"Mellowing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sorrow-stricken were supplied with brimming goblets of Lethe; and it was shrewdly conjectured that a certain golden vase, from which only the more distinguished guests were invited to partake, contained nectar that had been mellowing ever since the days of classical mythology. The cloth being removed, the company, as usual, grew eloquent over their liquor and delivered themselves of a succession of brilliant speeches,—the task of reporting which we resign to the more adequate ability of Counsellor ...
— A Select Party (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... earnest, it was not somehow the art of 1291. One feels no greater hardness in the Parliamentary zeal which razed the cross in 1647 than in the stony fidelity of detail which hurts the eye in the modern work, and refuses to be softened by any effect of the mellowing London air. It looks out over the scurry of cabs, the ponderous tread of omnibuses, the rainfall patter of human feet, as inexorably latter-day as anything in the Strand. It is only an instance of the constant futility of the restoration which, in a world so violent or ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... not listening. He had heard Nolan air his views before. He was a trifle acid, was Nolan. He needed mellowing, a woman in his life. But Nolan had loved once, and the girl had died. With the curious constancy of the Irish, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... city Dagonet danced away; But through the slowly-mellowing avenues And solitary passes of the wood Rode Tristram toward Lyonnesse and the west. Before him fled the face of Queen Isolt With ruby-circled neck, but evermore Past, as a rustle or twitter in the wood Made dull his inner, keen his outer eye For all that walked, or crept, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... all political questions, or, as much as possible, individual histories among the English community. It is already so long ago since we lived in that lovely place, that events, trials, joys, and the usual vicissitudes of life, are wrapt in that mellowing haze of the past, which, while it dims the vividness of feeling, throws a robe of charity over all, and perhaps causes actors and actions to assume a more true proportion to one another than when we walked amongst them. I have, however, not ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... does, to keep what he writes by him for nine years, the conclusion is irresistible, that he hoped by that time the writer would see the wisdom of suppressing his crude lucubrations altogether. No one knew better than Horace that first-class work never wants such protracted mellowing. ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... ministers, a good deal, as I found out long afterwards, according to their theological beliefs. On the whole, I think the old-fashioned New England divine softening down into Arminianism was about as agreeable as any of them. And here I may remark, that a mellowing rigorist is always a much pleasanter object to contemplate than a tightening liberal, as a cold day warming up to 32 Fahrenheit is much more agreeable than a warm one chilling down to the same temperature. The least pleasing change is that kind of mental hemiplegia which now and then ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... enter a library made up of such works, all faultlessly done up in the best style of binder. No—we love to pass long solitary hours in one of those old depositories of choice literature made venerable by the rich mellowing of time, and the sombre tapestry of cobwebs which are undisturbed by the intrusive visitation of prim housemaids. There, amid antique volumes, caskets of thought more precious than gems, how delightful to commune with the bright ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... sophomore goes on automatically. Only when one has become a senior may he, without losing caste, recognize a freshman as a youth of promise, and admit that a sophomore is not half bad. Such disinterested criticism is tolerated because it is evidently the result of the mellowing ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... itself, and as an abstract proposition could not be gainsaid; but its practical operation has but poorly sustained the expectations of its advocates, as will be seen when we come to consider the events that occurred a few years later in Kansas and elsewhere. Retrospectively viewed under the mellowing light of time, and with the calm consideration we can usually give to the irremediable past, the compromise legislation of 1850 bears the impress of that sectional spirit so widely at variance with the general purposes of the Union, and so ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... The mellowing effect of the potato harvest upon the hearts of the people is manifest. Yesterday was a rainy day and the women kept straggling up here in squads all day. Each one brought a basket of potatoes on her head, from a peck ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year, Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due; For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew Himself ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... monster is instinct displayed in a form which makes short work of any