"Cynosure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lay in the kirk's inclosure: All three, in the shadows dim, In a cenotaph's cynosure That waited for only him, Who sat with his fiddle tuning On the spot where his fame was won, On the empty world communing, Without a wife or ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... Ronnie, still the cynosure of the swarm, turned himself about and stared at Frank Jervaise. But it was Gordon Hughes who demonstrated his power of quick inference and response, although in doing it he overstepped the bounds of decency by giving a voice ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... who is now the cynosure of all eyes, began with any considerable stock of piety, is a question we have no means of determining; but we can quite understand how a very little would go a very long way in Africa, amid long and painful marches through unknown territory, the haunting peril of strange ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... expected to enter the hall by the dons' entrance, and for this enormity to be perpetrated by a fresher immediately made her the cynosure of all eyes. Poor Priscilla was unconscious of any offense. She grew scarlet under the gaze of the merciless young eyes and further added to her sins by sitting down at one of the tables at the top of ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... conscience invested the gladstone bag with a magnetic attraction for the public eye. To carry it unconcealed in his hand furnished him with a sensation as disturbing as though its worn black sides had been stenciled STOLEN! in letters of flame. He felt it rendered him a cynosure of public interest, an object of suspicion to the wide cold world, that the gaze which lit upon the bag traveled to his face only to espy thereon ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... varying year, For chance thereof, and hope thereof, is none. There comes no rival to the rising sun, And none to thee!—no rival to the moon That sets in Venice on the far lagoon, And none to thee, thou marvel of the months, That art the cynosure ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... had all trooped into the drawing-room, the door of which Japp closed. Poirot politely set chairs for every one. The Scotland Yard men were the cynosure of all eyes. I think that for the first time we realized that the thing was not a bad dream, but a tangible reality. We had read of such things—now we ourselves were actors in the drama. To-morrow the daily ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... colloquy, which was the one that caused the Earl to be so more than usually absent that evening. It had the opposite effect on her ladyship, who felt better after it; braced up again to company-manners after the first one. Gwen, as mentioned before, was dazzling; superb; what is apt to be called a cynosure, owing to something Milton said. Nevertheless, the Shrewd Observer, who happened in this case to be Aunt Constance, noticed that at intervals the young lady let her right-hand neighbour talk, and ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... he discussed within his own mind what sort of shape or similitude it were well to bestow upon this excellent piece of timber, there came into Drowne's workshop a certain Captain Hunnewell, owner and commander of the good brig called the Cynosure, which had just returned from her first voyage ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the next occupant of the witness chair; a bewilderingly pretty brunette with coal-black eyes and perfect teeth. During the height of the season Mr. Rudolph Fuchs had been the cynosure of all eyes at Brighton Beach, where, for a pecuniary consideration, he condescended to fill the role of waiter. Last year he was similarly engaged at Cable's. Next year, he will probably be the subject of fierce rivalry among ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... of course, for some time the cynosure of many neighbouring eyes, but had taken only the more pleasure in the cynosure, none in the persons with the eyes, all of whom she regarded as much below her. To herself she was the only young lady in Tiltowie, ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... saw of the Slasher for years. He was the cynosure of all eyes then, and observed of all observers. But there is no wolf so strong but he may find another to make wolves' meat of him; and Tom Sayers, who had fought his first fight—so tradition tells—on ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... wantonly, how cruelly my feelings had been wounded, it would have relieved the fulness, the oppression of my heart. But that was impossible. Mrs. Linwood's commanding social position, her uncommon and varied powers of conversation, the excellence and dignity of her character, made her the cynosure of the literary circle. Edith, too, from her exquisite loveliness, the sweetness of her disposition, and her personal misfortune, which endeared her to her friends by the tenderness and sympathy it excited, was a universal favorite; and all these attractive ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... There is a fascination about social life that appeals to the majority of natures. Let us compare society to a mountain whose sides are a steep incline, difficult to mount. To stand upon the summit, to become the cynosure of all eyes, is a desire inherent, seemingly, in all humanity; for humanity loves distinction. In the scramble toward the peak many fall by the wayside; others deceive themselves by imagining they have attained the apex when they are far from it. It is a game, Mr. Merrick, just as business ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... he answered, "for I can see that you are mad to be home in Persia, the cynosure of every eye, telling your father how you wrought ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... her. She should be the sharer av our heart an' throne. Her lovely brow should be graced by the crown av Spain an' the Injies. She should be surrounded by the homage av the chivalry av Spain. She should fill the most dazzlin' position in all the worruld. She should be the cynosure av r'y'l majistic beauty. She should have wealth, an' honors, an' titles, an' dignities, an' jools, an' gims, all powered pell-mell into her lap; an' all the power, glory, moight, majisty, an' dominion av the impayrial Spanish monarchy should ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... while since, Victorine, how should she not like his society? I can fancy no man more fit to be the cynosure of a woman's eye than Larochejaquelin. He has that beauty which women love to look on: the bold bright eye, the open forehead, the frank, easy smile, and his face is only a faithful index to his heart; he is ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... sponge off her first kiss from his lips—was probably a true instinct. How was it possible a girl of that class should escape the sordid attentions of street swains? Even when she was in the country she was well-nigh of woo-able age, the likely cynosure of neighbouring ploughboys' eyes. And ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... afterward the man of the platform appeared at the end of the aisle, accompanied by the porter who carried his bundle. Instantly he became the cynosure of a battery ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... the cynosure of every eye, rose and stood panting into Gyp's face. She took the occasion ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... saloon. Markam was a good sailor and had not suffered from the pitching of the boat, so that his naturally rubicund face was even more rosy by the conscious blush which suffused his cheeks when he had found himself at once the cynosure of all eyes. He could have wished that he had not been so bold for he knew from the cold that there was a big bare spot under one side of his jauntily worn Glengarry cap. However, he faced the group of strangers boldly. He was not, outwardly, upset even when some of the comments ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... head, in the midst of a strained silence, she traversed the length of the long room, the cynosure of all eyes. When almost at the altar she raised her eyes to the man ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... splendour of the ceremony, of which she is the sole object; the cynosure of all approving eyes. A girl of sixteen finds it hard to resist all this. I am told that more girls are smitten by the ceremony, than by anything else, and am inclined to believe it, from the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... darting gleams of fun shine, A smile like some translucent rill That sparkles in the summer sunshine, A manly mien, and unafraid, Crisp hair, fair face, and square-set shoulders, That made him on the King's Parade The cynosure of all beholders. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... is exhausted, and your curiosity driven to the highest pitch of anxiety; you make a desperate stride, push by the old bonnet, and look round with indignation to see what beldam had thus been between you and the "cynosure of neighbouring eyes:"—whew! 'tis the pretty young shop-girl that served you with your last pair of gloves, and measured them so fascinatingly along your hand, that your heart still palpitates with the electrical touch of her fingers. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... barren breast The labouring clouds do often rest; Meadows trim, with daisies pied; Shallow brooks, and rivers wide; Towers and battlements it sees Bosomed high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighbouring eyes. Hard by a cottage chimney smokes From betwixt two aged oaks, Where Corydon and Thyrsis met Are at their savoury dinner set Of herbs and other country messes, Which the neat-handed ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... been considered by her. Oh, that it might some day be her privilege to love some man with all her heart and all her strength, some man who should be, at any rate to her, the very hero of heroes, the cynosure of her world! It was thus that she considered the matter. There could surely nothing be so glorious as being well in love. And the one to be thus worshipped must of course become her husband. Otherwise would her heart be broken, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... leads us to devout admiration of the discriminating bounties of heaven, so well bestowed where most needed and deserved. For what, Sir Charles, is the downfall of a female of low birth, however worthy, compared with that of a young lady who has adorned elevated circles and is the cynosure of ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Marengo now became the "cynosure of every eye." Marengo was not very fat. The sledge and short rations had thinned him down, and his ribs could be easily traced. Although the boys, and Basil in particular, would have suffered much before sacrificing ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... and our hearts would jump into our mouths for fear we might yet fail. But at last, with all our bunting up, and both ships dressed as if for a holiday, we proudly entered the Narrows of St. John's, the cynosure of all eyes. The skipper and our friend had gone to England, so the Government had them extradited. The captain, who was ill with a fatal disease, made a full confession, and both ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... She soon became the cynosure of all eyes in the village, not only because of her remarkable beauty, but of her charmingly formed person, so plainly exposed to the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... exaggeration to say that the summits of the rocks on either side of the glen were lined with natives; they could almost touch me with their spears. I did not feel quite at home in this charming retreat, although I was the cynosure of a myriad eyes. The natives stood upon the edge of the rocks like statues, some pointing their spears menacingly towards me, and I certainly expected that some dozens would be thrown at me. Both parties seemed paralysed by the appearance of the other. I scarcely knew what ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... half-a-dozen of his friends, all of the cleanly order of country-people, stout, and having a well-to-do look that deprecated any thing like famine. A young lady of twenty and two hundred, as Caper summed up her age and weight, was evidently the cynosure of all eyes; two other good-natured women, of a few more years and a very little less weight, and three men, made up the table. Any amount of compliments, as usual, passed between the first six and the last three comers, prefacing every thing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... pang that a city like Gloucester was no place for him to keep a seal in, he sold the Pup, at a most consoling price indeed, to the agent of an English animal trainer. With the prospect of shortly becoming the cynosure of all eyes at Shepherd's Bush or Earl's Court, the Pup was shipped on ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... complimentary remarks which Miss Chandos has faithfully, if not flatteringly, reported, and the enunciation of which quite confused me as I sat the centre and cynosure of that wondering group, I was glad to learn that I was an open man, though possessed of sufficient caution and not defective in moral courage. In fact "pluck" was large. I really wished Mr. Burns would relieve me by finding some bad bumps; but no—the worst he could say ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... self-possession as though the chancel had belonged to her family for years; and the respectable pew-opener absolutely deserted two or three old ladies whom she was attending, to show Mrs Greenow into her seat. When seated, she was the cynosure of all eyes. Kate Vavasor became immediately aware that a great sensation had been occasioned by their entrance, and equally aware that none of it was due to her. I regret to say that this feeling continued to show itself throughout ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... hand all his infancy, boyhood, and young manhood: he was in the world with his father in his heart: that was the kingdom of heaven. Lonely man on the hillside, or boy the cynosure of doctor-eyes, his father was everything to him:—'Wist ye not that I must ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... lingering doubt in Bertram's mind, it must have been dispelled in less than an hour after the Bohemian Ten Club Exhibition flung open its doors on its opening night. Once again Bertram found his picture the cynosure of all admiring eyes, and himself the center of an enthusiastic group of friends and fellow-artists who vied with each other in hearty words of congratulation. And when, later, the feared critics, whose names and opinions counted for so much in his world, had their say ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... something to be proud of, and that reflected credit on the genius of Mr. Labram, who had planned it. Long Cecil (as it was called), in all its pristine perfection, was submitted to the public gaze, and was at once the cynosure of all eyes. On Friday it was tested, with complete success. The boom, at close quarters, was loud and alarming; and it required the despatch of a second shell to satisfy non-spectators that the gun had not been blown to pieces by the first. A few missiles were sent into ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... same royal, inviolable seal as those of the Medes and Persians, and from their unchangeableness must have floated down the stream of Aryan migration, from some infallible fountain in Bactria. I should not be much more astonished to hear that Cynosure had grown giddy, had swung down and waltzed in the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of the Greeks to the present day, man has been the cynosure of artistic eyes; with them he has never been vouchsafed more than a casual, not to say a cursory glance, even woman failing to rivet his attention. One of our own writers has said that, without passing ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... give an instance, when a joke was more and better than itself. A comely young wife, the "cynosure" of her circle, was in bed, apparently dying from swelling and inflammation of the throat, an inaccessible abscess stopping the way; she could swallow nothing; everything had been tried. Her friends were standing round her bed in misery and helplessness. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... their parents are not much better off. Nothing but a skirt is worn by the women and the men wear ragged shirts and trousers. Shoes are rarely seen in Porto Rico and a native who is lucky enough to have them is the cynosure of all eyes. The women do not know what silks and satins are, and, it seems, are not desirous of knowing. When night comes the men prepare themselves for bed. This is not hard work, and takes very little ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... then with an expression of humble delight at her new friend's beauty. A brilliant woman is often an object of the devoted admiration—it might almost be termed worship, or idolatry—of some young girl, who perhaps beholds the cynosure only at an awful distance, and has as little hope of personal intercourse as of climbing among the stars of heaven. We men are too gross to comprehend it. Even a woman, of mature age, despises or laughs at such ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... first time he had seen this beautiful young person in all the eclat, pomp, and circumstance of her station, as the heiress of the opulent Templeton,—the first time he had seen her the cynosure of crowds, who, had her features been homely, would have admired the charms of her fortune in her face. And now, as radiant with youth, and the flush of excitement on her soft cheek, she met his eye, he said to himself: "And could I have wished one so new to the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... synagogue that evening, he was the cynosure of all eyes, and it is safe to say that there was not in Kief a Jewish household in which the wonderful story was ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... that divided me from this cynosure of warmth and luxury, as a poor, draggled moth might do, to bask in the revivifying light of an astral lamp, attracted beyond my power to resist, to pause before the resplendent window, rich in green and purple and amber rotund ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... great sovereign was dressed the writer of the journal does not so well remember, for in those days Eugenie was the cynosure of all eyes, and people rarely looked at anything else when they could get a glimpse of ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... hand forget her Cupid kills with arrows —is painted blind Cups, freshly remembered in their flowing —that cheer but not inebriate Current of a woman's will Curses, rigged with, dark —, not loud, but deep Custom stale her infinite variety Cut, the most unkindest Cycle and epicycle Cynosure of neighboring eyes Cypress and ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... great gathering of the most celebrated physicians of the day and his books and records fetched fabulous prices. But one special tome, ponderous, silver-clasped and locked, entitled: "Macrobiotic, The True and Complete Secret of Long, Healthy Life," was the cynosure of every avaricious eye. The auctioneer shrewdly reserved it until the last. Amidst a scene of unparalleled excitement and competition the Great Book was at length knocked down to a famous London physician for no less a sum than seven thousand Gulden. When opened ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... His frankness would have led him to disabuse every inquirer of such prejudice; but his indolent humor forbade all farther agitation of a topic whose interest to himself had long ceased. It thus happened that he found himself the cynosure of the political eyes; and the cases were not few in which attempt was made to engage his services at the Prefecture. One of the most remarkable instances was that of the murder of a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was, for when we all assembled in the white drawing-room, in readiness for our escort to the Town Hall, Maura was what newspapers style "the cynosure ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the circumstance to the Duc de Bellegarde. The chance of the rivals in the favour of the lady herself could scarcely be doubtful, as the Duc de Bouillon, Prince of the Blood though he was, possessed few personal attractions, while the gay, the gallant, the magnificent Bassompierre was the cynosure of all eyes; superb in person, he was moreover of high birth, great wealth (although his profusion occasionally fettered his means), in high favour with the monarch, and celebrated alike for his wit and his attainments. Unfortunately, however, for his interests, M. le Grand had already seen ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Pilldarlick to the new school marked another red-letter day in the life of Panhandle Smith, cowboy. There were many boys and a few girls who had come to attend the school, only a few of whom had horses to ride. Pan was the proud cynosure of all eyes as he rode Pilldarlick round the yard for the edification of his schoolmates. It was the happiest day of Pan's life—up until Dick Hardman arrived on ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... while he devised an economic system of his own, and mined his gold and worked out his transportation problem upon a more elaborate scale. The harm had been done, however; his Indians were known to be rich, and MacNair found his colony had become the cynosure of the eyes of the whiskey-runners, the chiefest among whom was Pierre Lapierre. It was among these men that the name of Brute, first used by the beaten stampeders, came into general use—a fitting name, from their viewpoint—for when one of them chanced to fall into his hands, his moments ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... over the years to the day of that wonderful Judas sermon he had heard, and with this recalled memory there came the recollection of his turning to look into the face of that magnificent looking young man who had been the cynosure of all eyes as he left the church with his mother. He was conscious also of a strange uncanny sense that this smiling handsome man, with mocking, dancing light in his eyes, was ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... you screech-owl.— Come strew flowers, fair ladies, And lead into her bower our fairest bride, The cynosure of love and beauty here, Who shrines heaven's graces in earth's ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... correlate, corrigible, corroborate, corrosive, cosmic, covenant, crass, credence, crescent, criterion, critique, crucial, crucible, cryptic, crystalline, culmination, culpable, cumulative, cupidity, cursive, cursory, cutaneous, cynosure. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... only one loophole for the poor bachelor," Mrs. Levice summed up, "and that is to marry. Louis complains of the club, and thinks himself a sort of cynosure in a large household. You, Doctor, complain of the want of coseyness in a bachelor establishment. To state it simply, you need ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... for the first time, that Blanche was every thing, herself a mere cipher—that Blanche was the lady of the manor, the cynosure of all eyes, the queen of all hearts, herself but the lady's poor relation, the dependent on her bounty, and at the best a creature to be played with, and petted for her beauty and her wit, without regard to her feelings, or ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... had never seen so many feet in his life. A troop of horsemen in extravagant liveries rode past them, where they were standing, and suddenly Don Quixote was startled by hearing some one call out in a loud voice: "Welcome to our city, mirror, beacon, star and cynosure of all knight-errantry in its widest extent! Welcome, I say, valiant Don Quixote of La Mancha! Not the false, the fictitious, the apocryphal one, but the true, the legitimate, the real one that Cid Hamet Benengeli, flower of ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... insignificant blot upon the fair face of the spiritual world, and that nature was, to all intents and purposes, the play-ground of the devil; they learned that the earth is the centre of the visible universe, and that man is the cynosure of things terrestrial; and more especially is it inculcated that the course of nature had no fixed order, but that it could be, and constantly was, altered by the agency of innumerable spiritual beings, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... with alacrity. Arthur left father and son over their pipes and glasses, and went outside to join Miss Armytage and Jay, who had declined various overtures to enter the store, and were the cynosure of all eyes in the 'Corner' as they walked to and fro on the stumpless strip of ground in the place—a fair child and a pale girl. Presently forth came ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... off he went, all unconscious of the contemptuous looks from courtier and dandy at his strange, half-savage dress. And presently Pierre Radisson is seated in the king's presence, chatting unabashed, the cynosure of all eyes. At the stir, Hortense had turned towards us. For a moment the listless hauteur gave place to a scarce hidden start. Then the pallid face had looked ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... and spurred, but there was perhaps a bit of youthful but very natural ostentation of being ready for the field. Their hair was cropped as close as barber's shears could cut it, they wore the regulation uniform of the cavalry, with trim round-about jackets, and were the "cynosure of all eyes." Their parting words were said to their lady friends in the intervals of the music, and the pretty dramatic effect of it all suggested to an onlooker the famous parting scene in "Belgium's capital" which "Childe Harold" ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Bonaparte into the Tuileries, the revolution closed, and blissful days of tranquillity and gay festivity followed. Josephine and Hortense were the cynosure of all these festivals, for they were, likewise, the animating centre whence the grace and beauty, the attractive charm, and the intellectual significance ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... room an hour and a half, the cynosure of all eyes. There is a great deal of sociability there. Three hundred men all talking diagonally at each other at the same time, reminds me of a tete-a-tete I once had with a warm personal friend, who was a boiler-maker. He invited ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... and, therefore, omitted to tell his brother how that he, two days before, had entreated Rose Salterne herself to appear as the nymph of Torridge; which honor she, who had no objection either to exhibit her pretty face, to recite pretty poetry, or to be trained thereto by the cynosure of North Devon, would have assented willingly, but that her father stopped the pretty project by a peremptory countermove, and packed her off, in spite of her tears, to the said uncle on the Atlantic cliffs; after which he went up to Burrough, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... whose barren breast The labouring clouds do often rest; Meadows trim with daisies pied; Shallow brooks, and rivers wide; Towers and battlements it sees Bosom'd high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some Beauty lies, The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes. Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes From betwixt two aged oaks, Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met Are at their savoury dinner set Of herbs, and other country messes, Which the neat-handed Phyllis ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... a very narrow staircase, pretty Mistress Margaret's apartment, where she, the cynosure of the eyes of every bold young bachelor in Fleet Street, sat in a posture which hovered between the discontented and the disconsolate. For her pretty back and shoulders were rounded into a curve, her round and dimpled chin reposed in the hollow of her little palm, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... through my wardrobe making incredible additions and alterations, informing me as she did so that I would be the cynosure of many searching eyes when I appeared in the drawing-rooms which she frequented. I also received many graceful hints as to what was expected of me in conversation and demeanour, and I did not need any assistance whatever to realize that I was a sort of ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... half an hour two or three people had evidently lost their hearts to him in friendship; among them, to Lady Jane's great discomfiture, the handsome and amiable Graham-Reece, the cynosure of all female eyes in Riffrath; and when Barty (after very little pressing by Miss Royce) twanged her guitar and sang little songs—French and English, funny and sentimental—he became, as he had so often become in other scenes, the Rigoletto of the company; ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... orchards and gardens; terrace above terrace, but still with a great flush of foliage between; it is a pity it ever grew into a fashionable watering-place; though, even now, it is not too late to amend. Like some cynosure of neighbouring eyes, fed from her gentle youth upon all the sights and sounds of rural life, she is too beautiful to put on the airs and graces of a belle of the court. Let her go back to her country ways—her walks in the village lanes—her scampers across the fields; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... the dinner-table. One of the guests was a young officer attached to the Sanitary Commission. He was seated near Mrs. Lincoln, and, by way of pleasantry, remarked: "Mrs. Lincoln, you should have seen the President the other day, on his triumphal entry into Richmond. He was the cynosure of all eyes. The ladies kissed their hands to him, and greeted him with the waving of handkerchiefs. He is quite a hero when surrounded by ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... guidepost, handpost[obs3], fingerpost[obs3], directing post, signpost; pillars of Hercules, pharos; bale-fire, beacon- fire; l'etoile du Nord[Fr]; landmark, seamark; lighthouse, balize[obs3]; polestar, loadstar[obs3], lodestar; cynosure, guide; address, direction, name; sign, signboard. [Of the future] warning &c. 668; omen &c. 512; prefigurement &c. 511. trace[Of the past], record &c. 551. warning &c. 668[Of danger]; alarm &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Kilronan! Wagers had been won and lost over it; one or two pitched battles had been fought with pewter weapons at Mrs. Haley's; ballads had been written on it in the style, but not quite in the polished lines, of "Henry of Navarre"; and now, there it was, the "white plume" of victory, the cynosure of hundreds of wondering eyes. I dare say the "upper ten" did not mind it; they were used to such things; but everything else paled into insignificance to the critical and ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Athens rises as does no other citadel in the world. Had no workers in marble or bronze, no weavers of eloquence or song, dwelt beneath its shadow, it would stand the centre and cynosure of a remarkable landscape. It is "The Rock," no other like unto it. Is it enough to say its ruddy limestone rises as a huge boulder one hundred and fifty feet above the plain, that its breadth is five hundred, its length one thousand? Numbers and measures can never ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... perspective of vineyards, cornfields, groves, and gardens, pointed by numberless white villas. At his right loomed the gaunt mass of the Gnisi, with its black forests, its bare crags, its foaming ascade, and the crenelated range of the Cornobastone; and finally, climax and cynosure, at the valley's end, Monte Sfiorito, its three snow-covered summits almost insubstantial-seeming, floating forms of luminous pink vapour, in the evening sunshine, against the intense blue ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... flocks do stray, Mountains on whose barren brest The labouring clouds do often rest: Meadows trim with Daisies pide, Shallow Brooks, and Rivers wide. Towers, and Battlements it sees Boosom'd high in tufted Trees, Wher perhaps som beauty lies, The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes. 80 Hard by, a Cottage chimney smokes, From betwixt two aged Okes, Where Corydon and Thyrsis met, Are at their savory dinner set Of Hearbs, and other Country Messes, Which the neat-handed Phillis ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... unpleasantness of this incident would have been nothing to Carley had she at once forgotten it. Most unaccountably, however, she could not make herself unaware of this ruffian's attention. It did no good for her to argue that she was merely the cynosure of all eyes. This Ruff's tone and look possessed something heretofore unknown to Carley. Once she was tempted to tell Glenn. But that would only cause a fight, so she kept her counsel. She danced again, and helped Flo entertain her guests, and passed that door often; and once stood before it, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... young Queen, in her halls of state, walks like a goddess of Beauty, the cynosure of all eyes; as yet mingles not with affairs; heeds not the future; least of all, dreads it. Weber and Campan (Ib. i. 100-151. Weber, i. 11-50.) have pictured her, there within the royal tapestries, in bright boudoirs, baths, peignoirs, and the Grand and Little ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... instance," says the same good-natured physician, "when a joke was more and better than itself. A comely young wife, the 'cynosure' of her circle, was in bed, apparently dying from swelling and inflammation of the throat, an inaccessible abscess stopping the way; she could swallow nothing; everything had been tried. Her friends ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Mover and Seconder of Address march into seats immediately behind Ministers, especially kept for them; dexterously dodge tendency of sword to get between their knees; sit down with the consciousness that they are the cynosure of every eye, including those of JOSEPH GILLIS, regarding them across House through horn-bound spectacles. To-day everything upside down. Instead of moving the Address, HARCOURT on with question of Privilege—HARCOURT, a plain man, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... The cynosure of wondering beaux, I boast a soul above thee; No fate can mar my calm repose, Or make me cease to love thee; Supreme above the common tile, My own affronts unheeding, I bow and compliment and smile, The Chesterfield ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... make her round of calls, judiciously dropping a few words here and there, which, like the seed sown on good ground, brought forth fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundred-fold. As a result Darrell, upon his return, found himself a literary star of the first magnitude,—the cynosure ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... a gracious or bad aspect turns him up or down, Mens mea lucescit Lucia luce tua. Howsoever his present state be pleasing or displeasing, 'tis continuate so long as he [5329]loves, he can do nothing, think of nothing but her; desire hath no rest, she is his cynosure, Hesperus and vesper, his morning and evening star, his goddess, his mistress, his life, his soul, his everything; dreaming, waking, she is always in his mouth; his heart, his eyes, ears, and all his thoughts are full of her. His Laura, his Victorina, his Columbina, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... for the Reverend Armine Brownlow was the cynosure curate of the lady Church-helpers, and Mysie produced as a precious loan, to show what could be done, the volume containing the choicest morceaux of the family magazine of his youth, the Traveller's Joy, in white parchment binding adorned with clematis, and emblazoned with the Evelyn arms ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... majesty, moved onward far below, and evening breezes bathed, with their delicious touch, our glowing cheeks. The scene was grand, and my feelings were intense. In the midst of all this beauty and grandeur, she was the cynosure of eye and heart. I loved her; and yet, my conscience rebuked me for forgetting my first love, and I asked myself if, in all this wild delirium of soul, there was not some little ingredient of revenge. No, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... an overweening degree of self-confidence, yet shows graceful when mingled with good-humour and courtesy. The good old dames, too, in their white hoods and black velvet gowns—their daughters, "the cynosure of neighbouring eyes,"—where were they all now, who, when they entered the church, used to divide men's thoughts between them and Heaven? "But, ah! Alice Lee—so sweet, so gentle, so condescending in thy loveliness—[thus proceeds a contemporary annalist, whose manuscript we have deciphered]—why ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... through, reached Toyoka half drowned and very cold, to shiver over a hibachi in a clean loft, hung with my dripping clothes, which had to be put on wet the next day. By 5 a.m. all Toyoka assembled, and while I took my breakfast I was not only the "cynosure" of the eyes of all the people outside, but of those of about forty more who were standing in the doma, looking up the ladder. When asked to depart by the house-master, they said, "It's neither ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... softer intonation; and every gesture of his bodily frame conform to what is truly frank and liberal. Such, at any rate, the strange effects now wrought on Callias by love. He was like one transformed, the cynosure of all initiated in the mysteries ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... covering Verena with gratulations of word and look. Ransom could see that, according to a phrase which came back to him just then, oddly, out of some novel or poem he had read of old, she was the cynosure of every eye. She looked beautiful, and they were a beautiful couple. As soon as she saw him, she put out her left hand to him—the other was in Mr. Burrage's arm—and said: "Well, don't you ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... glories of our war—by the mountain Iliad of McClellan, the initial action at Philippi, and the prompt trampling out of West Virginia secession by the victories of Cheat River. This tameless, mountain-lapped, hemlock-tinted river had long been our fancied cynosure. "Each mortal has his Carcassonne," said, after a French poet, the late lamented John R. Thompson, using the term for what is long desired and never attained; and Mr. Matthew Arnold, in writing of a "French Eton," says, "Whatever you miss, do not miss seeing Carcassonne." As Carcassonne ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... gave way on the question of a private ceremony, though he had indignantly opposed the scheme when it was first mooted. It may be that he conceived an image of himself with that child in his arms, the cynosure of a packed congregation.... ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... crown Your highest wishes should let you down! Or Fate should turn, by your own mischance, Your victor's car to an ambulance, From cloudless heavens her lightnings glance! (And these things happen, even in France.) And so Miss Rose, as she trotted by, The cynosure of every eye, Saw to her horror the off mare shy, Flourish her tail so exceedingly high That, disregarding the closest tie, And without giving a reason why, She flung that tail so free and frisky Off in ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... Julie was in her most provocative of moods. Peter, eminently respectable in his best tunic, waited ten minutes for her outside the Nouvelles Galleries, and, like most men in his condition, considered that she was never coming, and that he was the cynosure of neighbouring eyes. When she did come, she was not apparently aware that she was late. She ran her eyes over him, and gave a pretended gasp of surprise. "You're looking wonderful, Padre Graham," she said. "Really, you're hard to live up to. I never know what to expect or how to behave. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... left him at home he had joined his parents, made them gay with his careless gayety, seen the old-fashioned folks retire to rest, and then—while they, perhaps, deemed him once more the hero of ball-rooms and the cynosure of clubs—he drove slowly through the soft summer night, amidst the perfumes of many a garden and many a gleaming chestnut grove, with no other aim before him than to reach the loveliest margin of England's loveliest river, at the hour when the moon was fullest ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... also from the stand in the passage her drooping hat, against which she proceeded to lay various materials, trying them with her sure eye, seeking to compose a picture, with that instructive sense of cynosure which marks the crafty expert. Fascinated, with her lips parted in an expression of that stupidity which is so often the sequel to a fit of crying, Emmy watched Jenny's proceedings, her eyes travelling from the hat to the ever-growing heap of discarded ornaments. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... an' the gander who's the object of the meetin', with his neck an' head greased a heap lavish, is hung from the rope by his two hind laigs. As the gander hangs thar, what Colonel Sterett would style 'the cynosure of every eye,' you'll notice that a gent by standin' high in the stirrups can get a grip of ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... and walked about the town the cynosure of all eyes—and some of them of admiring men, who would have been very ready, doubtless, to start a flirtation; both for their own pleasure and in the hope of gaining my good will ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... strangely altered voice. I mused on the funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and servants—few was the number of relatives—the gaping vault, the silent church, the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a convent cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person and character. The evening arrival at the great town of—scattered these thoughts; night gave them quite another turn: ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... fixed her eyes on him, her inflammable imagination was set in a blaze. She forgot his apparent subordinate quality in the nobleness of his figure; and once or twice that evening, while she was flitting about, the sparkling cynosure of the Duchess of Orkney's masquerade, her thoughts ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... poet Martial, whose name will ever be bound up with the tales of luxury and vice that are associated with this spot. Baiae in winter, Tibur (Tivoli) in summer, the two names stand for the beau-ideal of a Roman existence, the cynosure of every wealthy citizen. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... heels of the proud page, Cally threaded her way among the glittering tables for the telephone and Jefferson 4127, unaware for once that she was the cynosure of many eyes. She was buoyed within, thrilled with a sense of strange adventure, baffling to analysis, but somehow comparable to that soaring moment last week. She was captain of her soul. That ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... small dark head superbly held and ablaze with jewels, she was a vision of fire. She looked like a single flame that had become detached from some great conflagration and was swaying and dancing through the world alone. She shone and sparkled and flickered, and was the cynosure of all eyes. Mrs. Ozanne had never been so proud of her—and so perturbed. For where had that new diamond spray of maidenhair fern come from, that shone so gloriously against the glossy bands and curls of dark hair; and whence the single stone, that, like a great dewdrop, hung on her breast, suspended ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... leader of the Mission to our cousins and Allies, We learn with satisfaction, but without the least surprise, That he proved the very cynosure of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... determined to publish: he had now stood the test of some publicity, and under this hopeful impulse he composed in six winter months the bulk of his more important poems. Here was a young man who, from a very humble place, was mounting rapidly; from the cynosure of a parish, he had become the talk of a county; once the bard of rural courtships, he was now about to appear as a bound and printed poet in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'ugly valentine.' This is another of Time's jests: to degrade the beautiful and distinguished, and mock at old-time sanctities with coarse burlesque. We see it constantly in the fortunes of old streets and squares, once graced with the beau and the sedan-chair, the very cynosure of the polite and elegant world, but now vocal with the clamorous wrongs of the charwoman and the melancholy appeal of the coster. We see it, too, in the ups and downs of words once aristocratic or tender, words once the very signet of polite conversation, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... whither she would fascinated groups followed her steps. Salome's reputation as a brilliant belle had become extended since Irene's long seclusion, yet to-night, on the reappearance of the latter, it was apparent to even the most obtuse that she had resumed her sway—the matchless cynosure of that social system. Fully conscious of the intense admiration she excited, she moved slowly from room to room, smiling once or twice when she met her father's proud look of fond triumph fixed ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson |
