"Well-knit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Frank Crosse was neither tall nor short, five feet eight and a half to be exact, with the well-knit frame and springy step of a young man who had been an athlete from his boyhood. He was slim, but wiry, and carried his head with a half-defiant backward slant which told of pluck and breed. His face was tanned brown, in spite of his City ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... minutes at the open window, and taking out a cigar from his case began to light it. While doing this his eye was suddenly caught by the picturesque, well-knit figure of a man sitting easily on a step near the clustering boats gathered close to the hotel's special landing place. He was apparently one of the many road-side artists one meets everywhere about the Italian Lakes, ready to paint a sunset or moonlight on Como or Maggiore on commission at short ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... always show a full face. Any colourable pretence for a skirmish won't suit your palette. You march with the colours, and, like the oils, you will never run.' You all look perfect pictures, and everybody must admire your well-knit frames. Gentlemen, I do not know whether you will take my concluding observation as a compliment or not, but I need hardly say that it is meant to be both truthful and complimentary, and it is this, that though you are all Artists, you look ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... lived at Cambridge, and was Fellow of St. Peter's College there. He was still young, and yet he had made himself a name for learning, and still more for wisdom, which is a different thing, though the two are often confused. Gilbert was a slender, spare man, but well-knit and well-proportioned. He loved to wear old scholarly garments, but he had that sort of grace in wearing them that made him appear better apparelled than most men in new clothes. His hair was thick and curling, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... descended from her carriage as Keith passed by. Just as she was about to enter the shop, a well-knit figure with square shoulders and springy step, swinging down the street, caught her eye. She glanced that way and gave an exclamation. The door was being held open for her by a blank-faced automaton in a many-buttoned uniform; so she passed in, but pausing just inside, she glanced ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... well say so. The trim, well-knit, broad-chested form, the rosy embrowned honest face, the shining light-brown curly locks, the dancing well-opened blue eyes, and merry hearty smile showed to the best advantage, in array that even Tom would ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... applause because it tells chiefly, in the long run, in results. With his usual tact, Shakespeare has brought in such a character as a contrast and foil to Hamlet. Horatio is the only complete man in the play,—solid, well-knit, and true; a noble, quiet nature, with that highest of all qualities, judgment, always sane and prompt; who never drags his anchors for any wind of opinion or fortune, but grips all the closer to the reality of things. He seems one of those calm, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... he!) From time to time, the tried-in-battle their gray steeds set to gallop amain, and ran a race when the road seemed fair. From time to time, a thane of the king, who had made many vaunts, and was mindful of verses, stored with sagas and songs of old, bound word to word in well-knit rime, welded his lay; this warrior soon of Beowulf's quest right cleverly sang, and artfully added an excellent tale, in well-ranged words, of the warlike deeds he had heard in saga of Sigemund. Strange the story: he said it ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... now, Lester pale and rather flaccid, Robert clear, wax-like, well-knit, and shrewd, and one could see the difference time had already made. Robert was the clean, decisive man, Lester the man of doubts. Robert was the spirit of business energy and integrity embodied, Lester the spirit of commercial self-sufficiency, looking ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... was a strange sight that day at Eski Serai,[26] and the divan was crowded. The tried generals and statesmen of the greatest of Ottoman emperors assembled to gaze upon the rough sea-dogs whose exploits were on the lips of all Europe; and most of all they scrutinized the vigorous well-knit yet burly figure of the old man with the bushy eyebrows and thick beard, once a bright auburn, but now hoary with years and exposure to the freaks of fortune and rough weather. In his full and searching eye, that could blaze with ready ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... silence, a figure advanced, carrying a branch of laurel in one hand as a token of triumph. It was that of a young man of from thirty-two to thirty-four years of age, with a graceful and well-knit frame, an aristocratic air and faultlessly beautiful features of a somewhat haughty expression. Although he had walked three leagues to reach the town, the ecclesiastical garb which he wore was not only elegant but of dainty freshness. His eyes turned to heaven, and singing ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was relative to men, and men demanded a sensitive weakness, a shrinking timidity. Courage, honour, truth, sincerity, independence—these were items in a male ideal. They were to a woman as unnecessary, nay, as harmful in the marriage market as a sturdy frame and well-knit muscles. Dean Swift, a sharp satirist, but a good friend of women, comments on the prevailing view. "There is one infirmity," he writes in his illuminating Letter to a very young lady on her marriage, "which is generally allowed you, I mean that ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... affection for their chiefs, their country, and for each other—since they are, for the most part, strangers to each other. Uniform laws are not suitable for diverse provinces. Yet diverse laws among people belonging to the same state, breed weakness and confusion, for a healthy and well-knit constitution, in brief, it is wiser to count upon the vigour that is born of good government than upon the resources ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... Beaumanoir after long wanderings. He was the perfect scholar who had toiled at books and not less at the study of mankind. But his well-knit body and clear eyes showed no marks of bookishness, and Italy had made him a swordsman. A somewhat austere young man, he had kept himself unspotted in the rotting life of the Italian courts, and though he had ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... leadership. Critics have come to lose sight of the old war experience, that without division no strategical combinations are possible. In truth they must be founded on division. Division is bad only when it is pushed beyond the limits of well-knit deployment. It is theoretically wrong to place a section of the fleet in such a position that it may be prevented from falling back on its strategical centre when it is encountered by a superior ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... voice at this part of Colonel Carleton's narrative, and turning their eyes in the direction of the door they saw standing there the muscular, well-knit figure, the pleasant face and ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... and church-plants are multiplied, but lie largely disused; sects and communities are at loggerheads on unessential points; all this—and the world is not being saved! The Church fails to see openings for aggressive work; it fails to seize strategic points; it does not carry a well-knit local organization, with a husbanding of economic force; it does not front the world in dead-earnest; it is not proud and honorable in meeting its local debts; it loses progressive force, from lack of knowledge as ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... two have to do with Marguerite (or Gretchen), from both parts of Goethe's allegorical and philosophical phantasmagoria. Because he did this, he failed from one point of view. Attempting too much, he accomplished too little. His opera is not a well-knit and consistently developed drama, but a series of episodes, which do not hold together and have significance only for those who know Goethe's dramatic poem in its entirety. It is very likely that, as originally produced, "Mefistofele" was not such a thing of shreds ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... could accustom us to. I remember one especially that burned itself deeply into my memory. It was of a young man not over twenty-five, who a few weeks ago—his clothes looked comparatively new —had evidently been the picture of manly beauty and youthful vigor. He had had a well-knit, lithe form; dark curling hair fell over a forehead which had once been fair, and his eyes still showed that they had gleamed with a bold, adventurous spirit. The red clover leaf on his cap showed that he ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Telamon And Eriboea may their grandson see, And he may be the prop of their old age. My arms, no judges, nor my honour's foe Shall ere set up as prizes for the host. My shield, Eurysaces, my son, take thou, [Footnote: Signifying "him of the broad shield."] Thy namesake, by its well-knit handles wield The impenetrable orb of seven-fold hide. My other arms shall share their master's grave. And now, Tecmessa, take the boy again; Shut up the tent, and let us have no wails Here at the door; women are made of tears. Shut up ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... paused in the act of mounting the front steps and turned a blood-driven face toward his neighbor. His under jaw sagged and trembled, and his well-knit body seemed to have lost its power to stand erect, so that ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... an assistant everything must go well. There is no merit in being strong; every one can be strong who comes into the world with healthy blood and well-knit bones, who keeps all his limbs well exercised, as I did in my youth, and who does not destroy his inheritance by dissipated living.—However, I still feel the struggle in my hands; but there is some good wine in the next room yet, and two or three cups of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... limbs and fierce visage fasten their eyes curiously upon a white man who, standing against the bole of the elm, comes to them as white man never came before. He is a young man of about eight and thirty, wearing about his lithe and well-knit figure a sash of skyblue silk. He is tall, handsome and of commanding presence. His movements are easy, agile and athletic; his manner is courtly, graceful and pleasing; his voice, whilst deep and firm, is soft and agreeable; his face ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... pace. He was a tall young fellow, but slender, with an honest, good-humoured face. Without being handsome, there was something attractive about him—an alertness, a vigour in the well-knit limbs, a candour and kindliness in the expression of the open face, a tenderness, moreover, in the blue eyes as they rested on Roseen—which would seem to account for the fact that these ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... was fairly powerful, Selwyn's well-knit shoulders and alert movements of body spoke of a physique that was always tuned to pitch, but one missed the impression of limitless endurance which lay behind the easy carelessness of Malcolm ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... slighter of build, but of a well-knit figure, whose muscles, while not so pronounced, played quickly and easily; and whose whole manner suggested somehow a reserve strength, and a physique capable ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... at all seasons, it is in its fullest feather about the Fourth of July. Its truculent disposition is then manifested by a threatening attitude toward the Anglo-Saxon Lion, (Leo Britannicus,) which it has twice worsted in single combat, and to whose well-knit frame it is prepared at any moment to administer a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... eyes followed the well-knit figure of the Englishman as it went swinging along the street. Then the Turk turned and lost himself ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... world to-day could show, by the ravage in his face, the appalling weight of responsibility slowly crushing one of the most vigorous and resilient personalities in Europe. His figure, erstwhile erect and well-knit, seemed to have shrunk, and his withered arm, unnaturally looped away into his pocket, assumed a prominence that lent something sinister to that forbidding grey and ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... by the shining fountain, in the central court, stand two persons—Marcus and his mother. The lad has laid aside his toga, or outside mantle, and his close-fitting, short-sleeved tunic, scarcely reaching to his knees, shows a well-knit frame and a healthy, sun-browned skin. His mother, dressed in the tunic and long white stola, or outer robe, is of matronly presence and pleasant face. And, as they talk together in low and earnest tones, they watch with loving eyes, from the cool shadows ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... think about us. We are all very well, and shall be very well, no fear," was the answer; but Jack spoke in a voice very different to his usual tone. The exertions he had gone through had been almost too much even for his well-knit frame; a sort of stupor was stealing over him, and his senses began to wander. Murray discovered his condition with great alarm. He called ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... entertain him for an hour, and with effusive thanks the Mexican nurse conducted the tall Texan to the sick-room. White, gaunt and weak, the invalid lay in his bed and looked with eyes of envy and admiration at the tall, firm, well-knit frame, the big muscles and the tanned face of his companion. By that time Nick began to be conscious of a high, swift tide in his veins, and through his dancing brain came the conviction that he must hold a steady hand on himself and be very serious. He sat up stiff and straight in his chair ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... could hardly have much exceeded that of thirty, but time had agitated his truly Roman countenance, one which we now find only in consular and imperial busts, or in the chance visage of a Roman shepherd or a Neapolitan bandit. He was a shade above the middle height, with a frame of well-knit symmetry. His proud head was proudly placed on broad shoulders, and neither time nor indulgence had marred his slender waist. His dark-brown hair was short and hyacinthine, close to his white forehead, and naturally showing his small ears. He wore no whiskers, and his ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... at the moment, as Theron chanced to emerge temporarily from his brown-study, his eyes fell full upon the spare, well-knit form of Levi Gorringe himself, standing only a few feet away, in the staircase entrance to his law office. His lean face, browned by the summer's exposure, had a more Arabian aspect than ever. His hands were in his pockets, and he held an unlighted cigar between his teeth. He looked ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... perfection and a mouth a shade too wide. But it was a good-tempered, pleasant face, on the whole, intelligent and capable and matching well the physically capable body below, a body of wide shoulders and well-knit muscles and a deep chest that might have belonged to a youth of eighteen instead of seventeen. Compared with Tim Otis, who was of the same age, Don Gilbert suffered on only two counts—quickness and vivacity. Tim, well-muscled, possessed a litheness that Don could never attain ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... about the dinner-table. Harry Feversham was unchanged, except for a fair moustache, which contrasted with his dark hair, and the natural consequences of growth. He was now a man of middle height, long-limbed, and well-knit like an athlete, but his features had not altered since that night when they had been so closely scrutinised by Lieutenant Sutch. Of his companions two were brother-officers on leave in England, like himself, whom he had that afternoon ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... accorded an equally high position, with an equal amount of reserve. Their ways were decidedly not those of the other miners, and were as efficacious in keeping them from familiar advances as the reputation of Mr. McGee was in isolating his wife. Madison Wayne, the elder, was tall, well-knit and spare, reticent in speech and slow in deduction; his brother, Arthur, was of rounder outline, but smaller and of a more delicate and perhaps a more impressible nature. It was believed by some that it was within the range of possibility that Arthur would yet be seen ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a peculiar tree, so that he might find it when business was done; then he went to work with his revolver. As he rode forward he came upon an open stretch of ground, and the first object that struck his attention was a well-knit Kaffir on one knee covering his body with a Martini-Henry. The distance was about eighty yards, and Baden-Powell, telling the story, says that he felt so indignant at the fellow's rudeness that he ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... his private interests. What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude: the aims of friendship, religion, science, and art. All these aims, in a well-knit state, are covered by the single passion of patriotism; and then a conception of one's country, its history and mission becomes the touchstone of every ideal impulse. Timocracy requires this kind of patriotism ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... between two desires. A slender, well-knit hand stretched out and clutched a ruler; his brow was moist; but he ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... bird to be cooped up in such a cage. Tall and muscular, with a keen, dark face, and sharp, finely cut features, he might have stepped out of a canvas of Murillo or Velasquez. There were latent energy and power in his firm-set mouth, his square eyebrows, and the whole pose of his elastic, well-knit figure. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... beau-ideal of soldiers. Tall and erect in bearing, wiry and well-knit, and of great muscular development, their whole appearance stamps them as men who look upon themselves as "lords of the soil," whom it would be difficult to conquer. And without doubt the campaigns of 1845-46 ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... he had gone to the West, and in the great unexplored Pacific Northwest had conquered, built, and systematised until a fair foundation was laid for the fine civilisation which now sixty years later has been reared upon it. He was modest in his bearing, with well-knit and sinewy frame, and possessed at the same time refined manners and a taste for the higher things of life. Before the year had passed, his life went out in the second battle of Bull Run. In the end of that terrible campaign, he essayed with Phil Kearny to stem at Chantilly the rush ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... to cede. And now presently there he knelt on the fine white sand, his bearskin robe opened and flung back, his well-knit shoulder and sinewed arm ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... moment the hubbub was forgotten as he scrutinized the young man, who seemed scarcely twenty-one, his well-knit, well-dressed body, his soft brown hair curled about his scalp, cleanly modelled ears, steady brown eyes, white teeth—especially the mobile lips which seemed quivering from some suppressed emotion—all telling of a boy ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... mulatto had the best of it; his lithe dark limbs coiled about his adversary with paralyzing force: but soon the greater weight of the English youth began to tell; his young, well-knit figure ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... Hobart" without emphasis, the butler vanished. The newcomer came forward with the quiet assurance of the born aristocrat. He was a slender, well-knit man, dressed fastidiously, with clear-cut, classical features; cool, keen eyes, and a gentle, you-be-damned manner to his inferiors. Beside him Ridgway bulked too large, too florid. His ease seemed a little obvious, his prosperity ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... and defend the weak and defenseless. When Thomas Bright (for that was the name by which he was known) was fifteen years old he was offered a position as clerk in the office of a lumber-merchant, and with his mother's consent he accepted it. He was a fine young lad now, large and well-knit, and with a clear earnest countenance. In the evening he would bring home books to read, and as it had always been Brita's habit to interest herself in whatever interested him, she soon found herself studying and discussing with him things which had in ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... so incensed that, forgetting Robert's superior strength, evident enough to any one who saw the two, one with his well-knit, vigorous figure, the other slender and small of frame, he raised his cane and struck our hero ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... to me, and I had admired the finely-cut face from whose prominent chin a closely-cut blonde beard came forward; and the aquiline nose, the clear grey eyes, the decisive voice, the remarkable comeliness of the well-knit figure, scrupulously but simply dressed, represented a personality curiously sympathetic. On several occasions shyness had compelled me to abandon my determination to speak to him. But once he had spoken I entered eagerly into conversation, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... in love with you, Caesar Augustus!" And well she might, for surely, as he stood in the door with his well-knit frame, his fine German forehead, his pure, refined mouth, and his clear, honest, amiable blue eyes, he was a man to fall ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... was a man of many punctilious habitudes, who wore cloth instead of buckskin, however hard it might be to come by, and silver knee-buckles and well-knit hose on his still shapely calves, and a peruke carefully powdered and tended. He had a keen, wrinkled, bloodless face, discerning, clever, gray eyes, heavy, overhanging, grizzled eyebrows, and a gentlemanly mouth of ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... affronts; and when his slow anger was roused he was a formidable adversary. Several border bullies, at different times, crowded him indiscreetly, and were promptly and thoroughly whipped. He was strong, well-knit, and sinewy; but little over the medium height, though in other respects he seems to have resembled ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun; And he who flagged not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength advancing—only he, His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... the Indians still more ugly than the negroes. Their complexion is a light bronze, stunted in stature, well-knit, and about the middle size. They have broad and somewhat compressed features, and thick, coal-black hair, hanging straight down, which the women sometimes wear in plaits fastened to the back of the head, and sometimes falling down loose about them. Their forehead ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... perchance of scant utility, not worth interpretation. His full gray eyes were touched to glancing brilliancy by a moonbeam; his long, fibrously floating brown hair was thrown backward; his receding chin was peculiarly delicate; and though his well-knit frame bespoke a hardy vigor, his pale cheek was soft and thin. All the rustic grotesquery of garb and posture was cancelled by the deep shadow of a bough, and his delicate face showed ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... turned, surprised, incredulous, hopeful, his artist eye brightening at the ease and grace and modishness of the smart, well-knit ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working—clothes, Joe was a well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than anything else. Nothing that he wore then fitted him or seemed to belong to him; and everything that he wore then grazed him. On the present festive occasion he emerged from his ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... seen his hollow cheek; his sunken brilliant eye; his black-attired figure, indefinably grim, although well-knit and well-proportioned; his grizzled hair hanging, like tangled sea- weed, about his face,—as if he had been, through his whole life, a lonely mark for the chafing and beating of the great deep of humanity,—but might have said he looked like a ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... of all nations. Coral City held as complete a record of crime, cruelty, and debauchery as one could find in the human indices of any port. Many were closing their annals of error in decrepitude and beggary; others were well-knit studies of evil, with health still hanging on, more or less, and much deviltry to do. A blue blouse, or a bit of khaki; British puttees and a flare of crimson; Russian boots and a glimpse of sodden gray; or an American campaign-hat ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... September a band of New England rangers came to Winslow's camp, with three prisoners taken within the lines of Ticonderoga. Their captain was Robert Rogers, of New Hampshire,—a strong, well-knit figure, in dress and appearance more woodsman than soldier, with a clear, bold eye, and features that would have been good but for the ungainly proportions of the nose.[455] He had passed his boyhood in the rough surroundings ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... either. The Jewish national centre must perforce coincide with the numerical centre of the dispersed people, in which, moreover, conditions must grant Jews the possibility of living undisturbed in closely compacted masses, and of perfecting a well-knit organization of social and individual life. Outside of Spain these conditions were fulfilled only by Poland, which gradually, beginning with the sixteenth century, assumed the hegemony over the Jewry of the world. This marks the displacement of the Sephardic ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... more confidence that was displayed by Mr. Webster when he stood up, in the pride of his manhood, and began to address the interested mass of talent, intelligence, and beauty around him. A man of commanding presence, with a well-knit, sturdy frame, swarthy features, a broad, thoughtful forehead, courageous eyes gleaming from beneath shaggy eyebrows, a quadrangular breadth of jawbone, and a mouth which bespoke strong will, he stood like a sturdy Roundhead sentinel ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... led a life which required some of the qualities of the hero, had nothing particularly heroic in his outward aspect. He was a man of medium size, and sinewy, well-knit frame. He had keen, gray eyes, which noticed everything, and could penetrate to the inner core of things; close-cropped hair, short serviceable beard, of that style which is just now most affected by men of restless ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... threshold of the saloon stood a young man, who looked searchingly around. His tall and graceful figure was clad in the uniform of the guards, which displayed his well-knit form to great advantage. The star on his breast, and the crape which he wore on his arm, announced a prince of the royal house; his beautifully-formed and handsome features wore an expression of almost effeminate tenderness. The glance of his large blue eyes was ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... we have been studying how to mortise the joints of our arguments into well-knit and shapely strength; the pure scholastic, however, possesses but half the weapons of the preacher. The best built skeleton is repulsive till it is clothed with flesh, colour and beauty. This is the rhetorician's task. He comes with his graceful ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... with a young lady in a cherry-coloured riding-habit, her long hair hanging in loose curls over her shoulders. In the first he recognised his brother Jasper, and in the lady, the fair Alethea. She glanced slightly at Jack's bronzed countenance, surrounded by a bushy beard and whiskers, and well-knit figure. He drew his horse on one side to let the party pass. But though she looked up a second time, she evidently did not recognise him, nor ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... was said above, their relation to the sides of the composition to which they are parallel in rectangular pictures is of great importance in uniting the subject to its bounding lines and giving it a well-knit look, conveying a feeling of great stability ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... to the proposal, chairs were brought and placed just inside the door-way, where the light of the saloon lamps shown athwart the countenance of my self-constituted physician. He was a young man, and looked younger than his years; slightly built, though possessing a supple, well-knit frame, with hands of an elegant shape, fine texture, and great expression. You saw at a glance that he had a poet's head, and a poet's sensitiveness of face; but it was only after observation that you saw how much the face ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... of character. Exposure to the elements had bronzed his skin, but there were no wrinkles there, and Captain Will Ratlin could not have seen more than two and twenty years, though most of them had doubtless been passed upon the ocean, for his well-knit form showed him to be one thoroughly ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... wisdom—to realize that the outside man is not of necessity the man himself. He merely felt, as each wooden face confronted his own, that here was surely no Great Man, no Hero. Only when it came to the civilians his eyes rested with some degree of satisfaction on Travers' well-knit figure and fresh-colored face. For the first time during the whole proceedings the prince smiled, and in ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... years old, he had the vigorous constitution of thin, sanguine men; an energetic face, with well-marked lines, a high forehead, rising straight from the eyes, which were handsome but cold, thin lips, indicating a mouth chary of words, medium height, well-knit muscular limbs, indicated a man ready for any experience. Any one who saw him would have called him bold, and any one who heard him would have called him coldly passionate; he was a man who would never retreat, and who would risk the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... after some reconnoitering, concluded he could gain a better view from the other side the camp. With incredible pains he moved around to that side and was gratified by a success which glowed in his swarthy countenance and through his well-knit frame. ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... at his companion's well-knit figure, Balt gave in, with the final caution: "Don't let them get the upper hand, or there won't be no living ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... from the first, and being myself a small man, envied the six feet one of well-knit frame, and was struck with a way he had of quick backward head movement when the large blue eyes considered you with smiling attention. My first impression was that nothing as embarrassing as the absurd situation in which my blunder might ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... deflect the stream for a while, until the waters wear them away? Or are there spiritual hopes of humanity which the mechanism of nature cannot destroy? Is the philosophy of life capable of giving us something more than a naturalism—humanized merely by the thought that man, being, after all, a well-knit and plastic mechanism, can for a time mold nature to his ends? So much for the great problem of modern insight. Let us turn to consider the relation of the spirit of loyalty to ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... remarkably fine a common-sense and native respectability, that I perfectly remember the warm terms in which his demeanor used to be canvassed by my parents after he had been to visit his boys. He was short of stature and well-knit in person, (John resembling him both in make and feature,) with brown hair and dark hazel eyes. He was killed by a fall from his horse, in returning from a visit to the school. John's two brothers, George, older, and Thomas, younger than ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... was young, graceful, and fair, clad in plain doublet and hosen of blue Brussels cloth, which served to show his active and well-knit figure. A flat velvet cap was drawn forward to keep the glare from his eyes, and he rode with lips compressed and anxious face, as one who has much care upon his mind. Young as he was, and peaceful as was his dress, the dainty golden spurs which twinkled upon his heels proclaimed his knighthood, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... readers will call to mind in connection with the name of Isaac T. Hopper, the compact, well-knit figure of a Quaker gentleman, apparently about sixty years of age, dressed in drab or brown clothes of the plainest cut, and bearing on his handsome, manly face the impress of that benevolence with which his ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... goodness of all women. It awoke a raging devil. It was all I could do to keep from throttling unsuspecting John Runnels as we tramped along side by side. I could have done it. I had inherited my father's well-knit frame and serviceable muscles, and all through my office experience I had kept myself fit with long walks and a few bits of home-made gymnastic apparatus in my room at Mrs. Thompson's. And the new-born devil was ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... gallery, and in a few moments returned with two visitors: the youthful prophetess Esther, and her companion, a man short in stature, but with a powerful and well-knit frame. His countenance was melancholy, and, with harshness in the lower part, not without a degree of pensive beauty in the broad clear brow and sunken eyes, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... at the wiry, well-knit, upright figure, and at the fresh, elderly, but virile face, with its sombre eyes and its snowy hair, thought once again of the ancient saw which she had quoted to herself the night before, only to dismiss it finally from her mind. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... the same volume is placed in a position so conducive to a rapid acquirement of the spirit of the modern era. But, also, no other people comparable with the population of the Fatherland has so large and well-knit a body of archaic preconceptions to unlearn. Their nearest analogue, of course, is ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... gayly the youth rode forth upon a steed of dappled gray, four summers old, with shell-shaped hoofs and well-knit limbs. His saddle was of burnished gold, his bridle 20 of shining gold chains. His saddle cloth was of purple silk, with four golden apples embroidered ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... stranger drew himself up in the doorway—a well-knit figure of a man, clear of eye, bronzed of hue, clad in blue sea-cloth faced with scarlet, and wearing a short sword at the hip. "Where's my Oliver?" he shouted. "You'll forgive my voice, gentlemen. I'm Harry Vyell, at your service, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... arm and left are free to grasp the bell's horns, sprouting at its crest beneath the beam. With a grave rhythmic motion, bending sideward in a close embrace, swaying and returning to their centre from the well-knit loins, they drive the force of each strong muscle into the vexed bell. The impact is earnest at first, but soon it becomes frantic. The men take something from each other of exalted enthusiasm. This efflux of their combined energies inspires them and exasperates the mighty resonance ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... broad-shouldered, strong, well-knit, and graceful—still almost youthful physically, despite his forty-five years and the beginning of grayness in the dark, wavy hair which covers his large, finely arched, and well-proportioned head. His forehead is high and broad, his gray eyes deep set under brows ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... the chest, and with a jacket of London green cloth with brass buttons. Would the fishermen about the quay-head not lean over the gun'les of their skiffs and say, "There goes young Elrigmore from Colleging, well-knit in troth, and a pretty lad"? I could hear (all in my daydream in yon place of dingy benches) the old women about the well at the town Cross say, "Oh laochain! thou art come back from the Galldach, and ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... and looked gravely at the widow. She had a plain, honest, healthy face, with resolute lips, and an eye that brightened when she spoke; her well-knit figure, motionless in its respectful attitude, declared a thoroughly sound ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... occasion of Philip's initial visit at Holiday Hill, Channing had stood on the porch watching him ride away, his well-knit body moving in the perfect accord with his horse that means natural horsemanship, taking a gate at the foot of the road without troubling to open it, in one long, clean leap that brought an ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... who is the friend of Maheswara himself, that lord of treasures, how is it that thou feelest no shame?' Having said these words, Sita began to weep, her bosom shivering in agitation, and covering her neck and face with her garments. And the long and well-knit braid, black and glossy, falling from the head of the weeping lady, looked like a black snake. And hearing these cruel words uttered by Sita, the foolish Ravana, although thus rejected, addressed Sita once more, saying, 'O lady, let the god having the Makara ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... his rags almost everywhere, and was so white and delicate that the very noblest need not have been shy or ashamed of it Accordingly, his leanness only served to display more fully the perfect proportions of his well-knit frame. A careful scrutiny of the unfortunate's light-chestnut hair, now hanging all tangled and dishevelled about his exquisitely beautiful forehead, his blue eyes dimmed with extreme misery, his Roman nose, his fine formed lips—he seemed to be ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... white, but his calm, handsome face, clear eyes and ruddy complexion, made him appear younger than he was. His bearing also was that of a young man, for his erect, soldierly carriage showed his height to full advantage; his well-knit figure was almost slight for a man standing over six feet, and, mounted on his favorite horse "Traveller," he was the ideal soldier. Grant was barely forty-two years of age, short of stature, careless in dress and generally indifferent to appearances. ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... beckoned to the man who had done the shooting. He came across the room, shoving his gun back into the holster, a rather thickly built man but well-knit and there was a soft spring in his slowest movements which suggested snake-like quickness. He was dark-eyed, and his hair was a mat of close black curls. The cattle-buyer nodded, to indicate ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... having been made, Maitre Leroux took his departure; and Nigel was not sorry, soon after supper, to throw himself on his bed, and seek the repose which even his well-knit limbs required. ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... middle-aged man, tall, erect, well-knit in frame, with a thin, Yankeeish face, deeply browned, and shrewd hazel eyes. He bowed to nobody, but stood straight, looking like an Indian ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... but of the mountains, and there is still about him something of the hill people. He has the long, lean, straight, broad-shouldered frame of the true mountaineer, the marvellously bright eye, the eagle features, the well-knit growth of strength, traceable even in extreme old age; and in character there is in him the well-balanced combination of a steady caution with an unerring, unhesitating decision, which appears in those great moments when history will not wait for little men's long phrases, when the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... drop the small hand, which a moment ago he had been covering with kisses. He held it to his lips once more, very gently, lingering over this last fond caress, as if over an eternal farewell, then he straightened out his broad, well-knit figure, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... summer's heat, but which in winter, George told me, overflowed its banks. I still retain a vivid impression of that morning's ride; the far-off mountains, like silhouettes, against the steel-blue sky; the crisp, dry air, and the expanding track before me, animated often by the well-knit figure of George Tryan, musical with jingling spurs and picturesque with flying riata. He rode a powerful native roan, wild-eyed, untiring in stride, and unbroken in nature. Alas! the curves of beauty were concealed by ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... slowly away from our camp on the Nzoia River. One of them, evidently the leader, was a well-built man of about fifty-one years, tanned by many months of African hunting and wearing a pair of large spectacles. His teeth flashed in the warm sunlight. A rough hunting shirt encased his well-knit body and a pair of rougher trousers, reinforced with leather knee caps and jointly sustained by suspenders and a belt, fitted in loose folds around his stocky legs. On his head was a big sun helmet, and around his waist, less generous in amplitude than formerly, was a partly filled belt of ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... striving to conceal them as much as possible from others. As he stands, with his hands lightly crossed behind him, his legs a trifle apart, and his eye wandering critically over the Industry's hull and rigging, we see him to be a man of about five feet eight inches in height, with a well-knit figure, regular features, dark hair and eyes, the former surmounted by a jaunty crimson worsted cap with a silk tassel on its drooping end, and tied into a queue behind with a bow of very broad black silk ribbon, short black whiskers ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... femoral hernia may stop there, satisfied with merely coming through the ring, and, if sudden and recent in a healthy, well-knit subject, such a rupture is exceedingly dangerous, the constriction being very severe, and the consequent gangrene of the bowel very rapid if unrelieved. In most cases, however, it makes its way still further ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... 'Eurymachus, never can there be fair fame in the land for those that devour and dishonour the house of a prince, but why make ye this thing into a reproach? But, behold, our guest is great of growth and well-knit, and avows him to be born the son of a good father. Come then, give ye him the polished bow, that we may see that which is to be. For thus will I declare my saying, and it shall surely come to pass. If he shall string the bow and Apollo grant him renown, I will clothe ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... silent and expectant; my father, who rarely waited, waiting with us; our governess and my sister and I all in a row, and prepared for the great event. We saw the carriage stop, and out of it sprang the active well-knit figure of Mr. George Smith, who was bringing Miss Bronte to see our father. My father, who had been walking up and down the room, goes out into the hall to meet his guests, and then, after a moment's delay, the ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... he was a good-looking chap, dark of hair, his eyes gray, and he possessed an honest, open countenance that stood a whole lot in his favor. He was tall, with a well-knit, athletic figure that made me fancy he had been an heroic member of his university ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... group was a tall, well-knit figure, whose high, square brow, benign smile, and frank earnestness bespoke a man of moral energy, vigorous intellect, and warm, candid, tender soul. Traces of suffering, of thought, of stern purpose were, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... last clause, certainly; and Mr. Snitchey, glancing at him, thought so. There was something naturally graceful and pleasant in the very carelessness of his air. It seemed to suggest, of his comely face and well-knit figure, that they might be greatly better if he chose: and that, once roused and made earnest (but he never had been earnest yet), he could be full of fire and purpose. 'A dangerous sort of libertine,' thought the shrewd lawyer, ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... Ham Morris of so much agility, although his broad and well-knit frame promised abundant strength; but he was on board "The Swallow" like a flash, and Burgin was "pinned" by his iron grasp before he could so much ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... the battle-wall to keep. 510 Stones, too, of deadly weight they roll, if haply they may break The shield-roof of the battle-rush; but sturdily those take All chances of the play beneath their close and well-knit hold. Yet fail they; for when hard at hand their world of war was rolled, A mighty mass by Teucrians moved rolls on and rushes o'er, And fells the host of Rutuli and breaks the tiles of war. Nor longer ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... to that of Mrs. Frost's sons, and was relieved by the sight of the young people returning across the lawn—Fitzjocelyn with his ash stick, but owing a good deal of support to Mary's firm, well-knit arm. They showed well together: even lameness could not disfigure the grace of his leisurely movements; and the bright changefulness and delicacy of his face contrasted well with the placid nobleness of her composed expression, while her complexion was heightened and ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fair but somewhat weather-stained complexion, with light-brown, closely-curling hair, an expansive forehead, a clear blue eye, rather commonplace features, a thin, brown, pointed beard, and a slight moustache. Though low of stature, he was broad-chested, with well-knit limbs. His hands, which were small and nervous, were brown and callous with the marks of toil. There was something in his brow and glance not to be mistaken, and which men willingly call master; yet he did not seem, to have ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