inclination to see in it an acquired habit. In an art that can leave no one to practise it in the future unless that one be perfect at the outset, of what avail are happy chances, atavistic tendencies, the mellowing hand of time? But the grey caterpillar, sacrificed one day, may be succeeded on another day by a green, yellow or striped caterpillar. There you have discernment, which is quite capable of recognizing the regulation ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... him whose genius has caused it to be called by his name. It may smell too much of mortality and antiquity for this fast-living and forward-looking age; for it is not only a monument of the past, but an exponent of its spirit. We can look back at it, through the mellowing mist of centuries, with curiosity not unmixed with admiration; but we should turn with aversion from such a work, coming from the hands of an artist of our own day. We think, and with some reason, that we do not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... to his successors. I will suggest a service not there mentioned: to choose every year the best contemporary books that he can find worthily printed on time-proof papers and have them bound in parchment; then let him place them on his shelves to gather gold from the touch of the mellowing years through the centuries to come and win him grateful memory such as we bestow upon the unknown hands that wrought for these volumes the garments of their ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... a romantic temperament, could have been more attractive. The subdued twilight of that northern clime reigned over the face of nature, softening and mellowing all objects, but in no way obscuring them. The light was not so bright as that of the day, and yet it partook in no way of the characteristics of night. It was more like the warm light of the dawn of a ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... the men grew softer and softer as the two Indians listened to the song of their departing friends, mellowing down and becoming more harmonious and more plaintive as the distance increased, and the boats grew smaller and smaller, until they were lost in the blaze of light that now bathed both water and sky in the eastern horizon, and began ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... that from infancy to age dwelt upon the feelings of the Klosterheimers. Terror and superstitious dread predominated undoubtedly in the total impression; but the gentle virtues exhibited by a series of princes, who had made this their favorite residence, naturally enough terminated in mellowing the sternness of such associations into a religious awe, not without its own peculiar attractions. But, at present, under the harsh and repulsive character of the reigning prince, everything took a new color from his un-genial habits. The superstitious legend, which had so immemorially ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... sound at heart, amid the mellowing richness of civilization, we may well expect great things in religion. Whatever the outward forms of religion, its roots ran deep down into the moral law, and must needs have borne in due time a noble fruitage. There was in fact a striking ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... by Winter's ice and Summer's sun ? What if, in Reuben's hair the female eye Usurping grey among the black could spy? What if, in both, life's bloomy flush was lost, And their full autumn felt the mellowing frost? Yet time, who blow'd the rose of youth away, Had left the vigorous stem without decay; Like those tall elms in Farmer Frankford's ground, They'll grow no more,—but all their growth is sound; ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... tints of the trees are mellowing down From their summer green to a russet brown, And many a harvest is over and past, For Autumn has chas'd away ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... sprang from cradle memories And childhood's sports, and whose perennial stream Still threw fresh crystals o'er the sands of life. —Each bore some treasured picture of the past, Some graphic incident, by mellowing time Made beautiful, while ever and anon, Timbrel and harp broke forth, each pause between. Banquet and wine-cup, and the dance, gave speed To youthful spirits, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... every evening that he began to make some impression on his stern jailer. He was careful, though, not to mention his hopes until near midnight, when Gallito's normally harsh mood was greatly softened not only by winning the final game, which Jose invariably permitted now, but also by the mellowing influence of his bland, old cognac. Then Gallito would embark on an argument, determined to convince Jose of the wild folly ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... forth the white tip of a floral bud, Ere long to be a crown-like, shadowy flower. For, by his songs, and joy in ancient tales, He showed the seed lay hidden in his heart, A safe sure treasure, hidden even from him, And notwithstanding mellowing all his spring; Until, like sunshine with its genial power, Came the fair maiden's face: the seed awoke. I need not follow him through many days; Nor tell the joys that rose around his path, Ministering pleasure for his labour's meed; Nor how each morning was a ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... and grand in the ages past, and the constant and almost imperceptible influence of her most excellent system of public worship, as indicated in the Book of Common Prayer, silently but effectively issues, in moulding and mellowing good Christian character. She teaches not only through the prayer book, but by the yearly round of feast, festival and fast, of which, like a great panorama the acts and incidents in the life of her Lord are constantly set forth before those who have ears to hear and eyes ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... wonderful experience, Darsie reflected, to watch the gradual mellowing of character, the patient endurance of suffering, the peaceful death which was so truly a "falling asleep." Until that time Darsie had felt all a girl's natural shrinking from death, but the sight of Aunt Maria's peaceful ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to parts of England in rural beauty—the large tracts of waving yellow corn, undulating like a sea in the morning breeze—the interminable reaches of forest, upon which the shadows played and flitted, deepening the effect and mellowing the mass, as we see them in Ruysdael's pictures—while now and then some tall-gabled, antiquated chateau, with its mutilated terrace and dowager-like air of bye-gone grandeur, would peep forth at the end of some long avenue of lime trees, all having their own features of beauty—and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... ever met. The same conviction is forced upon his biographer. During his four last years this most loveable of men was becoming gradually riper, wiser, truer to his highest instincts. The imperfections of his youth were being rapidly absorbed. His self-knowledge was expanding, his character mellowing, and his genius growing daily stronger. Without losing the fire that burned in him, he had been lessoned by experience into tempering its fervour; and when he reached the age of twenty-nine, he stood upon the height of his most glorious achievement, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... by Mrs. Gantry's expression, it was fortunate for her daughter that Genevieve came in upon them. Dolores divined this last from the sudden mellowing of her mother's face. She whirled up out of her chair and around, with a cry of joyous escape: "Oh, Vievie! You're just in ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... salute. Nor did he eye with delight the flowering geraniums that clustered so thickly in the pots filling the sills. Nor did he even care for the great bars of sunlight that fell in golden splendour across his bed, causing the old dog to wink, and sneeze, and smile beneath their mellowing beams. No, these were nothing to him; indeed, they never had been—he had lived for years oblivious alike to ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... doubt, doing for other frailties, and will come at last to the one in hand, leaving it an object of admiring and compassionate retrospect to an enlightened posterity. There are people, however, too impatient to wait for such results from the mellowing influence of progressive civilisation. Such a consideration suggests to me that I may be treading on dangerous ground—dangerous, I mean, to the frail but amiable class to whom my exposition is devoted. Natural misgivings arise in one who professes to call attention to a special type of human ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... had settled down upon the landscape, brown and bare though that was, left no room to regret the full verdure and radiant sunlight of high summer. The indescribable loveliness of the haze and hush, the winning tender colouring that was through the air and wrapped round everything, softening, mellowing, harmonizing somehow even the most unsightly; hiding where it could not beautify, and beautifying where it could not hide, like Christian charity; gave a most exquisite lesson to the world, of how much more mighty ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... to the pleasanter, less serious literature about Hawaii... A record of the recollections of the first eighteen years of a boy's life, in Hawaii, where that life was ushered into being. They are told after the mellowing lapse of half a century, which has been very full of satisfying labors in an ennobling profession... Pure boyhood recollections, unadulterated by later visits to the scenes in which they had their ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never-sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compel me to disturb your season due; For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rime. He must not float ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... strikes us as a bare abstraction in the report of the Censor General, say, or in a collection of poor law returns, gains an entirely new significance when he touches it in the most casual manner. A kind of mellowing atmosphere surrounds all objects in his pages, and tinges them with poetical hues. Even the Scottish dialect, repulsive to some ignorant Southrons, becomes musical to his true admirers. In this power lies one secret of Scott's most successful writing. Thus, for example, I often fancy that ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... for the blank spaces, the passages and waiting rooms, as it were, to say nothing of the actual "recreation rooms" of the house of life. And there is no provision so abundant, so accessible to all, so permanent, so independent of fortune, and at once so mellowing and fortifying, as literature. Our happiness or discontent depends far more, than on anything else, on the habitual occupation of our mind when it is free to choose its occupation. And, since thought is instantaneous, even the busiest ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... three-days' stay at Rouen; after which we made an excursion to St. Georges de Bocherville and Jumieges, and were highly interested and pleased by both.—Oh! that the Vandals would leave the abbey of Jumieges, even in its present state of dilapidation! In a few years, with the mellowing tints of time, and the ornament of a little ivy and vegetation, it would be one of the most picturesque and beautiful ruins in Europe; but, alas! it is in vain to hope it. Cotman's representations of Jumieges and Andelys will now be ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... when he had finished. A sliding panel in the wall near the chapel had been pushed back, and the mellow music of Dr. Tallis pealed softly in, giving a sweet and melodious background, scarcely perceived consciously by either of them, and yet probably mellowing and softening their modes of expression during the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the flying creature With its arms about her mouth; Bursting all its mellowing bunches To seduce her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... God," he said quaveringly, "'at every creature on earth was as well fixed as me an' the redbird!" Clasping each other, they listened with rapt faces, as, mellowing across the corn field, came the notes of the Cardinal: ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... who in children see their heirs, Have numberless, diverging cares! Less pure for them affection glows,— Less of intrinsic joy bestows, Less mellowing, less enlivening, flows! Oh! such not even could divine A moment's tenderness like mine! Had he been destin'd to a throne, His little darling self alone, Bereft of station, grandeur, aught But life and virtue, love and thought, Could wake one anxious thrill, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... was up but not yet stripped for the long day's race to the west. The eastern skies still gleamed through a faery haze with the soft iridescence of a young ormer shell, the tender pinks and greens and golds of the new day's birth-chamber mellowing upwards into the glorious blue of a ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... would have been terminated in a ripe old age by a dissolution equally gradual and calm. But how unsearchable are the workings of Providence! The peaceful and retired seclusion amid which the honoured evening of Dr Haynes' life was mellowing to its close was destined to be disturbed, nay, shattered, by a tragedy as appalling as it was unexpected. The morning of the ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... since sunset, but the twilight still lingers in softened radiance, mellowing the mountain-scenery. The camp-wagons are drawn up on a low pebbly shelf at the foot of the hills, and the kindled fire has set a great carbuncle in the standing pool. A spring branch oozes out of the rocky turf, and flows down to meet a shallow river fretting over shoals. The road ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... wheel-winged thunder-cars Assembling strength to put forth tempest soon, When the clear still warm concord of thy tune Rose under skies unscared by reddening Mars Yet, like a sound of silver speech of stars, With full mild flame as of the mellowing moon. Grave and great-hearted Massinger, thy face High melancholy lights with loftier grace Than gilds the brows of revel: sad and wise, The spirit of thought that moved thy deeper song, Sorrow serene in soft calm scorn of ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and Browne. The vast annihilation that has swallowed all things—the voiceless solitude of the once busy earth—the lonely state of singleness which hems me in, has deprived even such details of their stinging reality, and mellowing the lurid tints of past anguish with poetic hues, I am able to escape from the mosaic of circumstance, by perceiving and reflecting back the grouping and combined colouring ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... too, that D'Alton M'Carthy, who was mellowing in religious matters and growing more radical on other issues, voiced a demand for a reduction of customs burdens and for the adoption of maximum and minimum schedules, the minimum rates to be given Great Britain and British colonies and foreign countries which offered equivalent ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... rising storm Hurling the hail, and sleeted rain, Against the casement's tinkling pane; The sounds that drive wild deer, and fox, To shelter in the brake and rocks, Are warnings which the shepherd ask To dismal and to dangerous task. Oft he looks forth, and hopes, in vain, The blast may sink in mellowing rain; Till, dark above, and white below, Decided drives the flaky snow, And forth the hardy swain must go. Long, with dejected look and whine, To leave the hearth his dogs repine; Whistling and cheering them to aid, Around his back he ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... pictured map. About a mile and a half to the south, rose the mountain where Nancy Vawse lived, craggy and bare; but the leafless trees, and stern, jagged rocks were wrapped in the haze; and through this the sun, now near the setting, threw his mellowing rays, touching every slope and ridge ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... orchard Mellowing one by one; Strawberries upturning Soft cheeks to the sun; Roses faint with sweetness, Lilies fair of face, Drowsy scents and murmurs Haunting every place; Lengths of golden sunshine, Moonlight bright as day,— Don't you think ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... lingering, loves to shine, Though there his altars are no more divine. Descending fast the mountain shadows kiss Thy glorious gulf, unconquered Salamis! 1180 Their azure arches through the long expanse More deeply purpled met his mellowing glance, And tenderest tints, along their summits driven, Mark his gay course, and own the hues of Heaven; Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep, Behind his Delphian cliff he ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... That is excluded by the lower hills which hem the Magra. The upper valley is beautiful, with verdant lawns and purple hill-sides breaking down into thick chestnut woods, through which we wound at a rapid pace for nearly an hour. The leaves were still green, mellowing to golden; but the fruit was ripe and heavy, ready at all points to fall. In the still October air the husks above our heads would loosen, and the brown nuts rustle through the foliage, and with a dull short thud, like drops of thunder-rain, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... how sweetly tender, Are the musings of an hour, When the mellowing scenes around us Give to Memory magic power; Thought recalls those scenes long parted, Life epitomized appears, Moments then reflect a lifetime Reaching back through ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... the mellowing meadows thrill To his blithe music. Be it day or night, Close gossip of the grass, on field and hill He serenades the silence with delight: Silence, that hears the melon slowly split With ripeness; and the plump peach, hornet-bit, ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... into the mellowing sunshine. He walked westward, till he found himself on the Embankment by Albert Bridge; here, after hesitating awhile, he took the turn into Oakley Street. He had no thought of calling to see Miss Elvan; upon that he could not venture; ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... pile was Whalley—one of the loveliest as well as the largest in the realm. Carefully had it been preserved by its reverend rulers, and where reparations or additions were needed they were judiciously made. Thus age had lent it beauty, by mellowing its freshness and toning its hues, while no decay was perceptible. Without a struggle had it yielded to the captor, so that no part of its wide belt of walls or towers, though so strongly constructed as to have offered effectual resistance, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ministering to his self-respect, medicining his weariness, peopling his solitude, winning him from sordid prizes, enlivening his monotonous days with mirth, or fancy, or wit, flashing heaven upon his earth, and mellowing it for all spiritual fertility,—there is the element of marriage. Wherever woman pays reverence to man,—wherever any woman rejoices in the strength of any man, feels it to be God's agent, upholding her weakness, confirming ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... What they will of their future. Maurice, for my sake And your own, put them out of your thoughts. All too brief And too broad is this life to be ruined by grief Over one human atom. Like mellowing rain, Which enriches the soil of the soul and the brain, Should the sorrow of youth be; and not like the breath Of the cyclone, which carries destruction and death. Come, Maurice, let philosophy lift ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Bridget's setting. She was a woman who, whatever her surroundings, must always impress them with her personality. This bush parlour was original in its simplicity. Walls lined with unvarnished wood which was mellowing already to a soft golden brown. Boards bare, but for a few rugs and skins. A fine piece of tappa from the Solomons, of barbaric design in black and orange, made the centre of an arrangement of South Sea Island and aboriginal weapons. Divans heaped with cushions ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... was just beginning to come in. She sat down on the big boulder where Reeves had fallen asleep. Beyond stretched the gleaming blue waters, mellowing into a hundred ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... ordinary way. It was a little bit of the Thames far away from London, with a bank of many-tinted trees on one side, and out beyond a range of low hills, purple in the evening light. In the sky was a rosy sunset glow, melted above into saffron color, and this was reflected in the water, gilding and mellowing the foreground of sedge and water lilies. But what made the picture specially charming was that the artist had really caught the peculiar solemn stillness of evening; merely to look at that quiet, peaceful river brought a feeling of hush and calmness. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... were rapidly lengthening, and the sun coming boldly nearer the earth was tempering and mellowing the atmosphere, and every pleasant afternoon a couch was made for Emily out of doors, where she could bask in the sunshine, and breathe the air charged with the perfume of the spruce and balsam forest above, and drink in the wild beauties ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... painful and choking sensations of sympathy, compassion, regret, admiration, all uniting, all mellowing into one fearful hope for his acquittal, made themselves felt through the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was once their own unshadowed grace. But here in our dear poet both are blended— Ripe age begun, yet golden youth not ended;— Even as his song the willowy scent of spring Doth blend with autumn's tender mellowing, And mixes praise with satire, tears with fun, In strains that ever delicately run; So musical and wise, page after page, The sage a minstrel grows, the bard a sage. The dew of youth fills yet ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... home-made and foreign wines, a "genuine old Port," by mere admixture; or to impart to a weak wine a rough austere taste, a fine colour, and a peculiar flavour; forms one branch of the business of particular wine-coopers: while the mellowing and restoring of spoiled white wines, is the sole occupation of men who are called refiners ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... development, he was in a way a great "boy" to the end—but a boy with a deepening sense of mystery mellowing his character and his utterances. And thus it was that he could say, looking back on his intercourse with the wonders of nature: "I have long enjoyed them, never I can honestly say alone, because when man was not with me I had companions in every bee and flower and pebble, and ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... may be the energy and keen mental life without the mellowing and sweetening influence of the Christian spirit. The restless aggressiveness may come without the poise; the ceaseless activity without the deeper steadying quality; the keenness without the softening touch of the true life. In other words, if we don't Christianize heathendom, ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... however, the younger children who kept up the home at Marlborough Place after the elder ones had married or gone out into the world, enjoyed more opportunities of his ever-mellowing companionship. Strongly as he upheld the conventions when these represented some valid results of social experience, he was always ready to set aside his mere likes and dislikes on good cause shown; to follow reason as against the mere prejudice of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... the advances of sycophant and flatterer, enthusiastically poured out for the ungainly mountain boy all the rare quality and bouquet of his seasoned personal charm. It was a vintage distilled from experience and humanity. It had met the ancient requirement for the mellowing and perfecting of good Madeira, that it shall "voyage twice around the world's circumference," and it was a thing reserved ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Folly's active rage, Nor Envy's self, shall blot the golden page; Time shall admire, his mellowing touch employ, And mend the immortal ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... orchard—ah, the wonder and the joy of it! even the bare and bony limbs of the apple trees only helped to reveal the sumptuous wealth of their luscious fruit. For it was apple time in the land! The evanescent harvest apples were long since gone, the snows were past their best, the pippins were mellowing under the sharp persuasion of the nippy, frosty nights and the brave gallantry of the sunny days. In this ancient warfare between the frosty nights and the gallant sunny days the apples ripened rapidly; and well that they should, for the warfare could not be for long. Already in the early morning ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... to number your friends amongst all classes of society. And to you, Mr. Vigeland, I have to offer this book of Family Devotions, printed on vellum and handsomely bound, to grace your study table. The mellowing influence of time has led you to take an earnest view of life; your zeal in carrying out your daily duties has, for a long period of years, been purified and enobled by thoughts of higher and holier things. (Turns to the crowd.) ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... that Kirk's music—which was the hardest sort of work—absorbed him completely; he lived in a new world. So, almost before they could believe it, September came, filling the distance with tranquil haze, and mellowing the flats to dim orange, threaded with the keen blue inlets of the bay. Asters began to open lavender stars at the door-stone of Applegate Farm; tall rich milkweed pressed dusty flower-bunches against the fence, and the sumach brandished ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... the women with an air of victory. "He wants to see you, Berrie. He's mellowing. Don't be ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... occasion in which whiskey wasn't appropriate," said the cow-boy, mellowing at the sight of ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... was only a few yards distant, and they seated themselves on a broad, flat stone, beneath a cluster of pomegranate and figs. The evening was beautifully clear, the soft light which still lingered in the west mellowing every object, and the balmy southern breeze, fresh from "old ocean's bosom," rustling musically amidst the branches above. As if to enhance the sweetness of the hour, and win the mourners from their sad thoughts, ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... where all things seemed drowsy—where the only spectators were the mellowing apples that reddened the boughs above her, and her sole auditors the brown partridges that nestled in the tall grass, and the shy cicadae ambushed under the clover leaves—her pent-up pain and disappointment bubbled over in a ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... power the Pixies own, 80 When round thy raven brow Heaven's lucent roses glow, And clouds in watery colours drest Float in light drapery o'er thy sable vest: What time the pale moon sheds a softer day 85 Mellowing the woods beneath its pensive beam: For mid the quivering light 'tis ours to play, Aye dancing to the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... quarter of the Son of David from that of the children of Jesus (Aissa). The water only trickles by drops, and, though plentiful in winter, deserts them altogether in the season when their air-hung gardens, planted in earth brought up from the plains, need it the most. As the mellowing of the season brings with it its plague of aridity, recourse is had to the river at the bottom of the ravine, the Oued-Hamadouch. Then from morning to night perpendicular chains of diminutive, shrewd donkeys are seen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... summer arise in joy, Or the summer fruits appear? Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, Or bless the mellowing year, When ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... girl Mate prosperously; there are sweet women to kiss; There are good women to breed. In a golden fog, A large, full-stomached faith in kindliness All over the world, the nation, in a dream Of money and love and sport, hangs at the paps Of well-being, and so Goes fattening, mellowing, dozing, rotting down Into a ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... bright idea of the Master's mind, Where a new world leaps out at his command, And ready Nature waits upon his hand; When the ripe colours soften and unite, And sweetly melt into just shade and light; When mellowing years their full perfection give, And each bold figure just begins to live; The treach'rous colours the fair art betray, And all the ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... sincere idea—the idea of "freedom to worship God;" and it was adapted to the uses which it was designed to serve. It stood upon a hill, a square box with square windows cut in its sides—grim without and grim within, save as the mellowing seasons toned down its ruder aspects, and green grass and waving boughs framed it as if it were a picture. Within, the high pulpit, surmounted by a sounding-board, towered over the square-backed pews, facing a congregation kept orderly by stern ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... to "pooh-pooh whatever's fresh and new" in favor of something which has at least the appearance of age with or without the richness and mellowness thereof. After all, the mellowness is the essence; if the years merely age without mellowing a thing, they have done it no good; the same thing new is the more ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... for him, and that purpose was, to try how many silver foxes' heads full of port wine Tom could carry off without tumbling, and the old fellow being rather liquorishly inclined, had never made any objection to the experiment. Mr. Waffles now wanted him, to endeavour, under the mellowing influence of drink, to get him to enter cordially into what he knew would be distasteful to the old sportsman's feelings, namely, to substitute a 'drag' for the legitimate find and chase of the fox. Fox-hunting, though exciting and exhilarating at all times, except, perhaps, when the 'fallows ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... a large, and often a rambling, building of one storey, except where a tower served as a store-room for the mellowing wine or a loft for the mellowing fruit. When we read in Horace about the liberal stack of wood to be kept in readiness near the hearth, and about the wine-jar drinking in the smoke in the store-room we must think of his country homestead on the Sabine Hills, not of a house in Rome, for at Rome there ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... this night together with me canst thou rest thee Here on the verdant leaves; for us there are mellowing apples, Chestnuts soft to the touch, and clouted cream in abundance; And the high roofs now of the villages smoke in the distance, And from the lofty mountains are falling larger ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... more decidedly, perhaps, than any of the Professors. He had