opposed to each other. Lewis, polite and dignified, profuse and voluptuous, fond of display and averse from danger, a munificent patron of arts and letters, and a cruel persecutor of Calvinists, presented a remarkable contrast to William, simple in tastes, ungracious in demeanour, indefatigable and intrepid in war, regardless of all the ornamental branches ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "Pelleas et Melisande" in order to take its rightful place. For while Moussorgsky may have influenced Debussy artistically, it was Debussy's work that made for the recognition and popularization of Moussorgsky's. For the music of Debussy is the delicate and classical and voluptuous and aristocratic expression of the same consciousness of which Moussorgsky's is the severe, stark, barbaric; the caress as opposed to the pinch. Consequently, Debussy's art was the more readily comprehensible of the two. But, once "Pelleas" produced, the assumption of "Boris" ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... witchery. Every limb of her body and every feature of her face followed, with a sort of effortless grace, the movements of her feet. Yet the general effect of the whole was suggestive of a sweet and dainty repose, voluptuous yet refined, glowing with life, yet dreamily restful. In a certain sense her physical movements, even her body itself, seemed merged and lost in the artistic ideal created and born of her performance. And so it was that he carried away that day ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... miscellanies, fashionable at the time, half moral and poetical, half fiercely polemical, which he called a "Theatre, wherein be represented as well the Miseries and Calamities which follow the voluptuous Worldlings, as also the great Joys and Pleasures which the Faithful do enjoy—an argument both profitable and delectable to all that sincerely love the word of God." This "little treatise," was a mixture of verse and prose, setting forth in general, the vanity of the world, and, in particular, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... hospital, as she had imagined the place. The sunny chamber, with its tastefully decorated walls hung with pictures, the foils over the door,—through which she saw a still more lovely room,—the voluptuous divan and its soft cushions, the heavy Turkish rugs, the rich damask hangings of her bed,—no; it ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... about the ordinary size, rather matronly; her features not very handsome; her mouth, voluptuous; but there was a care-worn expression in her face, probably attributable to her late misfortunes. From her appearance, one would judge her about forty; but ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... distinctive principles of these connexions were now difficult to trace. That period of public languor which intervenes between the breaking up of parties and the formation of factions now transpired in England. An exhausted sensualist on the throne, who only demanded from his ministers repose, a voluptuous aristocracy, and a listless people, were content, in the absence of all public conviction and national passion, to consign the government of the country to a great man, whose decision relieved the sovereign, whose ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... that his art is based on something stronger than the amusing or at its best the beguiling of a few mortals. If he uses a sensuous chord, it is not for sensual ears. His harmonies may float, if the wind blows in that direction, through a voluptuous atmosphere, but he has not Debussy's fondness for trying to blow a sensuous atmosphere from his own voluptuous cheeks. And so he is an ascetic! There is a distance between jowl and soul—and it is not measured by the fraction of an inch ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... a mortal man impassion'd far At these voluptuous accents, he arose, Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose Into her dream he melted, as the rose 320 Blendeth its odour with the violet,— Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... sky is clear everywhere; the clusters of mist over the Tore peaks are gone, heaven knows where, but they have stolen away. In their place, an eagle swings in great circles over the valley. Huge, black, and inaccessible, he traces ring after ring as though held on a rail in the air, moving with voluptuous languor, a thick-necked male, a winged stallion exulting. It is like music to watch him. At length ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... citrons, or the blooming orange-grove, As in Rousillon's jasmine-bordered vales, Incense at eve. 480 But temperate airs are thine, England; and as thy climate, so thy sons Partake the temper of thine isle; not rude, Nor soft, voluptuous, nor effeminate; Sincere, indeed, and hardy, as becomes Those who can lift their look elate, and say, We strike for injured freedom; and yet mild, And gentle, when the voice of charity Pleads like a voice from heaven: and, thanks to GOD, The chain that fettered Afric's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... late; he was enfeebled in health and spirits. A French artist who was specially despatched from Paris to do an original sketch of him for the enterprising journal L'ILLUSTRATION had, at the end of several sittings, uncharitably declared him to be "COMPLEETEMENT GA-GA." The voluptuous surroundings of Nepenthe, the abundant food, adoration of disciples, alcoholic and carnal debaucheries, had impaired his tough Monjik frame and blunted his wit, working havoc with that energy and peasant craftiness which once ruled an Emperor's Court. His body was obese. His mind ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... "Tannhauser," ah! that's the sublime hallelujah of the new era. First of all comes the chant of the pilgrims, the religious strain, calm, deep and slowly throbbing; then the voices of the sirens gradually drown it; the voluptuous pleasures of Venus, full of enervating delight and languor, grow more and more imperious and disorderly; and soon the sacred air gradually returns, like the aspiring voice of space, and seizes hold of all other strains and blends them in one supreme harmony, to waft them away ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... and custom than any other basic instinct. The law holds that no marriage is consummated until the sex act has taken place, regardless of the words of preacher or State official. The happiness of the first year or years of married life is mostly in its voluptuous bonds, for companionship and comradeship have really not yet arisen. Complementary to this it may be said that much of married misery, especially for the woman, arises from the ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... other participants in the Gluck-Piccinni feud there is not much to say. Sacchini was a man of notoriously luxurious and voluptuous life, but I do not find that he married. Salieri—whom Gluck assisted in the most generous manner, even to the extent of having one of Salieri's operas produced under his own name, and declaring the true author when it was a success—was married, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... one may say 'summer' now that September is deep and that we are cool as people hoped to be when at hottest.... Do tell me your full thought of the commonwealth of women.[168] I begin by agreeing with you as to his implied under-estimate of women; his women are too voluptuous; however, of the most refined voluptuousness. His gardener's daughter, for instance, is just a rose: and 'a Rose,' one might beg all poets to observe, is as precisely sensual as fricasseed chicken, or even boiled beef and carrots. Did you read Mrs. Butler's 'Year of Consolation,' ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... John Sinclair asserts to be "the darling idol of the English." There are delicious languors, Neapolitan reposes, Creole siestas, "long days and solid banks of flowers." But it is the birthright of the man of the temperate zones to alternate these voluptuous delights with more heroic ones, and sweeten the reverie by the toil. So far as they go, the enjoyments of the healthy body are as innocent and as ardent as those of the soul. As there is no ground of comparison, so there is no ground of antagonism. How compare a sonata and a sea-bath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... and their wits five, But thou hast all those and soul intellective; So by reason of thine understanding, Thou hast dominion of other beasts all, And naturally thou shouldst desire cunning To know strange effects and causes natural; For he that studieth for the life bestial,[12] As voluptuous pleasure and bodily rest, I account him never better ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gathered then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men. A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell; But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... suppose Christ means only such as ask for Necessaries: For to them who ask, nay, who importune, or rather extort great Sums from People to furnish voluptuous Entertainments, or, which is worse, to feed Luxury and Lust, it is Charity to deny; nay, it is a Kind of Rapine to bestow that which we owe to the present Necessity of our Neighbours, upon those that will abuse it; upon this Consideration ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... conflicts and buffetings of the enemy, wrought in him a great purity of heart, and prepared him for most extraordinary heavenly communications. The conversion of count Oliver, or Oliban, lord of that territory, added to his spiritual joy. That count, from a voluptuous worldling, and profligate liver, became a sincere penitent, and embraced the order of St. Benedict. He carried great treasures with him to mount Cassino, but left his estate to his son. The example of Romuald had also such an influence on Sergius, his father, that, to make ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... admirably. In resting on the earth they take the most graceful attitudes. Thus the ancients, observing their soft and expressive looks, which cannot be surpassed by the most beautiful look a woman can give, their clear voluptuous eyes, their charming positions, and the poetry of their manners, metamorphosed them, the male into a triton and the female into a mermaid. I made Conseil notice the considerable development of the lobes of the brain in these interesting cetaceans. No mammal, except man, has such a quantity ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... worthy of me. But it is my misfortune that I am his sister. So long as I strive, while awake, to commit no such {attempt}, let sleep often return with the like appearance. No witness is there in sleep; and yet there is the resemblance of the delight. O Venus and winged Cupid, together with thy voluptuous mother, how great the joys I experienced! how substantial the transport which affected me! How I lay dissolved {in delight} throughout my whole marrow! How pleasing to remember it; although short-lived ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... helpless burden to the lace-canopied and snowy couch of the young gambler, it seemed almost a profanation of some feminine seclusion. Gideon, to whom such luxury was unknown, was profoundly troubled. The voluptuous ease and sensuousness, the refinements of a life of irresponsible indulgence, affected him with a physical terror to which in his late moment of real peril he had been a stranger; the gilding and mirrors blinded his eyes; even the faint perfume seemed to him an ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... complete change should come about, bringing with it just laws, and a salutary rule for his country. His own life troubled him in no small degree, for he saw nothing in the future but the career of a Malay chief, a ruler over slaves, living a life of voluptuous idleness, and such an existence he looked ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... congenial occupation in drunkenness, duelling, and seduction, it is not to be expected that women should have retained an unappreciated refinement. Half-naked and ornamented with a profusion of jewels, they look out from the portraits of the time with a sleepy, voluptuous expression, which suggests a lack of intelligence and too great a susceptibility to physical impressions. Women as we find them in contemporary memoirs, and these most often deal with such as are about the court, are not unfit companions for the men. We see not a few the willing victims of coarse ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... inexhaustible variety of her steps and her movements. First, in rapid transition, we saw her pass from a serious dignity to transports of pleasure, at first moderate, but growing more and more animated; then to soft and voluptuous languors; then to the delirium of joy, and then to some strange ecstasy more delirious still. Next, she disappeared in the far-off darkness of the huge hall, and the clash of the castanets grew feeble in proportion to the distance, and diminished ever till, as we ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... a little shiver of voluptuous horror, remembering what she had endured and escaped. The sweet, true lines of her flawlessly made body were transiently undulant within a sheath of shimmering sequins: a daring gown, by British standards of that day, but permissible because she was ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... There are rites in which "words are uttered by persons who, on other occasions, would think themselves disgraced by the use of them."[1933] The Phalgun festival in northern India commemorates Krishna's voluptuous amusements. The rites are indecent.[1934] The mythological stories about the gods have to be converted by interpretation or special pleas into something which modern mores can tolerate.[1935] Songs, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... prevalent interests of the world, the one by a special persistent aggression, the other by a general passivity and unearthly calm. The fanatic is, notwithstanding, nothing but a worldling too narrow and violent to understand the world, while the mystic is a sensualist too rapt and voluptuous to rationalise his sensations. Both represent arrested forms of common-sense, partial developments of a perfectly usual sensibility. There is no divine inspiration in having only one passion left, nor in ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the Prince of Portugal), and, as she told Lady Mar, "just such a Roman Catholic as you." "He succeeds greatly with the devout beauties here," she went on to say; "his first overtures in gallantry are disguised under the luscious strains of spiritual love, that were sung formerly by the sublimely voluptuous Fenelon and the tender Madam Guion, who turned the spirit of carnal love to divine objects; thus the Count begins with the spirit and ends generally with the flesh, when he makes his addresses to holy virgins." Presently, she teased her sister about ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... to feed voluptuous thought The beauteous forms of Nature wrought, Fair trees and lovely flowers; The breezes their own languor lent, The stars had feelings which they sent ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... ambitious, what He for honours would atchieve? Or the gay voluptuous, that Which he'd not for ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... report her sprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her unwomanly jests gave colour to a thousand scandals. Her character in fact, like her portraits, was utterly without shade. Of womanly reserve or self-restraint she knew nothing. No instinct of delicacy veiled the voluptuous temper which broke out in the romps of her girlhood and showed itself almost ostentatiously through her later life. Personal beauty in a man was a sure passport to her liking. She patted handsome young squires on the neck ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... little more than sufficient to support nature, although her labours began ere the sunbeams played on the waters of the Tigris, and ended not till the stars were reflected from its surface. Such was the business of the disconsolate Nouri, when the voluptuous Almurah was proclaimed Sultan throughout his extensive dominions; nor was it long before his subjects felt the power of their Sultan; for, Almurah resolving to inclose a large tract of land for hunting and sporting, commanded the inhabitants of fourteen hundred villages to be expelled from ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... some stately war-ship, becalmed in the offing, and only waiting the rising of the capricious breeze, to waft her onward on her THEN peaceful mission of dispatch. Lost indeed to all perception of the natural must he have been, who could have listened, without a feeling of voluptuous melancholy, to the plaintive notes of the whip-poor-will, breaking on the silence of night, and harmonising with the general stillness of the scene. How often have we ourselves, in joyous boyhood, lingered amid these beautiful ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... entranced, possessed; but the feeling was delicious, and he roamed far and wide in the dark streets, making long detours by the river-side quays to lengthen out his reveries, his heart full, overfull of passionate, voluptuous imaginings. He was content because he was weary; his soul lay drowned in a delicious languor that no pang of desire troubled; to look and long was more than sufficient as yet to still the cravings ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... gathered then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose, with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes that spake again, And all went merry ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... left the quiet halls of Oxford for the frivolous court of Queen Elizabeth, there was more than one heart that was anxious for him. The Irish Sea lay between him and his sober, upright father; while the voluptuous and insincere Earl of Leicester was to be his patron, and all the hollow, glittering, pleasure-loving men and women of the court were to be his daily companions. No wonder his friends watched the young courtier's career with anxiety! But time soon showed how truly the young Philip ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... down on the bank to enjoy this unexpected voluptuous treat, when suddenly I was startled by a breathless exclamation of: "That's my book! Oh, give it me back, Sir; I must have dropped it as I passed along here, a short time ago, and ran back to ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... realm, and held it to be their sacred duty to destroy the nimbus which, had hitherto enveloped the throne, and to show to the hungering people that the queen who lived in luxury was nothing more than a light-minded, voluptuous woman,—all these enemies of the queen had had time to gain over public opinion and the judges. The trial had been a welcome opportunity to all to give free play to their revenge, their indignation, and their ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... it became possible to decipher the character of the idolaters. Where Moloch was worshipped, the people would naturally be found cruel; where the Paphian Venus, it could not be expected that they should escape the taint of a voluptuous effeminacy. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... In his miserable attic off Hester Street—that recalled the attic he had found her in, though it was many stories nearer the sky—he warmed himself with Gittel's image, smiling, light-darting, voluptuous. Night and sleep surrendered him to grotesque combinations—Gittel Goldstein smoking cigarettes in a bath-room, Yvonne Rupert playing Yiddish heroines ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... varnish; and it is a kind of picture that would not be desecrated, as some deeper and holier ones might be, by any splendor of external adornment that could be bestowed on it. It is deplorable and disheartening to see it in faded and shabby plight,—this joyous, exuberant, warm, voluptuous work. There is the head of a cow, thrust into the picture, and staring with wild, ludicrous wonder at the godlike bull, so as to introduce ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thirty-five years, with a handsome oval face, grey eyes, thin straight nose, and hair and well-trimmed moustache and Vandyke beard of a deep golden brown, the moustache not altogether hiding the pleasant, somewhat voluptuous mouth. And it seemed to Fan when she looked at it and the grey eyes gazed back into hers, and the pleasant lips seemed to smile on her, that she had never seen among living men a more ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... name of seats common to both sexes. The use of the "speculum," or mirror, was also confined to the female sex; indeed, even Pallas or Minerva was represented as shunning its use, as only befitting her more voluptuous fellow-goddess, Venus.] ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... scent-bottles of imitation cut-glass, the draperies with printed rose-buds on them, the general artificial-floweriness and flimsiness and superfluity of naughtiness of our domestic art. It expresses a feminine romance to which the male indulgently consents, as if he were really the voluptuous monarch whose mistress the female, aesthetically, pretends to be. In this world of aesthetic make-believe our homes are not respectable; they would scorn to be so, for to the romantic female mind, when it occupies itself with art, the improper ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... side of the world; he wakens and strikes the strings for a dance, such as the world has never heard (Allegro Finale). It is the World's own dance; wild delight, cries of anguish, love's ecstacy, highest rapture, misery, rage; voluptuous now, and sorrowful; lightnings quiver, storm's roll; and high above the gigantic musician! banning and compelling all things, proudly and firmly wielding them from whirl to whirlpool, to the abyss.— He laughs at himself; for the incantation was, after all, but play to him. Thus night beckons. ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... Divested Animosities, and in the ocean of Discharged Sorrows. I'm the Fairy of Monitory Vision, of the cave of Drooping Fragrance, in the mount of Emitted Spring, within the confines of the Great Void. I preside over the voluptuous affections and sensual debts among the mortal race, and supervise in the dusty world, the envies of women and the lusts of man. It's because I've recently come to hear that the retribution for voluptuousness ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... feature in her face. There were twin dimples at its corners; yet was not its expression one of habitual mirth, but of tenderness and softness rather, unmixed, although an anchorite might have been pardoned the wish to press his lips to its voluptuous curve, with the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... skins were lying in the short grass, motionless, as if plunged in peaceful thought. Hills sloped gently up to the horizon, and their velvety contours seemed to ripple in the bright rays of the moon. For the first time in my life I realized something of the voluptuous beauty and divine effluence of the night. I felt the magic touch of some unknown bliss. It seemed that for the first time in my life I was looking on moon and meadows and hills. I remembered hearing Edmee say that nothing our eyes can behold ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... power of the great nobles, once at the head of practically independent feudatories, had been effectually broken down, and now, for the most part withdrawn from the provinces, they ministered only to the ambition of the king, and contributed to the dissipation and extravagance of a voluptuous court. ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... fly—how the rubles fly for them! Look at the other Russians—there are beards for you! beards grown where brandy freezes! but, they are thawed out now. Look at these men: hear their wild northern tongue, how it rolls out the sounds that frighten Italians back to sleepy sonnets and voluptuous songs. Hurrah, my Russians! look fate in the face. Your ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "A voluptuous little wench, that Carmen! Keeping her for yourself, eh? But you will have to give her up. Belongs to the Church, you know. But don't let our worthy Don Wenceslas hear of her good looks, for he'd pop her into ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... this moment that the door opened and I rose to my feet, trembling, as Diana stepped into the room. She was clad for riding and her close-fitting habit served only to accentuate the voluptuous beauty of her form, yet her eyes seemed maidenly and untroubled, wide-opened and serenely steadfast as of old, and this of itself stirred within me a sullen resentment as she stood looking at me, a little pale, very wistful, yet radiant in her beauty; ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... swim ever; But by thy father's arm, by Odin's honour, Haste, hide thy tears and thee in shades of alder! Haste to the still, the peace-accustom'd valley, Where lazy herdsmen dance amid the clover. There wet each leaf which soft the west wind kisses, Each plant which breathes around voluptuous odours, With tears! There sigh and moan and the tired peasant Shall hear thee, and, behind his ploughshare resting, Shall wonder at thy grief, and ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... were renegades of every variety of nation, drawn together by the vilest passions, commanded by some reckless adventurer, and paying a species of allegiance to any power that either endangered them, or afforded them the hopes of plunder. Bloodthirsty and voluptuous alike, they were viewed with equal terror by the Frank pilgrim, the Syriac villager, the Armenian merchant, and the Saracen hadji—whose ransom and whose spoil enriched their chambers, with all that the licentious tastes of East and West united could desire. There were comparatively few of these ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I say, Rose smiles in answer to my smile and we remain silent; our eyes gaze without seeing and our idle hands trail in the wet grass. We hear, without listening, the hoarse, fat, cooing-voluptuous voices of the doves: in the cool air of the morning, among the leaves, the flowers and the branches, it is an undercurrent of joy rising and falling, suspended for a moment and then beginning ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... arranged lateness was due to the fact, that there had grown up in all sections of society an ever-increasing lateness of retiring at night, coupled with a growth of indolence caused by every kind of sensual indulgence, not the least of which was gluttony. Music of a sensuous, voluptuous character formed a chief part of the brief Sunday services, and every item was loudly applauded as though the whole affair had been a performance rather than a ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... mind be wise, Gravina, With me haste to the tranquil haunts of Baiae, Haunts that pleasure hath made her home, and she who Sways all hearts, the voluptuous Aphrodite. Here wine rules, and the dance, and games and laughter; Graces reign in a round of mirthful madness; Love hath built, and desire, a palace here too, Where glad youths and enamoured girls on all sides Play and bathe ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... still with this word, which so much offends their hearing. And if it imply any chief pleasure or exceeding contentments, it is rather due to the assistance of vertue, than to any other supply, voluptuousnes being more strong, sinnowie, sturdie, and manly, is but more seriously voluptuous. And we should give it the name of pleasure, more favorable, sweeter, and more naturall; and not terme it vigor, from which it hath his denomination. Should this baser sensuality deserve this faire name, it should be by competencie, and not by privilege. I finde ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... are constant. Within easy reach of India and China on one side, she has California, Mexico, and South America on the other. To the north lie the hundreds of islands which constitute the groups of Polynesia, notable for their voluptuous climate and primitive fertility. With the opening of the Panama Canal or other available means for ships to cross the isthmus of South America, New Zealand will lie directly in the highway between Europe and the gold-fields of the ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... the classic ages, a crown of parsley was awarded, both in the Nemaean and Isthmian games, and the voluptuous Anacreon pronounces this beautiful herb the emblem of joy and festivity. It has an elegant leaf, and is extensively used in the culinary art. When it was introduced to Britain is not known. There are several varieties,—the plain-leaved ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... their riot. Look upon these others who sit and stand here in a voluptuous bevy, hand in hand under the brazen sun, or flaunt to and fro, lolling in one another's arms and laughing in one another's faces. And see how closely above them hover the winged loves! One, upside down in the air, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... lodge with Nature find early rising quite in order. It is our voluptuous beds, and isolation from the earth and the air, that prevents us from emulating the birds and the beasts in this respect. With the citizen in his chamber, it is not morning, but breakfast-time. The camper-out, however, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... semicolon has been introduced, or when it must be used in a subsequent member, and a still greater pause is required within the period, the colon should be employed: as, "Princes have courtiers, and merchants have partners; the voluptuous have companions, and the wicked have accomplices: none but the virtuous can have friends."—"Unless the truth of our religion be granted, a Christian must be the greatest monster in nature: he must at the same time be eminently wise, and notoriously ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... said, on the affairs of his see. In the full consistory Urban preached on the text, "I am the Good Shepherd," and inveighed in a manner not to be mistaken against the wealth and luxury of the cardinals. Their voluptuous banquets were notorious—Petrarch had declaimed against them. The Pope threatened a sumptuary law that they should have but one dish at their table: it was the rule of his own order. He was determined to extirpate simony. A cardinal who should receive presents he menaced with excommunication. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... multitudes of fish to satisfy the most voluptuous of wishes, can China glory in which Virginia may not in justice boast of?... Let her publish a precedent so worthy of admiration (and which will not admit belief in those bosoms where the eye cannot be witness of the action) of ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... the worst kind; nor is he adapted to make the happiness of domestic life lasting. He is one of those persons so often met with, whose affections-if they may be supposed to have any-are held in a sort of compromise between an incitement to love, and their natural inclination to revel in voluptuous pleasures. The two being antagonistic at times, the latter is sure to be the stronger, and not unfrequently carries its victim into dissolute extremes. Riches, however, will always weigh heavy in the scale; their possession sways,—the charm of gold is precious ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... something diabolic in such pleasure, especially when it is felt by a man intoxicated with love, and full of religious respect for the virgin of his election. This feeling is, from a rational point of view, absurd, and in its tendencies, immoral; but it is delicious in its sacredly voluptuous subtlety. Defloration thus has its powerful fascination in the respect consciously or unconsciously felt for woman's chastity. In marriage, the feeling is yet more complicated: in deflowering his bride, the Christian (that is, any man brought up in a Christian ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... in our day Raphael must give way to Botticelli, with how much greater reason should Titian in the heights of his art, with all his earthly splendor and voluptuous glow, give place to the lovely imagination of dear old Gian Bellini, the father of Venetian Art? —Mrs. Oliphant, in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard |
