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Allurement   Listen
noun
Allurement  n.  
1.
The act alluring; temptation; enticement. "Though Adam by his wife's allurement fell."
2.
That which allures; any real or apparent good held forth, or operating, as a motive to action; as, the allurements of pleasure, or of honor.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Allurement" Quotes from Famous Books



... of labor was a slavish life. All she did, and all she left undone, she looked at with sad-hearted reference to the great object of her life. Far away she put all allurement to tempting, youthful joy. What had she to do with merriment and jollity, while a sin remained unexpiated, or a moment of her father's suffering and sorrow ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... come under the control of man, with every conquest suggesting many more not yet achieved but brought within range of possibility, old theories of cosmic degeneration and circular futility have gone to pieces, the glamour of antiquity has lost its allurement, the great days of humanity upon the earth have been projected into the future, and the gradual achievement of human progress has become the ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... robin differs greatly from the American one. He is much smaller and quite differently shaped. His body is daintily round and plump, his legs are delicately slender. He is a graceful little patrician with an astonishing allurement of bearing. His eye is large and dark and dewy; he wears a tight little red satin waistcoat on his full round breast and every tilt of his head, every flirt of his wing is instinct with dramatic significance. He is fascinatingly conceited—he burns with curiosity—he ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... superbly, as became men whose special province it was to order the lords of gold about like dogs. Merchants and pedlars, as many as could get permission from the sons of Musa, spread out their wares on the floor of the hall, and smiled allurement on the visitors. The servants of Cook and other Powers of Europe and America strutted about and ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... associates deem his pigheadedness; but he has seen a vision and he keeps true to it. Regulus did not go back to Carthage to be tortured to death for the pleasure of it, or to avoid the greater pain of an uneasy conscience; he went in spite of foreseen pain and the allurement of possible pleasure. When a man endures privations for the sake of posthumous fame, it is not that he expects to enjoy that fame when it comes, or expects others to enjoy it; he is simply so made that he cannot resist the sway of that ambition which will bring him no good. The pursuit ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... Staffordshire; here at the end of June 1825 takes place the classical encounter between the philologer and the flaming tinman—all this, is it not related in Lavengro, and substantiated with much hard labour of facts and dates by Dr. W. I. Knapp in his exhaustive biography of George Borrow? The allurement of his genius is such that the etymologist shall leave his roots and the philologer his Maeso-Gothic to take to the highway and dwell in the dingle ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... before any of his comrades the great land of promise beyond the mountains, heedless of those whom he had left, and heedless of the future before him and the object which he was about, the young outcast made his journey over the Alps in all possible lightness of heart. "Seeing country is an allurement which hardly any Genevese can ever resist. Everything that met my eye seemed the guarantee of my approaching happiness. In the houses I imagined rustic festivals; in the fields, joyful sports; along the streams, bathing and fishing; on the trees, delicious fruits; ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... eyes to the boy's frank gaze in a way which she had usually found very effective. She had been able to do anything with Terry when she looked at him like that, and she had tried the same allurement ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... period of life, it were well to draw the imagination to "the enjoyment of the beautiful through an actual contemplation of it, and for this purpose the study of painting and sculpture is of pre-eminent value. * * * * * Through their means the allurement which the wholly or especially the half-undraped form has for us, becomes softened and purified. The enjoyment of beauty itself is the enjoyment of something divine; and it is only through a coarse, indecent, and already infected ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... days, the recruiter again met Mr. P—— at his accustomed rendezvous; when, after treating him with coffee, liqueur, &c. he came directly to the point, but neglected not to introduce into his discourse every persuasive allurement. P——, finding himself pushed home, reminded the recruiter of the obstacle to which he had before alluded, and, to convince him of its existence, put into his hand His Britannic Majesty's commission. The astonishment and confusion of the French recruiter were so great that he was unable to make ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... repose in agitation There are defeats more triumphant than victories There are some upon whom their rich clothes weep There can be no pleasure to me without communication There is more trouble in keeping money than in getting it There is no allurement like modesty, if it be not rude There is no long, nor short, to things that are no more There is no merchant that always gains There is no reason that has not its contrary There is no recompense becomes virtue There is none of us who would not be worse than kings There ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne

... forwarded him a letter containing a copy of a bond and oath of engagement which had been entered into by Huntly, Athole, the Earl of Seaforth, and other leading Highland chiefs, by which they had pledged themselves on oath to join firmly and faithfully together, and "neither for fear, threatening, allurement, nor advantage, to relinquish the cause of religion, of the king, and of the kingdom, nor to lay down their arms without a general consent; and as the best undertakings did not escape censure and malice, they promised ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... will one day cause great changes in the world. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labor; this labor is founded on the basis of self-interest; can it want a stronger allurement? Wives and children, who before in vain demanded a morsel of bread, now fat and frolicsome, gladly help their father to clear those fields, whence exuberant crops are to arise to feed them all; without any part being claimed either by a despotic ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... a half ago Bath had reached the zenith of her fame and allurement, not only as "Queen of the West," but as Empress of all the haunts of pleasure in England. She drew, as by an irresistible magnet, rank and beauty and wealth to her shrine. In her famous Assembly Rooms, statesmen rubbed shoulders with card-sharpers, Marquises with swell mobsmen, and Countesses with ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... the midst of the forest, and that there his reverie was interrupted by a voice from the wilderness—a voice that was irresistibly and profoundly sweet. In some mysterious way, the soul of the young man was touched as it had never been before, for this call of exquisite tenderness and allurement was the voice of ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... Emperor and the Crown Prince of Austria, with many another high-placed friend, plead with Milan not to commit such a folly. He was driven to distraction between such powerful appeals and the allurement of the siren who had him so effectually under her spell, until in his despair he entertained serious thoughts of suicide as escape from his dilemma. Meanwhile, we are told, "a perfect hell" raged in the castle; each day brought its scandalous scene between his outraged Queen and himself. His ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... But in works of imagination mar. wants a treatment totally different, a style which, by all or any means, little mattering what they be, can avoid the imminent deadly risk of languor and monotony and which adds to fluency the allurement of variety, of surprise and even of disappointment, when a musical discord ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... and of slumber, their horses' feet falling without noise as though upon deep carpets, the bright moon and its few attendant stars working the harsh land of the day over into a soft sweet country of subtle allurement—the picture of all this was to spring up vivid and vital in many an idle hour of the days to follow. Little speech passed between them that night: they rode close together, they forgot the wagon which rocked and jolted along somewhere far behind them; they were content to be content without analysing. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... though she tried every allurement and persuasion to detain him. The blow to her affection and her pride was too much for her to endure, and when she found that he was gone, she mounted a funeral pile which she had caused to be erected, and having stabbed herself was consumed with the pile. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... a kaleidoscopic glimpse of Europe, never dreaming that he would carry back to America anything more than the usual flitting memories of a pleasant trip; but instead he was destined to take with him a single vivid picture. He argued that he was merely infatuated with the girl, carried away by the allurement of a new and remarkable type of woman, and that these headlong passions were neither healthy nor lasting; but his reasoning brought him no real sense of conviction, and his life, as he looked forward to it, appeared singularly flat and stale. His one consolation, poor as ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... absent friend, I thank you." In spite of wistful looks from the beautiful youth as we rose from the table, and the allurement of a tropic moon, I remained constant to duty and Aunt Jane, and immured myself in her stateroom, where I passed an enlivening evening listening to her moans. She showed a faint returning spark of life when I mentioned Cuthbert Vane, and raised her head ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... from its frame and cast it into the fire, thus burning her for her witchcraft. I watched the flames leap and curl. The last look she gave me before they licked away her face had its infinite allurement, its devilish sorcery so intensified in the fierce yellow light, that the yearning for her clutched me by the throat and shook me through ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... from her task at sound of the steps below the window, and their starry brightness under her straight black brows gave her an infinite allurement. Certainly a beautiful woman, as Monck had said, and possessing the brilliance and the wonder of youth to an almost dazzling degree! Perhaps it was not altogether surprising that the ladies of the regiment had not been too enthusiastic ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... his vehemence and by the justice of his reasoning. Here was the man whose whole influence would be pitted against the purpose of her journey; and her woman's intuition told her that no argument or allurement could turn his mind. It was with a feeling of relief that the halting of the vehicle before the porch of a stately house checked the unwise retort that trembled on her lips. Later, she could oppose him better than if, yielding now to an impulse to controvert his ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... the determination to spend every excited nerve on sensation, to obtain the last drop from glasses the contents and odors of which uniquely resembled the drinks of pre-prohibition. These girls, consciously animating their shapely bodies with the allurement if not the ends of creation, prostitutes of both temperament and fact, were, Lee Randon decided, calmer—yes, safer—in mind and purpose than were his ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Steevens, in a note on the "Comedy of Errors," act ii. sc. 1, has collected a number of quotations to show the meaning of the word stale, and to them the reader is referred. In this place it signifies a false allurement, bait, or deception on the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... me to her social walls, That 'mid the vast Metropolis arise, Where Splendor dazzles, and each Pleasure vies In soft allurement; and each Science calls To philosophic Domes, harmonious Halls, And [1]storied Galleries. With duteous sighs, Filial and kind, and with averted eyes, I meet the gay temptation, as it falls From a seducing pen.—Here—here I stay, Fix'd by Affection's power; ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... brigades bearing their pelts, the hardy traders of the winter posts, striking hot the imagination through the mysterious and lonely allurement of their callings. For a brief season, transient as the flash of a loon's wing on the shadow of a lake, the post was bright with the thronging of many people. The Indians pitched their wigwams on the broad meadows below the bend; the half-breeds sauntered about, flashing bright teeth and wicked ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White

... to my city—the great, the old, the terrible city of unnumbered crimes. My friend had told me of him, and of the impelling fascination and allurement of his revelations, and I burned with eagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries. My friend said they were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; that what was thrown on a screen in the darkened room prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep dare prophesy, and that ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... enough game. Nevertheless, whatever the motive, the effect was certainly real enough. She was alluring rather than charming, with her fan and her rebosa, her veiled glances, her languorous, bold poses, and the single red flower in her hair. And a great deal of this allurement resided in the very fact that no one could tell how much was simple, innocent, and unconscious instinct, and how much was intended. An unpleasing note in both women was furnished by the powder. This so liberally covered their faces as to ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... every minute of his absence. Miss him? If Dr. King had known what even three days without David would mean to her, he would not have wasted his breath in suggesting that she should give him up! Yet the possibility of such a thing had the allurement of terror; she played with the thought, as a child, wincing, presses a thorn into its flesh to see how long it can bear the smart. Suppose, instead of this three days' trip with Dr. Lavendar, David was going away to stay? The ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... the breeze—repeated serially, and so resembling his own, that had Caspar not known that they proceeded from the throat of a deer, he might have fancied them to be echoes. He did not allow many seconds to elapse before barking again, and again, with an equal straining at allurement. ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid

... the shining vistas through which we rode that day, nor the meadows which possessed all the allurement and mystery which the word "savanna" has always had with me. It was like going back to the prairies of Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, as they were sixty years ago, except in this case the elk and the deer ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... couple of hours after mid-day until the mountain-shadows strike the water in the evening, are the best times to troll for bass. If so minded, they will rise to a fly at such times in the rapids; but no allurement excepting the troll will bring them to the surface in still water. When the river is rising, or the water is clouded with mud or drift, bass scorn all surface-diet; but the live minnow or crawfish, hellgramite or fish-worm, will capture them on trout-line ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... of us for that cause, shall be taken as done to us all in general, and to every one of us in particular; that we shall, neither directly nor indirectly, suffer ourselves to be divided or withdrawn, by whatsoever suggestion, allurement, or terror, from this blessed and loyal conjunction; nor shall cast in any let or impediment that may stay or hinder any such resolution, as by common consent shall be found to conduce for so good ends;—but, on the ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery

... rude simplicity of republican virtue. Pride gave place to vanity, true liberty to titles of Honor, a needy independence to a luxurious servitude. To oppress or to plunder their native land as the absolute satraps of an absolute lord was a more powerful allurement for the avarice and ambition of the great, than in the general assembly of the state to share with the monarch a hundredth part of the supreme power. A large portion, moreover, of the nobility were deeply sunk in poverty and debt. Charles ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... obtain the plausible appearance of gentility, and obtrude himself into the first circle of fashion. These opportunities abound in the metropolis; and such is the apathy of the present age, that the accomplished swindler, of exterior allurement, intermixes, sans inquiry, with honourable rank; and even where inquiry is deemed necessary, all minor considerations vanish before the talismanic influence of Wealth! "Is he rich? Incalculably so! Then, let's have him, by all ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... primum mobile [Lat.], keystone; the why and the wherefore; pro and con, reason why; secret motive, arriere pensee [Fr.]; intention &c 620. inducement, consideration; attraction; loadstone; magnet, magnetism, magnetic force; allectation^, allective^; temptation, enticement, agacerie^, allurement, witchery; bewitchment, bewitchery; charm; spell &c 993; fascination, blandishment, cajolery; seduction, seducement; honeyed words, voice of the tempter, song of the Sirens forbidden fruit, golden apple. persuasibility^, persuasibleness^; attractability^; impressibility, susceptibility; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... been enticed forth by the savages? In that case the savages would surely have plundered the camp, unless—and now his thought and his pulse quickened—unless there had not yet been time. Perhaps they had only recently left the place. Then they could not be far away, and if they had yielded to allurement there might still be time to save them. He started up, and told Rodier, who had begun his customary task of cleaning the engine, the conclusion to which ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... grass faded to pale rose in the twilight, and beyond the crumbling rail fence miles of feathery broomsedge swept to the pines that stood straight and black against the western horizon. Impressions of the hour and the scene, of colour and sound, were blended in the allurement which Nature proffered him, for her own ends, through the woman beside him. Not Blossom Revercomb, but the great Mother beguiled him. The forces that moved in the wind, in the waving broomsedge, and in the call of the whip-poor-will, stirred in his pulses as they stirred ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... the power of this new thought by its effect, saying that it makes me "fix my regard" on a Lady, and speaks to me words of allurement, that is to say, it reasons before the eyes of my intelligent affection, in order the better to induce me, promising me that the sight of her eyes is its salvation. And in order to make this credible to the Soul experienced in love, it says that it ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... my life as to the present moment, leads me far afield. It was the pleasure I took in literature, the discipline of mind I found arise from it, that made me eager to lead Perdita to the same pursuits. I began with light hand and gentle allurement; first exciting her curiosity, and then satisfying it in such a way as might occasion her, at the same time that she half forgot her sorrows in occupation, to find in the hours that succeeded a ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... business is built to a great extent on the mysterious allurement, the attractive invitation and innocent camouflage of the advertisement that you find sparkling everywhere, on the flashy poster, in the show-window, in the magazine, in the daily paper. Without willingness ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... readable of his generation. He has the allurement of his own inconsistency, and the inconsistency of youth is its questing spirit, and, consequently, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... Vice. They paid men who were fixed before the doors of such houses with huge paper lanterns, on which there was painted in large illuminated letters, "This is a house of bad fame." But, instead of causing a desertion of the houses, they operated as an advertisement and an allurement, and increased the numbers who resorted to them. Those who had before frequented them did not discontinue their visits, and those who were ignorant of such places and seeking them, on seeing the emblazonment by the doors, cried out—that is just what we wanted, and turned ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper

... their own monitorship. The college discipline, even if it extend not beyond college duties, is a perpetual remembrancer of the high moral end for which the student is placed within its precincts. His only allurement to extravagance is the desire of vying with those who make a greater display than himself, or else it arises from, if possible, a less defensible motive, namely, that of becoming himself an object of emulation to others. It is not the duty ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... and Elizabeth seem types, moulded by the spirit of the time, and placed upon an elevated platform, to show to the coming ages Woman such as the conduct and wishes of Man in general is likely to make her. The first shows Woman lovely even to allurement; quick in apprehension and weak in judgment; with grace and dignity of sentiment, but no principle; credulous and indiscreet, yet artful; capable of sudden greatness or of crime, but not of a steadfast wisdom, nor self-restraining virtue. The second reveals Woman half-emancipated ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... she received from the house enabled her to meet their disapprobation defiantly; while to the younger portion, in the vague sense that there was something wrong about it, her dance became surrounded by all the attraction and allurement of seeing life. It was not that the frowning ones did not go through many of the same motions themselves; but theirs were occasioned by the frenzy of the religious excitement, where pious rapture and ecstasy were to be expressed by nothing but the bodily exertion of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... this girl, not as he had loved Adele, of course, but quite as humanly. Her mediumship, so vital to the world, so sacred in his eyes, had but added to her allurement. "All that I am, and all I hope to be, is bound up in the possession of that sweet, wonderful child," he said, in acknowledgment of his discovery. In a very subtle way he now apprehended a change in the girl, and, realizing how utterly his aims, his daily ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... were beginning to filter into the new settlements found the attractions of coursing against the Spaniards to be irresistible. Great extremes of fortune, such as those to which the buccaneers were subject, have always exercised an attraction over minds of an adventurous stamp. It was the same allurement which drew the "forty-niners" to California, and in 1897 the gold-seekers to the Canadian Klondyke. If the suffering endured was often great, the prize to be gained was worth it. Fortune, if fickle one day, might the next bring incredible bounty, and the buccaneers ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... one of the couplets in this little Primer-book, and right truly can I say that from the springtime day sixty-odd years ago, when first my heart went out in love to this little book, no change of scene or of custom no allurement of fashion, no demand of mature years, has abated that love. And herein is exemplified the advantage which the love of books has over the other kinds of love. Women are by nature fickle, and so are men; their friendships are liable ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... hotel. She had confidingly judged the charms of the advertised car from those of the advertisers, and this was her reward. Could we blame her if, in the bitterness of mortification, she yielded to the allurement of that glittering car which was our detractor's best argument? But she was ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... "promenoir" where you may walk up and down or sit at a little table and drink bad brandy at one franc and a half. In a fenced off part are the Oriental Dances, a familiar feature of every Parisian Show. These dances—at twenty cents a turn—are supposed to represent all the languishing allurement of the Oriental houri—I think that is the word. The dancers in Paris—it is only fair to state—have never been nearer to the Orient than the Faubourg St. Antoine, where they were brought up and where they learned all the Orientalism that they know. Their "dance" is performed with their feet continuously ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... Malaga, I do not know which, and with the usual company of freight-cars idling about, empty or laden with sheets of cork, as indifferent to them as if they were so much mere pine or spruce lumber. There is a sufficiently attractive hotel here for transients, and as an allurement to the marine and military leisure of Gibraltar, "The Picnic Restaurant," and "The Cabin Tea Room," where no doubt there is something to be had beside sandwiches and tea. Here also is the pier ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... my desire invited thee to love The good, which sets a bound to our aspirings, What bar of thwarting foss or linked chain Did meet thee, that thou so should'st quit the hope Of further progress, or what bait of ease Or promise of allurement led thee on Elsewhere, that thou ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... and lo! I was walking beneath the elms of Harvard,—the name of allurement, the college of my youngest, wildest visions! I needed money; scholarships and prizes fell into my lap,—not all I wanted or strove for, but all I needed to keep in school. Commencement came and standing before governor, president, and grave, gowned men, I told them certain astonishing truths, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... the old allurement was glowing in the dark eyes when she said it, but there was no answering thrill of passion in his blood. For one moment, indeed, the bestial demon whispered that here was vengeance of a sort, freely proffered; but the fiercer ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... he had so much abused. Who was now to be Perdiccas' successor, and to manage the kingdom in the name of the kings? With one voice the people begged Ptolemy to undertake this task. The foresight and presence of mind of the son of Lagus were not clouded by the allurement of such an offer gained by his sudden change of fortune. At this supreme moment he acted with consummate sagacity. He divined that a refusal of the proffered honour would make him in reality more powerful, although, at the moment, he ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... holding power of the Never-Never. They are only pleasant places to ride through and leave behind; for their purring slumberous beauty is vaguely suggestive of the beauty of a sleeping tiger: a sleeping tiger with deadly fangs and talons hidden under a wonder of soft allurement; and when exiles in the towns sit and dream their dreams are all of stretches of scorched grass and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... stimulate gaiety, it is sold really in order to empty pockets. Huge dance halls are opened to which hundreds of young people are attracted, many of whom stand wistfully outside a roped circle, for it requires five cents to procure within it for five minutes the sense of allurement and intoxication which is sold in lieu of innocent pleasure. These coarse and illicit merrymakings remind one of the unrestrained jollities of Restoration London, and they are indeed their direct descendants, properly commercialized, ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... by the riding-habit which she was wearing—for she had been in the saddle during the hour which Lady, O'Moy had consecrated to the rites of toilet and devotions done before her mirror. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, vivacity and intelligence lent her countenance an attraction very different from the allurement of her cousin's delicate loveliness. And because her countenance was a true mirror of her mind, she argued shrewdly now, so shrewdly that she drove O'Moy ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... time. It was as though he had gone out of the limitations of everyday human life, and this life had become to him distant and of indifference; but at the same time his thoughts and emotions obtained a certain peaceful clarity and apathetic distinctness, and there was a tedious and languishing allurement in ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... think, when we tell them that the man whose name is so frequently sounded through the columns of the press as the head of police, and applauded for his activity among thieves, is the well-known prince-officio of a voluptuous dwelling, where dazzling licentiousness fills his pockets with the spoils of allurement. This man has several counterparts, whose acts are no secrets to the public ear, and who turn their office into a mart of intrigue, and have enriched themselves upon the bounty of espionage and hush-money, and now assert the dignity of their purse. It may ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... refusal of the name, but yet not serious; again, it did signify an infinite confidence and magnanimity, as if he presumed Caesar was the greater title, as by his worthiness it is come to pass till this day. But chiefly it was a speech of great allurement toward his own purpose, as if the state did strive with him but for a name, whereof mean families were vested; for Rex was a surname with the Romans, as well as ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... atelier, but his method, his facture has been ferreted out though never excelled. He employs the division of tones, his couches are fat and his colour is laid on lusciously. His colour is never hot; coolness of tone is his chief allurement. Greuze, passing one of his canvases at an exhibition, a long time regarded it and went away, heaving a sigh of envy. The frivolous "Frago," who studied with Chardin for a brief period, even though he left ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... its provoking cause—it produced the effect that might have been anticipated. Any young lady who wishes to enslave a young man will really do better work by showing an interest in himself than by any amount of fascination and allurement, on the lines of Greuze. We are by no means sure that it is safe to reveal this secret, so do not let it go any farther. Young women are formidable enough, as it is, without getting tips from the ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... the physical aspect of either path. The journey had become interminable. The unspeakable monotony, whose only variant was peril, had smothered the spark of hope and interest. The allurement of mystery had wholly ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... Philip no longer in touch with modern business methods? Had he become too old and infirm to make the public hungry for literary nourishment? Were his advertisements without allurement, his baits without scent? No one felt inclined to buy expensive lexicons and editions de luxe on the instalment plan. The rich old fellows with a nose for dubious reading matter never came around any more. Jason Philip ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... of the home-life of many of these girls: its hard work and unrelenting poverty; its cheerlessness; the absence of any fun; the irresistible allurement of the flashily-dressed stranger who jingles money in his pocket and offers to "show a good time." Then he told a typical story, the story of a little girl he knew, who worked in a department store for three dollars and a half a week, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... her beauty and swear that it is of the kind that drives to distraction. She is fire and flesh and carnal—she is more than beauty. There is allurement about her body; sylph-like, sinuous; the olive tint of her complexion, the wonderful glory of her hair and the glowing night-black of her eyes. Men pause; she is of the superlative kind that robs the reason, a supreme glory of passion and life and beauty, ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... little lodgings in the Via Bocca di Leone. Miss Cushman likewise reappeared for a time, with all her former greatness and fascination, and many other friends, new and old, made that spring season memorable. As the moment for our departure drew near, the magical allurement of Rome laid upon us a grasp more than ever potent; it was impossible to realize that we were leaving it forever. On the last evening we walked in the moonlight to the fountain of Trevi, near our lodgings, and drank ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... you need not think of offering resistance—he's as strong and as crafty as the Devil.... And it's impossible to catch him by any means; neither with liquor nor with money; he won't yield to any allurement. More than once good men have made preparations to put him out of the world, but no, he doesn't give ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... are doing what Jesus Christ never did; we are working absolutely contrary to the fundamental laws of the kingdom of God. . . . We must teach prospective ministers to look upon their lives as an unselfish expenditure of God-given power. For once make the allurement of the ministry the allurement of comfort, ease, or wealth, and we have closed up every fountain of the ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... to this action by the valor of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, saying, "If they [the negroes] can be made to face and fight bravely against their former masters, how much more probable is it that with the allurement of a higher reward, and led by those masters, they would submit to ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... sicken of the world and seek redemption from its hypocrisies, he replies that for him redemption rests only in the Virgin Mary. The invocation breaks the bonds of enchantment which have held him. The scenes of allurement which have so long surrounded him melt away, and he finds himself in an attitude of prayer in a blooming valley below the Wartburg. It is spring, and a shepherd lad, seated on a rock, trolls a lay to spring's goddess. A troop of pilgrims passing by on their way ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... was there worth while in the world for him if he was to be robbed of his youth and his love? For him, the bare husks of life held no allurement; he was one of that virile, human type that rejects the doctrine of sacrifice, denial, and self-repression in this life for the greater glory of God and man's promise of a reward in another life, of which we wot but little and that little not scientifically authenticated. He wanted ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... open part of the hall. There directly in front they encountered Captain Vane Thesel, with Helen Wrapp on his arm. Her red hair, her green eyes, and carmined lips, the white of her voluptuous neck and arms, united in a singular effect of allurement that Lane felt ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... repose, but shading to violet tints when aglow with vivacity; her nose was not perfect, because a trifle tip-tilted, but her face gained character through the defect; her very red lips held most delicious allurement in their slightly full curves. Her hands and feet were small enough to pay tribute to her birth and breeding, but not so small as to be doll-like. She wore a simple, white dress, freshly laundered, which made her look cool ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... faces. Cecily looked brighter and prettier than I had ever seen her, with her softly shining eyes and the nut brown gloss of her hair. Felicity was too beautiful for words; and even the Story Girl, between excitement and the crimson silk array, blossomed out with a charm and allurement more potent than any regular loveliness—and this in spite of the fact that Aunt Olivia had tabooed the red satin slippers and mercilessly decreed that stout ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the year 1752, and in a short time became distinguished for the good order and deportment of its members, both as men and as christians. During the continuance of the French war, they nobly withstood every allurement which was practised to draw them within its vortex, and expressed their strong disapprobation of war in general; saying, "that it must be displeasing to that Great Being, who made men, not to destroy men, but to love and assist each other." In 1769 emigrants from their villages of Friedenshutten, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... pleasantly warm; the jinricksha, or kuruma, is the most cosy little vehicle imaginable; and the street-vistas, as seen above the dancing white mushroom-shaped hat of my sandalled runner, have an allurement of which I fancy ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... that sole criterion in estimating the novel impressions she received. To review the criterion itself was still beyond her power. She suffered from the conviction that trials foreseen were proving too strong for her. Whenever her youth yielded to the allurement of natural joys, there followed misery of penitence. Not that Miriam did in truth deem it a sin to enjoy the sunshine and the breath of the sea and the beauty of mountains (though such delights might become excessive, like any other, and so veil temptation), ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... the silvery Thames, green-wooded and sunny, proved too strong an allurement to resist. Jack did not know that Destiny, watchful of opportunity, had taken this beguiling shape to lead him to a turning-point of his life—to steer him into the thick of troubled and restless waters, of gray clouds and threatening storms. He ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... theatre and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul's fairy tale, and it had for him all the allurement of a secret love. The moment he inhaled the gassy, painty, dusty odour behind the scenes, he breathed like a prisoner set free, and felt within him the possibility of doing or saying splendid, brilliant things. The moment the cracked orchestra ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... California alone, to the Clay and Webster idea of settling the "whole controversy". [36] Representative Morehead wrote Crittenden, "The extreme Southern gentlemen would secretly deplore the settlement of this question. The magnificence of a Southern Confederacy... is a dazzling allurement." Clay like Webster, saw ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster

... of the dance-hall and the glitter and the shine, The beauty, and the jewels, and the whirl, The madness of the music, the rapture of the wine, The languorous allurement of a girl! She is like a lost madonna; he is gaunt, unkempt and grim; But she fondles him and gazes in his eyes; Her kisses seek his heavy lips, and soon it seems to him He has staked a little ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... home of Winny Dymond became a fascinating and uncertain game, fascinating because of its uncertainty; it had all the agitation and allurement of pursuit and capture; if she had wanted to allure and agitate him, no art of "cock-a-tree" could have served her better. He was determined ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... stronger. As soon as the flame of life burns more dimly, the demons regain their influence and their wanton tricks are more successful. Lucia's maternal instincts were satisfied, and her allurement, which had always seemed the same as seduction to me, lost its power and was most easily evaded. But the old tormenting life in the big cities began anew, not easier but harder to bear with the advancing years, for the shame and ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... the Alleghany Mountains; the other an attack on Mexico. A third object was provided, merely ostensible, to wit, the settlement of a pretended purchase of a tract of country on the Washita claimed by a Baron Bastrop. This was to serve as the pretext for all his preparations, an allurement for such followers as really wished to acquire settlements in that country and a cover under which to retreat in the event of a final discomfiture of both ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... see the Italian sub-alpine valleys of to-day as devoted to the Church of Rome are apt to forget how nearly they fell away from her in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and what efforts, both by way of punishment and allurement, she was compelled to make before she could retain them in her grasp. In most of them the ferment caused by the introduction of the reformed doctrines was in the end stamped out; but in some, as in the Valle di Poschiavo, and the Val Bregaglia, Protestantism is still either the predominant ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... said Miss Taylor invitingly. There was an allurement about this all-pervasive name; it held her by a growing fascination and she was anxious for the older woman to amplify. Miss Smith, however, remained provokingly silent, so ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... subtilest, indefinable fascination which belongs only to imaginative reminiscence. In the future, I suppose, all this existence will have become such a childhood, its earth changed to sky, its dulness sharpened to a tender, delicious poignancy of allurement and suggestion. And were it not bliss enough for an immortality, this boundless deepening and refining of experience through memory and imagination? Only to feel thrilling in one's being chords of connection with times immeasurably bygone! only to be fed with ethereal remembrance out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... of reasoning, and that natural uprightness and purity which no sophistry can warp, and no allurement betray, are farther displayed in the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... difficulty in the way of Madame Goesler's dinner-parties which had required some patience and great ingenuity in its management. She must either have ladies, or she must not have them. There was a great allurement in the latter alternative; but she knew well that if she gave way to it, all prospect of general society would for her be closed,—and for ever. This had been in the early days of her widowhood in Park Lane. She cared but little for women's society; but she knew well that the society of gentlemen ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... oblivion which means starvation and slow death. Youth and health have flown and now no paint nor cosmetic can cloak their real character. They must come early because their need of money is bitter and a watchful eye for opportunity must take the place of the physical allurement that once made life in the tenderloin so easy. They sink into their seats and wait, contemptuous of their escorts, and yet pitifully dependent upon them. For without the escorts they cannot enter the ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks

... dramatized to suit young beholders, lively, bright, and full of the harmless nonsense which brings the laugh without the blush. That night she saw one of the new spectacles which have lately become the rage, and run for hundreds of nights, dazzling, exciting, and demoralizing the spectator by every allurement French ingenuity can invent, and American prodigality execute. Never mind what its name was, it was very gorgeous, very vulgar, and very fashionable; so, of course, it was much admired, and every one went to see it. At first, Polly thought she had got into fairy-land, ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... appreciated her soft, warm allurement, the appeal of sex with which she was so prodigally endowed. His breath ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... black hair twisted about her head. She was not pretty but there was a certain charm of interest and mystery in her face, and Rilla found her fascinating. Even her occasional moods of gloom and cynicism had allurement for Rilla. These moods came only when Miss Oliver was tired. At all other times she was a stimulating companion, and the gay set at Ingleside never remembered that she was so much older than themselves. Walter and Rilla were her ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... I was taught to govern, but a wit was an animal for whom no arts of taming had been yet discovered: the woman whom he could once get within his power, was considered as lost to all hope of dominion or of quiet: for he would detect artifice and defeat allurement; and if once he discovered any failure of conduct, would believe his own eyes, in defiance of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... there was allurement, in the very superscription. Clearly, it seemed, he ought to open and examine these letters. They might serve to clear up this mystery. He would ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick



Words linked to "Allurement" :   temptingness, enticement, attraction, allure



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