"Ravishing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all was glorious; a cloudless sky above, a most delicious view around. 'Oh, my friend,' said I to M. Robert, 'how great is our good fortune! I care not what may be the condition of the earth; it is the sky that is for me now. What serenity! what a ravishing scene! Would that I could bring here the last of our detractors, and say to the wretch, Behold what you would have lost had you arrested the ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... head down on her mother's shoulder. She was more tired than she would admit. Hanny's eyes were like stars, and her brain was still filled with wonderful melodies and light airy figures trooping to the ravishing sounds, the shimmering light and sparkle. Doctor Joe just carried her up the steps, and opened the door with his latch-key. But Mrs. Underhill had heard them, and she came ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... wherein I used nimbly to pace the swift coranto, or to move with a loftier grace in the stately galliard, for this rugged and decayed dungeon of rusty-coloured stone—quitting the gay theatre, for the solitary chimney-nook of a Scottish dog-house—bartering the sounds of the soul-ravishing lute, and the love-awaking viol-de-gamba, for the discordant squeak of a northern bagpipe—above all, exchanging the smiles of those beauties, who form a gay galaxy around the throne of England, for the cold courtesy of an untaught damsel, and the bewildered ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... soul,' rejoined the abbot, 'marvel not, for that sanctity nowise abateth by this, seeing it hath its seat in the soul and that which I ask of you is a sin of the body. But, be that as it may, your ravishing beauty hath had such might that love constraineth me to do thus; and I tell you that you may glory in your charms over all other women, considering that they please holy men, who are used to look upon the beauties of heaven. Moreover, abbot though I be, I am a man like another and am, as ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... it. You will save Gnulemah; her innocence will save her from the knowledge of her loss. As for Balder,—his suffering will satisfy a reasonable enemy. No wife, no fortune, the cup dashed from his lips just as the aroma was ravishing his nostrils!—O, enough! Open the ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... tribute to the Romans: which assertion he proved to be true. But now those persons who, for several years past, had maintained themselves by plundering the public, were greatly enraged; as if this were ravishing from them their own property, and not as dragging out of their hands their ill-gotten spoil. Accordingly, they instigated the Romans against Hannibal, who were seeking a pretext for indulging their hatred against him. A strenuous opposition was, however, for a long time made to this by ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... sweet," and then he gave her such a tender squeeze! "Done—do—you naughty man!" cried she, tapping him on the knuckles with the plated sugar-tongs, and then cast down her eyes with such a roguish modesty, that he repeated the operation for the sake of that ravishing expression. Pointing his knife at a pat of butter, he poetically exclaimed, "My heart is jist like that—and you have made a himpression on it as time will never put out!" "I did'nt think as you were quite so soft neither," said the widow. "I ham," ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... a series of those grey-brown streets, neither commodious nor picturesque, in which the eastern quarter of the city abounds. Lucy soon lost interest in the discontent of Lady Louisa, and became discontented herself. For one ravishing moment Italy appeared. She stood in the Square of the Annunziata and saw in the living terra-cotta those divine babies whom no cheap reproduction can ever stale. There they stood, with their shining limbs bursting from the garments of charity, and their strong white arms extended ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... misguided, and franticly abandoned to its passions. He is admirable where the subject calls chiefly for emotion, and makes no higher requisitions; and he is still more so where pathos and moral beauty are united. Few of his pieces are without passages of the most ravishing beauty. It is by no means my intention to deny him the possession of the most astonishing talents; I have only stated that these talents were not united with a mind in which the austerity of moral principles, and the sanctity of religious feelings, were held ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... the strings again. Then, looking up and seeing the twinkle in Nyoda's eye, she added, "Weren't the Harpies beautiful maidens that sat on the rocks and played harps and lured the sailors to destruction with their ravishing songs? Oh, I say, they were too," she finished feebly, amid a perfect shout of laughter from the girls. "Well, what were they, then? Horrible monsters? Oh, what a shame! What a misleading thing the English language is, anyway! You'd naturally expect a harpy to play on a harp. Anyway, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... are no hard blues, no coarse red flesh-tints, no black shadows. Mellow lights, the morning hues of primrose, or of palest amber, pervade the whole society. It is a court of gentle and harmonious souls; and though this style of beauty might cloy, at first sight there is something ravishing in those yellow-haired white-limbed, blooming deities. No movement of lascivious grace as in Correggio, no perturbation of the senses as in some of the Venetians, disturbs the rhythm of their music; ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... entitled to take; he has paid the historic muse with ample interest for anything she lent him, by the magnificent sketch of Louis and the fine one of Charles; he has given a more than passable hero in Quentin, and a very agreeable if not ravishing heroine in Isabelle. Above all, he has victoriously shown his old faculty of conducting the story with such a series of enthralling, even if sometimes episodic passages, that nobody but a pedant of 'construction' would care to inquire too narrowly whether they actually make a whole. Quentin's ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... will not vouch. Only of this be sure. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' More and more the light peeps through the chinks. Soon, amidst music ravishing, the curtain will rise, and the glorious scene be displayed. Adieu! Remember me. Ha! 'tis dawn," Pinto ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... incomparably false, that, though one should laugh derision at it from Christmas to Candlemas, he would not laugh enough. "Hiring servants for life,"—that is the most intrepid lucus a non lucendo of the century. It fairly takes one's breath away. It is stunning, ravishing. One can but cry, on recovering his wind,—Hear, O Caucus, and give ear, O Mock-Auction! ye railway Hudsons, tricksters, impostors, ye demagogues that love the people in stump-speeches at $—— per year, ye hired bravos ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... All the Inventions of the most refined Luxury, were employed to add new Incentives to Wantonness. The House seemed the very Residence of Love and Delight. Every Thing in it declar'd the Elegance of the Mistress, and the Magnificence of the Lover. Each succeeding Day brought with it the most ravishing Scenes, without any Alarm or Disturbance. The old Bassa and his Family saw no more than the Prologue, only some few Spectators of approved Discretion and Secrecy, were admitted to be present at the Plot of the Play, but for the ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... have been here six weeks, and still no burning: for the place seems to plead with me, it is so ravishing, so that I do not know why I did not live here, and spare my toils during those sixteen nightmare years; for two whole weeks the impulse to burn was quieted; and since then there has been an irritating whisper at my ear which said: 'It is not really like ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... reserved and self-contained in general company, would laugh till the tears ran down her cheeks; and the music of her laughter, which was deep and low, rang more agreeably to Barty's ear than even the ravishing strains of Adelina Patti—the last of the great prime donne of our time, I think—whose voice still stirs me to the depths, with vague remembrance of fresh girlish innocence ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... There scarcely exists another composition of such lofty and religious spirit, as finds expression in the Communion-scene. It is not possible to imagine a more vivid contrast than that between the saintly melodies and those of the fascinating fairies, which latter, glowing with poetry and ravishing ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... when asked to associate themselves with it. "Why should I want to join that?" was the question they put. But it pleased Johnny McComas, both by its present manifestations and its latent possibilities. It was richly in unison with his own nature, and I believe he had a ravishing vision of ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... night, with the man whom she secretly adored, with what that conversation might have been, had she possessed some share of charms and beauty—had she been loved as she loved, with a chaste and devoted flame! But soon sinking into belief that she should never know the ravishing sweets of a mutual passion, she found consolation in the hope of being useful to Agricola. At the dawn of day, she rose softly, and descended the staircase with little noise, in order to see if anything menaced Agricola ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... as hard and cold as steel. She pointed to the door as Nevill made a step toward her. Her ravishing beauty, lost to him forever, maddened him. For an instant he was tempted to fly at her throat and bruise its loveliness. But just then a bell pealed loudly through the house. The front door was heard to open, and voices mingled with rapid steps. An elderly man ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... and from whom a word, a glance even, was deemed the greatest and most gratifying distinction—whom all orders, classes, and conditions of men had combined to stimulate with multiplied adulation, with all the glory and ravishing delights of the world, as it were, forced upon him—to see him thus assailed with the savage execrations of all those vile things who exult in the fall of every thing that is great and the abasement of every thing that is noble, was indeed a spectacle which might have silenced malice ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the going of each day's sun gilding cloud-crests, silvering waves, setting you matchless scenes in color effect, some ravishing in their gorgeous splendor, some soft and tender of tone as the light in the eyes of the woman you worship, scenes beside which the most brilliant stage settings which metropolitans flock like sheep to see ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... harp-player came to her palace and sang and played before her; he made music so ravishing and so sad that all who heard him wept save the Queen, who listened and smiled, listless and indifferent. But her smile filled him with such a passion of wonder and worship that he resolved to rest no more until he had found her heart, for he knew the tale. So he sought ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... enough in the neck to admit full scope to the devil's fancies. Her face, too, was so oval that nature could not have added one line more to its perfection; while her complexion was of deep olive, made ravishing by the carnatic flush of her cheeks. And she had what poets and lady novelists call great Italian eyes, beaming lustrous of soul and energy; and hair that floated in raven blackness over shoulders that seemed chiseled. I began to think myself the happiest of men, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... puissant, powerful and necessary than all the nightingales, butterflies, or men of letters—who, nevertheless, are well enough in their places!—Tortier, the only Tortier, who carried the art de cuisine to ravishing perfection, whose ragouts were sonnets in sauce and whose ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... of pearl and jasper swung back upon their golden hinges, making the most ravishing music, and the Saint, ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... engaging; winning, winsome; taking, fascinating, captivating, killing; seducing, seductive; heart-robbing, alluring, enticing; appetizing &c. (exciting) 824; cheering &c. 836; bewitching; enchanting, entrancing, enravishing[obs3]. charming; delightful, felicitous, exquisite; lovely &c. (beautiful) 845; ravishing, rapturous; heartfelt, thrilling, ecstatic; beatic[obs3]; beatific; seraphic; empyrean; elysian &c. (heavenly) 981. palmy, halcyon, Saturnian. Phr. decies repetita placebit[Lat]; "charms strike the sight but merit wins the soul" [Pope]; "sweetness ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... on the left, the windows bricked up. It had a sinister and wicked air, somehow. The squire told me that they had unearthed a dozen skeletons in that little yard as they were laying a drain, and had buried them in the neighbouring churchyard. But the back of the house was still more ravishing than the front; surrounded by great brick walls, curving outwards, lay a grassy garden, with huge box-trees at the sides, and in the centre many ancient apple-trees in full bloom. The place was bright with carelessly ordered ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... window was opened immediately, the blind was raised, and a ravishing young girl, in a night dress, her fair hair rippling over her shoulders, appeared in the frame ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... to consciousness after a restless night. The sun was streaming in at the window. He felt dull and heavy, with a slight headache and a weariness in all his muscles. Worst of all, Nan, in a ravishing pink fluffy affair, was bending over him, her eyes ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... lips of morn, Kissing the leaves, and sighing so to lose 'em, The winding of the merry locust's horn, The glad spring gushing from the rock's bare bosom: Sweet sights, sweet sounds, all sights, all sounds excelling, Oh! 'twas a ravishing spot formed for ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... the honour of providing a feast that would live for years in the memory of all who might be privileged to be present. Both she could not accomplish, and she wisely chose the latter; for she shrewdly reasoned that, while the Western bridal garb would certainly set forth her charms in a new and ravishing style, the glory of that triumph would be short-lived at best, and it would excite the envy of the younger members of her own sex and the criticism of the older and ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... which he did to the life. We also made out our own "reports" for home, and played a most spirited game of croquet in the hall, with potatoes for balls and brooms for mallets, besides treating our prisoners to a ravishing concert by an orchestra of one dinner-bell, two dish-covers, two combs and paper, ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... rhythms. Those great lights, which so quietly gleaming swept around, were they stars of heaven, and that melodious harmony which arose from their movements, was it the song of the spheres, of which poets and seers have reported so many ravishing things? At times, when I endeavored to gaze out into the misty distance, I thought I saw pure white garments floating ground, in which colossal pilgrims passed muffled along with white staves in their hands, and singular to relate, the golden knob of each staff ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Of gods is honored, With song made splendent in the sight of men— Whose heart most sweetly stout, From ravishing France cast out, Being firstly hers, was hers most wholly then— Or where on shining seas like wine The dove's wings draw the drooping Erycine. (Give me ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... George Anne arrived, in a hackney coach, attended by her dresser, and scarce visible for mantua boxes. The three children were put away—their usual fate—in the beds within, and though not able to sleep for excitement, were mute as mice, lest they be punished by the closing of the door upon the ravishing glimpses they had of ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... her a lesson, that, among all the dilettanti in Europe, there was not so great a singer as herself. The most famous of the public performers scarcely could equal her. In the bravura she astonished! in the cantabile she charmed; her maestoso was inimitable! and her adagios! Oh! they were ravishing! killing. She indeed openly accused him of flattering her; but Signor Gridarini appealed both to his honour and his friends; the best judges in Europe, who as she well knew all said ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... high up was hanging a ravishing Botticelli—a Madonna and Child bending over like a wind-blown tree to be kissed by St. John:—a composition that takes you up in its arms and rocks you as you look at it. Andrea del Sarto is to me only a big mediocrity: there ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... recognised as only second to the great Geber himself. One of the doctors present inquired whether a man who knew so many sciences was acquainted with music? Alfarabi made no reply, but merely requested that a lute should be brought him. The lute was brought; and he played such ravishing and tender melodies, that all the court were melted into tears. He then changed his theme, and played airs so sprightly, that he set the grave philosophers, sultan and all, dancing as fast as their legs ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... fork of a tree-trunk, perhaps twice the height of his head above the ground, Anthony beheld a ravishing face and two very bright eyes. Without removing his gaze, he leaned his gun carefully against a bush—firearms have an ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... stirred, just as heavy stones are raised by delicate growing plants. To exert this power the poet is always moved at the instance of feeling. Poetry having its birth in feeling, no man can enjoy or value it but through feeling. But what moves him to embody and shape his feeling is that ravishing sentiment which will have the best there is in the feeling, the sentiment which seeks satisfaction through contemplation or entertainment of the most divine and most perfect, and ever rises to the top of the refined joy ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... fay-haunted Arden, or listening to the harper that frequented the fireside of Polesworth Hall where the boy was a petted page, later the honoured almoner of the bounty of many patrons, one who "not unworthily," as Tofte said, "beareth the name of the chiefest archangel, singing after this soule-ravishing manner," yet leaving but "five pounds lying by him at his death, which was satis viatici ad coelum"—is not this the panorama of a poetic career? But above all, to complete the picture of the ideal poet, he worshipped, and hopelessly, from youth to age the image of one, woman. He never ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... pulled himself together, and got up and looked at himself in a mirror. He was elegant and genteel, at any rate, that everybody would be bound to allow. His whole get-up was unexceptionable—his chin was clean-shaven, his moustache and whiskers were downright picturesque, his cravat was ravishing, and ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... mighty passion that now raged in the heart of Ferdinand Armine, as, pale and trembling, he withdrew a few paces from the overwhelming spectacle, and leant against a tree in a chaos of emotion. What had he seen? What ravishing vision had risen upon his sight? What did he feel? What wild, what delicious, what maddening impulse now pervaded his frame? A storm seemed raging in his soul, a mighty wind dispelling in its course the sullen clouds and vapours of long years. Silent he was indeed, for he was speechless; ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... smoothly across her unblemished forehead, which might have been marble, so smooth and pure, but for the warm blood that flowed through those delicate blue channels. The mouth and features were of the Grecian model, and when she smiled she showed a ravishing sweetness of expression, and teeth that rivalled those of an Indian. In form, her person was slightly voluptuous, though strictly within the most true female delicacy. Such is a sketch of the two whom we at the outset denominated as lovers; and such they ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... own half the island between them. Splendid, aren't they? Look at the diamonds on her lovely arms, and his ravishing moustache. Isn't he your ideal of Prince Djalma, ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... sometimes proved a refreshment to my body," said the boy; "his exhortations are so ravishing, that they are apt to lull ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... Milton was a harmonist rather than a melodist. There are, no doubt, some exquisite melodies (like the "Sabrina Fair ") among his earlier poems, as could hardly fail to be the case in an age which produced or trained the authors of our best English glees, as ravishing in their instinctive felicity as the songs of our dramatists, but he also showed from the first that larger style which was to be his peculiar distinction. The strain heard in the "Nativity Ode," in the ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... "She sleeps," the princess said. "Come back to-morrow." So they bowed and went. The princess hastened with the casket rich To Bidasari's room, and opened it Before her eyes. Within it was a box Of agate, beautiful to see, and filled With water wherein swam a little fish Of form most ravishing. The princess stood Amazed to see with eyes of fire a fish That swam. Then was she glad, and spoke with joy To Bidasari: "Say what signifies The fish to thee? What shall I do with it?" Then Bidasari bowed and said: "My soul Is in that fish. At dawn must thou remove It from the water, ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... excluding even Schumann's or that of Franz. The "Love Song," though a piano solo, is in reality a duet between two lovers. It is to me finer than Henselt's perfect "Liebeslied," possibly because the ravishing sweetness of the woman's voice answering the sombre plea of the man gives it a double claim on the heart. The setting of "Du bist wie eine Blume," however, hardly does justice either to Heine's poem, or to Nevin's art. The "Serenade" is an original ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... come so suddenly to displace at least temporarily the merry, trivial air of the "Ca ira!" which hitherto had been the revolutionary carillon. Instinctively Mme. de Plougastel and Aline clung to each other. They had heard the sound of the ravishing of that other house in the neighbourhood, without knowledge of the reason. What if now it should be the turn of the Hotel Plougastel! There was no real cause to fear it, save that amid a turmoil ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... heard Bloomgarten without learning something. There was a good deal of subdued conversation while the pianist was in his extreme agony of execution, and a hush of extreme admiration—it was divine, divine, ravishing—when he had finished. The speaker was a learned female pundit from India, and her object was to interest the women of America in the condition of their unfortunate Hindoo sisters. It appeared that thousands ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that there was no subsisting in that manner. Upon this we called a short council, and concluded to carry the great ship away with us, but to put all the prisoners—queen, ladies, and all the rest—into the lesser vessels, and let them go; and so far was I from ravishing this lady, as I hear is reported of me, that though I might rifle her of everything else, yet, I assure you, I let her go untouched for me, or, as I am satisfied, for any one of my men; nay, when we dismissed them, we gave her leave to take a great many things of ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... Below, and seated on the rich rugs which cover the marble pavement, musicians and singers pause to listen to impassioned words from a laurel-crowned poet, while further on a sort of orchestra plays time for the sensuous dance of lithe-bodied Oriental dancers—each woman of them more ravishing than the other. Minor incidents, like dice-play and love-making, give interest to the remaining space, and keep ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... be with that ravishing marauder," said Rugge. "However, I have set a minister of justice—that is, ma'am, a detective police—at work; and what I now ask of you is simply this: should it be necessary for Mr. Losely to appear with me before the senate—that is to say, ma'am, a metropolitan ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... saw her portrait, he exclaimed, "The original was fashioned for the gods." And we cannot wonder, as we look on the ravishing beauty of the face that wrung this eloquent tribute from the cold-blooded cynic—the tender, melting violet of the eyes, with their sweeping brown lashes, under the exquisite arch of brown eyebrows, the dainty little Greek nose, the bent ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... linnets and the little Jenny Wrens, knowing the value of silence, are hoarding it like misers; but like prodigals, they 're squandering sound. The ear of mortal never heard such a delirious, delicious, such a crystalline, argentine, ivory-smooth, velvety-soft, such a ravishing, such an enravished tumult of sweet voices. Showers, cascades, of pearls and rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires. The weather, says Anthony Rowleigh. He could n't stand the weather. The weather is as perfect as a perfect work of art—as ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... sun, it did not take me long to fall asleep in the saddle. A sudden sense of freshness penetrated and awoke me. I saw that we had already begun climbing a mountain path, in the midst of a dense forest, rifts in which occasionally opened to our admiring gaze ravishing vistas, impetuous torrents; distant mountains; cloudless heavens; a landscape, far below, of wondrous beauty. All about us were the songs of numberless brilliantly plumaged birds. We came out of the forest toward noon, descended to a little hamlet ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... is no fear of being hanged for such a crime as this, while we have money or friends.—And suppose even the worst, that two or three were to die, have we not a chance, each man of us, to escape? The devil's in them, if they'll hang five for ravishing three! ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... exclaimed: "And there, down below, to the right, is the little beach—the ravishing little beach! How I loved it! Here, take the glasses, ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... extract a square root, or study Algebra: than which, as [3360]Clavius holds, "in all human disciplines nothing can be more excellent and pleasant, so abstruse and recondite, so bewitching, so miraculous, so ravishing, so easy withal and full of delight," omnem humanum captum superare videtur. By this means you may define ex ungue leonem, as the diverb is, by his thumb alone the bigness of Hercules, or the true dimensions of the great ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... few days of frightful illness she began to feel better, and was able to be moved from her cabin to the ladies' lounge. Wrapped in one or other of Diana's ravishing boudoir garments of silk and fur, she was supported there every morning, ensconced on the most luxurious sofa, and surrounded by attentions from the other semi-invalids. Nothing was too good for the peer's delightful daughter, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... in front of them marched to and fro a magnificent soldier laced in gold, with chinking spurs and a rifle. Suddenly there ran out of a cottage two little girls, aged about four years and eight years, dirty, unkempt, delicious, shrill, their movements full of the ravishing grace of infancy. They attacked the laced soldier, chattering furiously, grumbling at him, intimidating him with the charming gestures of spoilt and pouting children. And he bent down stiffly in his superb uniform, and managed his long, heavy gun, and talked to them in a deep, vibrating ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... Maiden, to this my home What sights—what sounds of beauty come; Pictures of loveliness—paintings rare— All the charms that art can bestow are there, With ravishing music of harp and song, Sweet notes that ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... The youngest boy or girl in class or college is the weakest wolf in the pack, the under dog in the fight. I had all of a little girl's natural desire for new playfellows and the dreamer's passion for more material for castle-building. The prospect of "the school" was ravishing. I constructed scenes and rehearsed conversations, with the cast of coming actors, until the quartette must have been super-or sub-human, had they come up to ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... wax candles perfumed with amber which formed an agreeable and pleasant sight. A large sideboard was set out with all sorts of gold plate, so finely wrought that the workmanship was much more valuable than the weight of the gold. Several beautiful women richly dressed, whose voices were ravishing, began a concert, accompanied with all kinds of the most harmonious instruments he had ever heard. When they had sat down to table, the fairy Pari Banou took care to help Prince Ahmed to most delicious meats, which the prince had never heard of, but found so nice that he commended ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... spot without accident or loss of life, and then he looked as happy as a man who had helped a fellow being through a momentous undertaking, and was grateful to know that he had not lived in vain. Laura thanked him once more. The words were music to his ear; but what were they compared to the ravishing smile with which she flooded his whole system? When she bowed her adieu and turned away, he was no longer suffering torture in the pillory where she had had him trussed up during so many distressing moments, but he belonged to the list of her conquests ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... water—and hot and tired and soul-sick as he was, the coolness of it was like a clasp of protecting arms. There was a rock rising from the centre, and he swam out and stood upon it, and gazed about him at all the ravishing beauty, and laughed and whooped so that the mountains rang ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... wise, rendered the divine fire that slumbered in my heart more uncontrollable than ever, and this I felt at that very moment. Thereafter, opening a little her purple robe, she showed me, clasped in her arms against her ravishing breast, the very counterpart of the youth I loved, wrapped in the transparent folds of a Grecian mantle, and revealing in the lineaments of his countenance pangs that were not unlike ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... met o' nights, There will I steal and with my hurried hand Startle them suddenly from their delights Before the next encounter hath been plann'd, Ravishing hours in little minutes spann'd; But when they say farewell, and grieve apart, Then like a leaden statue I will stand, Meanwhile their many tears encrust my dart, And with a ragged edge ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... wheel and when the ball stopped on the red, and dad did the raking and raked in a quart of chips, and dad shook hands with the Dakota man and said: "Pard, we have got 'em on the run," and reached for his sack to put in the first installment of acquired wealth, and the low-necked countess smiled a ravishing smile on dad, and dad looked as though he owned a brewery, and the Dakota man twisted his chin whiskers and acted like he was sorry for the Monte Carlo bank, I just got so faint with joy that ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... and delites all as sees it, just take the 9:45 train from Paddington next Sunday, and, drectly you gets there, go at wunce to the Lock, and there, for ours and ours you will see sitch a sight of most ravishing bewty, combined with helegance and hart, as praps no other spot in all the hole world can show! Why, Sir," I said, "every time as the full Lock opens its yawning gates, at the command of one of the principel hofficers of the Tems Conserwancy, you will think of the Gates of Parrydice a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... the same house became less and less like children, and began to disappear from the family board and roof by a mysterious process called marrying, which greatly mystified Zosephine, but equally pleased her by the festive and jocund character of the occasions, times when there was a ravishing abundance of fried ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... he stepped out! the thunder had leapt into the west, the air was clean and sweet, and a ravishing scent came ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... carry her off to please Rodolfo; for the rich who are open-handed always find parasites ready to encourage their bad propensities; and thus to conceive this wicked design, to communicate it, approve it, resolve on ravishing Leocadia, and to carry that design into effect was the work ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... dreams went by. The little home—how charming it would be! The chintz that matched her two best trousseau frocks, the solidity and polish of her dining-room chairs, the white paint and pale spring colours of her sitting-room, how ravishing it all was! The conveniences of the kitchen, the latest household apparatus, would they not make the keeping of the perfect flat a sort of toy occupation for a pretty girl's few serious moments? In spite of Julia, all would be easy ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... meet him in a most ravishing morning robe of pale green, a confection so stunning in conjunction with her gold-brown eyes and waving brown hair and round white throat that Bobby was forced to audible ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... brought every variety of collar and cravat in fashion at that epoch. He brought two of Buisson's coats and all his finest linen He brought his pretty gold toilet-set,—a present from his mother. He brought all his dandy knick-knacks, not forgetting a ravishing little desk presented to him by the most amiable of women,—amiable for him, at least,—a fine lady whom he called Annette and who at this moment was travelling, matrimonially and wearily, in Scotland, a victim to certain suspicions which required a passing sacrifice ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Gentleman, and you shall find me so; for I'll not offer you the least shew of Violence, or offer to corrupt your Chastity; tho indeed you are tempting Fair, and might inflame a colder Heart than mine: Yet Ravishing's no part of my Profession as yet; or if it were, you look so charming Innocent, you wou'd disarm my ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... at the twin Photographs and working it like a Slide Trombone, one could get ravishing glimpses of Trafalgar Square, Lake Como, and the Birthplace of ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... of Arcadia House and the superstitious terror with which he had watched it following upon the unconscious footsteps of the girl Esmay. Then, again, the fair-haired woman who only a few minutes ago had come to meet Quinton Edge on the north terrace, an apparition so ravishing that Constans must needs confound it with the flesh-and-blood presentment of his own ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... and that pretty air of timidity on her face, she was more ravishing than ever. Her voice called as a siren's; her eyes drew Sam irresistibly. In a second all his fears, doubts, scruples, were flung to the winds. He held up the portmanteau, and ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... busy imagination was at work. I called to mind the Arabian story of a prince, borne away during sleep by a good genius, to the distant abode of a princess of ravishing beauty. I do not pretend to say that I believed in having experienced a similar transportation; but it was my inveterate habit to cheat myself with fancies of the kind, and to give the tinge of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... and I are on the intention to make good cheer, and a great expense; -and this country is in possession to furnish wherewithal to amuse oneself. All that England has of illustrious, all that youth has of amiable, or beauty of ravishing, sees itself in this quarter. Render yourself here, then, my friend; and you shall find assembled all that there is of best, whether for ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... superb! how touching! There is a religious character in this piece, something holy about it! I beg of you, do sing that air by Voss, "True Happiness." That will make our enjoyment complete; it is truly ravishing! There is something divine in singing, and your expression, your feeling, Madam! You give yourself up so ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... her sister in ravishing black satin, scaled as a fish with glistening crimsoned-silver sequins, her round, smooth arms bare to the shoulders, her corsage cut as low in the front and back as her daring, in relation to her sense of the proprieties, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... came from the peasant's horn, and had deified it there among the clouds, and had repeated it over and over with divinest variations, to show man how crabbed were the sounds which he produced, and yet how ravishing they might one day become, when to the symphony of silver strings they rang out amid the seraph harps and choral harmonies of heaven. All the party stood still in rapturous attention, and even Cyril forgot for ten minutes ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... silence and a guilty ignorance on the part of the better elements of Christian society at Singapore and Hong Kong, which could be played upon by treacherous, corrupt officials by the flimsy device of calling the ravishing of native women "protection," and the most brazen forms of slavery "servitude." To this extent the individual Christians of these colonies are in many cases guilty of compromise with slavery; and to this extent the title of ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... the slightest admixture of any active moral principle in social life, all the ecstasies, all the ravishing emotions, of an abandonment to excessive sensibility. The soul was to be, no longer the "little bark attendant" that "pursues the triumph and partakes the gale" in Pope's complacent Fourth Epistle, but ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... not of lust or ambition, but of ideality. Saul met Christ at noon, and was blinded by his vision; and would not all brave men covet blindness thus incurred? And better to be blinded, as Don Quixote, by a ravishing ideal, than to see, besotted in soul and shut out from God. That humorous figure astride lean Rosinante, esquired by pudgy, sensible Sancho; eager for chances to be of use; faithful to his love as dawn to sun; strong in his desire of being all ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... for it now anyhow, and if it is wrong may the good Father forgive me," she said softly to herself, just as the orchestra struck up, thrilling her with its ravishing strains, and making her forget all else ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Lily was perfectly ravishing in her splendor at the dance this year. The white Swiss frock she wore was high in the neck, but her brown shoulders and arms shone through the thin fabric with fine effect. About her slim waist she tied a narrow ribbon of blue, and she carried a ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... he had never looked upon. She had slept and rested; she had bathed and groomed and set herself in order. She was dressed after a fashion to bewilder a mere man in the only utterly ravishing outing costume Mark King had ever seen. He felt insanely inclined to pick up her little boots, one after the other, and go down on his knees and kiss them; her hat was a flopsy turban, from under the brim of which the most adorable of ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... child is not a success. It has a rival who is rapidly beating it off the ground. This is the Parisian dog. As an implement of fashion, as a set-off to the fair sex, as the recipient of ecstatic kisses and ravishing hugs, the Parisian dog can give the child forty points in a hundred and win out. It can dress better, look more intelligent, behave better, bark better,—in fact, the child is ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... evening, so ravishing under its sway were heaven and earth, that Lydia's work went but slowly. She was a professional artist, to whom guineas were just as welcome as to other people; and she had very industrious and methodical views of her business. But she was, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... they seemed as high, though they were entirely different in their impress upon the beholder. Tahiti from the sea was like a living being, so vivid, so palpitating was its contour and its color, but Moorea, when far away, was cold and black, a beautiful, ravishing sight, but like the avatars of a race of giants that had passed, a sepulcher or monument of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... grace is ravishing charm. Dignity, in its highest form, is called majesty. In the ravishing we love our Ego, and we feel our being fused with the object. Liberty in its plenitude and in its highest enjoyment tends to the complete destruction of liberty, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... greenery upon it. On the facade, side by side with the tracery of one window, another window presents its masses of jagged stone carved only by the hand of time. Here, to the least artistic and the least trained eye, is a ravishing contrast between this frontage, where marvels throng, and the interior frontage of the chateau of Louis XII., which is composed of a ground-floor of arcades of fairy lightness supported by tiny columns resting at their base on a graceful platform, and of two storeys above it, the windows ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... places awake in ourselves. We should not really have seen the wonders of the world through the eyes of his soul and with the glow of his hope. The drama would have given dead names to our ear; the photoplay gives ravishing scenery to our eye and shows the fancy of the young fellow ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... Allen took us on an excursion in Mr. Hamilton's big motor-boat. Present: Mrs. Allen, Mr. & Mrs. & Miss Sloane, Helen, Mildred Howells, Claude, & me. Several hours' swift skimming over ravishing blue seas, a brilliant sun; also a couple of hours of picnicking & lazying under the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... some villas in one of those ravishing bays that one meets at every turn of the mountain; there were only four or five fronting the sea at the foot of the mountains, and behind them a wild fir wood slopes into two great valleys, that were untraversed by roads. I stopped short before one of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of ineffable glory opened before me, such as I imagine burst upon the enraptured vision of the wandering peri through the opening gates of paradise. (Renewed laughter.) There, there for the first time, my enchanted eye rested upon the ravishing ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... flew to heaven, and, returning, brought fruits and flowers the most curious and exquisite; and immediately there bloomed a garden there, of such ravishing loveliness and perfume that the gods themselves delighted to visit it. Also they filled the great stables with white elephants and chargers. And then the angels transported Thawadee and Somannass to their new abode, the fame of which was so spread ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... in this world, so that with unspeakable aptness we shall call to mind all God's providences, all Satan's malice, all our own weaknesses, all the rage of men, and how God made all work together for his glory and our good, to the everlasting ravishing of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... With joyful, melodious, ravishing, strain, The lark, as he wakens, salutes the glad sun, Who glows in the arms of Aurora again, And blissfully smiling, his race 'gins ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... looked behind. His voice each joyous Vanar raised, And Rama, conquering Rama, praised. Soft from celestial minstrels came The sound of music and acclaim. Soft, fresh, and cool, a rising breeze Brought odours from the heavenly trees, And ravishing the sight and smell A wondrous rain of blossoms fell: And voices breathed round Raghu's son: "Champion of Gods, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... listen to Chad at this moment to feel it; for Chad was in the act of remarking to him that they of course both counted on him—he himself and the other earnest person—for cheer and support. It was brave to Strether to hear him talk as if the line of wisdom they had struck out was to make things ravishing to the Pococks. No, if Madame de Vionnet compassed THAT, compassed the ravishment of the Pococks, Madame de Vionnet would be prodigious. It would be a beautiful plan if it succeeded, and it all came to the question of Sarah's being really ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... in Maud's brain with a ravishing sound. She built upon them a fantastic palace of mist and cloud. When at last her dress was finished and she started, after three unsuccessful attempts, to walk to Algonquin Avenue, she was in no condition ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... who had been taking his sorrows to bed with him. The ante-room was quite full and visitors were still arriving, but it was possible to hear oneself speak occasionally. Trivett and Eames, in sack and sash, sat side by side on a table, their hats at a ravishing angle, coquettishly twiddling their tied feet. In the intervals of singing 'Put Me Among the Girls,' they sipped whisky-and-soda held to their lips by, I regret to say, a Major. Public opinion seemed to be against allowing them to change their costume till they should have ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... the next place, remember that no excellence is ever attained without self-denial. Wisdom's ways are indeed ways of pleasantness. The satisfaction of having done well and nobly is of a certain ravishing kind, far surpassing other enjoyments. But to obtain this high and satisfying pleasure, many minor and incompatible pleasures must be foregone. You cannot have the pleasure of being a first-rate scholar, and at the same time have your full ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... the lucrative process of selection for the eye alone the cunning horticulturist has cheated us of our rightful heritage of fragrance. I have a mind some time to practise the art of burbankry or other kind of wizardy upon the old lilac stock and select for odour alone, securing ravishing original varieties—indeed, whole new ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... dream-tortured night The intoxicating fruits of my day dream, The fiery lotus of my senses' delight That rises from the abyss of my life. The abysmal heaven of love and living Now bruised, burnt, torn and thrown To the winds of thy ravishing rejoicing Whose inarticulate words of delight and moan Make the ever-yielding music ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... indeed, dazzling in her beauty, and was, perhaps, conscious of her power; her eyes sparkled, and a ravishing smile played upon her lips as she looked up at the prince, who stood dumb and embarrassed before her, and could find no words to express ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... more that hand which permanently to retain is the passion of his life, yet which may never be his! It seemed that for the ravishing delight of that moment he could have borne with cheerfulness all the dark and harrowing misery of the year that had passed away since he embraced her in the woods of Hellingsley, and pledged his faith by the waters ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... business was to ravish and take away virginity from young girls. These girls were taken to such men, and the latter were paid for ravishing them, for the natives considered it a hindrance and impediment if the girls were virgins ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... complexion, yet not without colour of a rose tint; dimples in the cheeks, which were ravishing when she smiled,—and she was very fond of smiling, ay, and laughing too, and showing the most perfect set of white teeth,—black hair, and very dark blue eyes; and there you have her. United to this beauty of person was a most fascinating natural manner; not the manner ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... nuisance," Anna declared, with a little grimace. "I was perfectly happy, Francis, sitting here before the open window and looking out at the lights in that cool, violet gulf of darkness. I believe that in another minute I should have said something to you absolutely ravishing. Then your telephone rings and back one ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Asia, and Africa. Hayward estimated the number of its adherents to be one hundred and forty millions. The heaven of the Mohammedan is replete with all the luxuries which appeal to the animal propensities. Ravishing Houris attend the faithful, who recline on downy couches, in pavilions of pearl. On the Western Continent a system of promiscuity was practiced by the Mexicans, Peruvians, Brazilians, and the barbarous tribes of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... happiness cherished by men take in an immensely wide range, and bring into action all the peculiar attributes of the composite natures of man. The brutal instinct cries out: "Kill! kill!" Bloodsheding is its ravishing delight. When it arrives at a point where it may not destroy its fellows, the whole created animal kingdom—including woman—is its prey. Wars and rumors of wars will never cease on this planet until humanity at large develops out of this grade which expects ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... the fire-fly, driven by the pulses of an inward bliss. But she knew little as yet of her inheritance. Unconsciously she took one step forward from the threshold, and the girl who had been from her very birth a troglodyte stood in the ravishing glory of a Southern night, lit by a perfect moon—not the moon of our Northern clime, but a moon like silver glowing in a furnace—a moon one could see to be a globe—not far off, a mere flat disk on the face of the blue, but hanging down half ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the dark, where, laying hold of the beau's skin (for Slipslop had torn his shirt almost off), and finding his skin extremely soft, and hearing him in a low voice begging Slipslop to let him go, he no longer doubted but this was the young woman in danger of ravishing, and immediately falling on the bed, and laying hold on Slipslop's chin, where he found a rough beard, his belief was confirmed; he therefore rescued the beau, who presently made his escape, and then, turning towards Slipslop, received such a ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... it passionately, as a prelude to kissing? Who could linger over it tenderly with a candle, or a lump of mutton fat, when cold had laid its cruel hand upon it? It is not tip-tilted like a flower; it is not whimsical with some ravishing and unexpected little crook. It is straight, like a mathematical line. But it has no parts. Her cheeks are round and fair. Each has its dimple and blush. They are thoroughly healthy, Mrs. Smith's digestion is unexceptionable. You might indicate the contour ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... to go as a Vie Parisienne cover. A study in black and daffodil—a ravishing confection—and also used part of our "FANTASTIK" kit, but made the bodice out of crinkly yellow paper. A chrysanthemum of the same shade in my hair, which was skinned back in the latest door-knob ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... besides Women," A. 1, S. 3 (Dyce's edit, iii., 575), Dondolo, after a song by his page, says, "Oh rich, ravishing, rare, and inticing. Well, go thy ways, for as sweet a brested page as ever lay at his master's feet in a truckle-bed." And in the same writer's "Women beware ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... Hardbeen, who came from Helsingland, gloried in kidnapping and ravishing princesses, and used to kill any man who hindered him in his lusts. He preferred high matches to those that were lowly; and the more illustrious the victims he could violate, the more noble he thought himself. No man escaped unpunished who durst measure ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... strange and vast absurdities some imaginations have straggled ... the Knight constantly killing the gyant, or it may be whole squadrons; the Damosel certainly to be relieved just upon the point of ravishing; a little childe carried away out of his cradle after some twenty years discovered to be the sone of some great prince; a girl after seven years wandring and co-habiting and being stole, confirmed to be a virgin, either by a panterh, fire or a fountain, and lastly ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... waters. They looked like angels half way out of heaven. Their faces were of a silvery hue; their hairs shone on the stream like tremulous beams of light; their eyes were of a tender azure, and their bosoms rose and fell as if they were all dreaming of blessedness. Some strains of ravishing harmony that were floating among the islands ceased when I appeared, and I thought I heard the snapping of a lute-string. All the spirits started at once. They were crescent-shaped, and stood upon their nether ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... could not guess the name or period. There was a player-piano to match the furniture, and a cabinet of rolls. Near by stood a specially made Victrola with an extensive selection of records. There were bronze lamps, ravishing bits of bric-a-brac, lace curtains of which she could judge the quality, and heavy hangings, sheathed now in their summer coverings. The decorations of the room were harmonious and bespoke a reckless disregard of cost. A fluffy Japanese spaniel with protruding eyes ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... beside his chair; and William Fitzosborne, "the Proud Spirit," placed on the board with his own hand the dainty dishes for which the Norman cooks were renowned. And great men were those Norman cooks; and often for some "delicate," more ravishing than wont, gold chain and gem, and even "bel maneir," fell to their guerdon [192]. It was worth being a cook ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the beauty of the earth makes itself felt like ravishing music that has no sound. The air, warm and full of summer fragrance, was of that ethereal untinged clearness which spreads over all things the softness of velvet. The far-vaulted heavens, so bountiful of light, ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... leapt he to the soaken sand, "That ravishing song would make The devil a saint." He held out his hand ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... were pressed together in a torrent of smacking kisses, our groping hands had discovered every trick of excitation, and our bodies, clasped in a mutual embrace, had fused our souls into one, (and then, in the very midst of these ravishing preliminaries my nerves again played me false and I was unable to last until the instant of supreme bliss.) Lashed to fury by these inexcusable affronts, the lady at last ran to avenge herself and, calling her house servants, she gave orders for me to be hoisted upon their shoulders and ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent.[31] To many of our Undesirables it may seem, mere sentiment to trouble about the ravishing of the world's beauty or the ravaging of the world's humanity. But certain hard facts, even to-day, have to be faced. The process of mechanical invention continues every day on an ever increasing scale of magnitude. Now that process, however necessary, however beneficial, ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... engaged themselves; but they do not care the scrape of a match whether the author originally intended her for the Princess of Kennaquhair or for Polly Jones, him and it for corresponding realities. Nor is the sequel particularly ravishing, though it is dedicated to "all fair and virtuous shepherdesses, all generous and perfect shepherds." Perhaps it is because one is not a generous and perfect shepherd that one finds the "Great Pan is Dead" story less impressive in Gomberville's prose than in Milton's verse at no distant period; ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... more than all else constituted the inexpressible charm of the Empress's presence were the ravishing tones of her voice. How many times have I, like many others, stopped suddenly on hearing that voice; simply to enjoy the pleasure of listening to it. It cannot perhaps be said that the Empress was a strictly beautiful woman; but her lovely countenance, expressing sweetness and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... maintain her pre-eminence in the admiration of her circle. Her ambition knew no bounds. She changed her so-called friends every week; she cultivated grand passions for actors, authors, musicians, and even for professors. Sometimes she played to select audiences with all her old ravishing skill, but this happened more and more rarely, until at last she utterly declined, and even went so far as to flout H.S.H. the Duke of KALBSKOPF, who had been ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... not alone would I test him by hardships and hunger, fatigue and occasional upsets; but I'd try his powers of self-resistance by surrounding him with dissolute young attaches given to blind hookey and lansquenet. I'd have him invited to ravishing orgies, and tempted in as many ways as St Anthony; and all these after long privations. Then, I'd have him kept waiting either under a blazing sun or a deep snow, or both alternately, to test his cerebral organisation; and ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... of Kansas scenes have been distributed among the blacks. The gentleman who has seen some of these chromos writes that the most ravishing presentment of rural life in Kansas is depicted. The Negroes look on the State as a second paradise, compared with which old Canaan is a Florida swamp. One of these pictures, entitled "A Freedman's Home," represents a fine landscape, with fields of ripening ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... friends, and then took a last drive upon the Calcada. Backwards and forwards along this beautiful paseo we went, the moon lending her enchantment, and the different bands filling the air with ravishing strains, odorous plants of the tropics lading it with perfumes, and the dark-eyed Senoras reclining in their luxurious calesas, gave as good an idea of a paradise of Mahomet's order as one could wish. Lingered here as long as we could, and then off to the "Funcion," where spent a delightful ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... recklessness which Salvian describes among his Roman countrymen in Gaul, when, while the Franks were thundering at their gates, and starved and half-burnt corpses lay about the unguarded streets, the remnant, like that in doomed Jerusalem of old, were drinking, dicing, ravishing, robbing the orphan and the widow, swindling the poor man out of his plot of ground, and sending meanwhile to the tottering Caesar at Rome, to ask, not for armies, but for ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... must still find a well-in-tune echo in the tympanum of every amateur of taste. That, we must confess, as critics and theoretical musicians, causes us considerable embarras for words to describe. Who that heard it on Saturday last, has yet recovered the ravishing sensation produced by the thrilling tremour with which Rubini gave the Notte d'Orrore, in Rossini's "Marino Faliero?" Who can forget the recitativo con andante et allegro, in the last scene of "La Sonnambula;" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... father, as well as the ominous ones, "I have something to tell you," startled Leah, and caused the chords of love and fear to vibrate wildly within her bosom. Yet she concealed her deeper feelings, and sang-beautifully, bravely, sweetly-the tender, ravishing love-ditty which she knew was her father's favorite. The melody died away, the chords relaxed and hushed their sweetness, and Leah turned toward her father, awaiting the words of commendation that he always awarded to her performances. But he was silent. Seated upon a divan ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... at Atlantic City—and now the convalescent's heart leaped. In the distance he saw Marjorie coming—in pink again, with a ravishing little parasol over her head. And alone! No Mitchy-Mitch was ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... until neither the light of the sun, nor the moisture of the heavens will wake the flush of life, so may the spiritual essence be deadened when the soil of the soul is filled with the aged and multiplying weeds of ravishing materiality. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the german was first projected, and had accepted. That was fully two weeks before; and now—no one knew just what ought to be done. It was known that Nina Beaubien had returned on the previous day from a brief visit to the upper lakes, and that she had a costume of ravishing beauty in which to carry desolation to the hearts of the garrison belles in leading that german with Mr. Jerrold. Old Madame Beaubien had been reluctant, said her city friends, to return at all. She heartily disapproved of Mr. Jerrold, ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... you over her shoulder radiant in a white tricot Palm Beach suit, who thought palms grew in jardinieres only. On page 17 she was revealed in the boyish impudence of our Aiken Polo Habit, complete, $90. She was ravishing in her golf clothes, her small feet in sturdy, flat-heeled boots planted far apart, and only the most carping would have commented on the utter impossibility of her stance. Then there was the Killiecrankie Travel Tog (background ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... also Parietria Lutea, Musk, Lemmon, and Mastick: Thyme, Spike, Cammomile, Balm, Mint, Marjoram, Pimpernel, Serpillum, etc., which upon the least pressure and cutting, breathe out and betray their ravishing Odors.' Plantations of trees were also to be made and nurseries formed, which would have the additional advantage, besides mere beauty and ornament, of providing for the fields—'better Shelter, and Pasture for Sheep and Cattel then now; that they lie bleak, expos'd ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... contending for the mastery. She longs for eternal sleep, and rest from her evil passions, but Klingsor holds her in his power. Parsifal enters, and the scene changes to a delightful garden filled with girls of ravishing beauty in garments of flowers. They crowd about him, and by their fascinating blandishments seek to gain his love, but in vain. He is still the "guileless fool." Then Kundry appears in all her loveliness, ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... character. Now only the dulcet tones of the harp were heard, sweet as the soft summer shower when the tinkling rain-drops merrily pelt the flowers—strains so sweetly harmonious as seemed too heavenly for mortal touch. And as fainter and fainter, yet still more sweet, the ravishing melody breathed around, one by one the company glided out silently and mournfully—the tapestried walls gradually assumed the appearance of my own little parlor—the rich and tasteful decorations vanished—and where was I? Seated in my own comfortable rocking-chair, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... in no wise, however, because I loved him less, but them more. I would fain write particularly of some of these beloved friends, comrades of my heart, from whom I first learned the undreamed-of possibilities of human friendship, and how ravishing the satisfactions of sympathy may be. Who, among those who may read this, has not known that sense of a gulf fixed between soul and soul which mocks love I Who has not felt that loneliness which oppresses the ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... other, for ever. You will think me carried away by my enthusiasm; but no, I take into account, perfectly, the pains, the blood, the treasure we shall have to expend to maintain this declaration, to uphold and defend these States; but through all these shadows I perceive rays of ravishing light and joy, I feel that the end is worth all the means and far more, and that posterity will rejoice over this event with songs of triumph, even though we should have cause to repent of it, which will not be, I trust ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... wall. They can hardly send anything else so characteristic. Their artists, especially of the later school, sometimes toil to depict such subjects, but are apt to stiffen the lithe tendrils in the process. The poets succeed better, with Tennyson at their head, and often produce ravishing effects by dint of a tender minuteness of touch, to which the genius of the soil and climate artfully impels them: for, as regards grandeur, there are loftier scenes in many countries than the best that England can show; but, for the picturesqueness ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