the firm fibre of a theological athlete, and lived to be old without ever mellowing, I think, into a kind of half-heterodoxy, as old ministers of stern creed are said to do now and then,—just as old doctors grow to be sparing of the more exasperating drugs in their later days. He had manipulated the mysteries ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... come: perhaps again It mayn't: And ere these ages blest begin (For Rome, I've heard historians say, Was only partly finished in A day) In men of sentiments sublime 'Tis possible we yet may trace The influence of mellowing Time And PLACE:— O who can tell? Ere Labour rouse Its ever-multiplying hordes To mend or end th' obstructive House Of Lords, And bid aristocrats begone, And their hereditary pelf Bestow with generous hand upon Itself— Why, Mr. George,—his threats forgot Which Earls and Viscounts cowering hear,— ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... wanting, the lunar surface must be the seat of an eternal calm; where no sound breaks the stillness and where change, as we know it, does not exist. The sun beats down upon the arid rocks, and inky shadows lie athwart the valleys. There is no mellowing of the harsh contrasts. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... the more impervious the package containing tea is to the air, the more perfectly the finer qualities of the tea are preserved. If there is a necessity for ripening or mellowing by time, air should be rigidly excluded during ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... same gloomy mansion dwell And mingle with her kindred regal earth, Still in thy tints shall she survive, With sweet attraction still engage, 220 Still feed the flame as when alive, And (e'en improv'd by mellowing age Each charm of person and of face) Still sacrifice ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... Landscape painting exerts a mellowing influence, and leads to the observation and love of nature, while historical pictures stimulate research, and nerve the mind to deeds of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... life casts the shadow of divorce on her pathway, but it is only the warm, restful shadow of a ripening and mellowing sorrow. Do not fear to ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Dagonet danced away. But thro' the slowly-mellowing avenues And solitary passes of the wood Rode Tristram toward Lyonesse and the west. Before him fled the face of Queen Isolt With ruby-circled neck, but evermore Past, as a rustle or twitter in the wood Made dull his inner, keen his outer eye For all that walk'd, ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... a drop of my blood under it, which got mashed flat when the lens got shut down upon it. The result was beyond my dreams. The field stretched miles away, green and undulating, threaded with streams and roads, and bordered all down the mellowing distances with picturesque hills. And there was a great white city of tents; and everywhere were parks of artillery and divisions of cavalry and infantry waiting. We had hit a lucky moment, evidently there was going to be ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... cloudless day is richer at its close; A golden glory settles on the lea; Soft stealing shadows hint of cool repose To mellowing landscape, and to ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... think you ought to spring it until after we've had refreshments. Food has such a mellowing effect on human nature. It's all a question of tact, though. If I were you, I'd talk to them in an intimate sort of way instead of lingering too much on the historic value. Better straighten Malcolm, over yonder; he looks kind ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... to Monte Rotondo. The sun sank; and from the flames where he had perished, Hesper and the thin moon, very white and keen, grew slowly into sight. Now we follow the Tiber, a swollen, hurrying, turbid river, in which the mellowing Western sky reflects itself. This changeful mirror of swift waters spreads a dazzling foreground to valley, hill, and lustrous heaven. There is orange on the far horizon, and a green ocean above, in which ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... put 'em in here," says Mr. Glentworthy, laconically, lighting his lamp. "I hope to get old Saddlerock in here. Give him such a mellowing!" He turns his light, and the shadows play, spectre-like, along a low, wet aisle, hung on each side with rusty bolts and locks, revealing the doors of cells. An ominous stillness is broken by the dull clank of chains, the muttering of voices, the shuffling ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Sophy's home; in a good, old-fashioned farm-house, with green moss growing out of the sloping roof, shaded by trees that looked a century old. It is autumn there now; so you see on the cellar door and under the front windows, crooked necked squashes and round yellow pumpkins, mellowing in the warm sunbeams. Strings of dried apples are festooned from chamber windows; and paper bags of catnip and spearmint and thoroughwort and penny-royal and mullen hang drying on the ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... in the cabin, so disastrously begun, finished, under the mellowing influence of wine and woman, in excellent feeling and with some hilarity. Mamie, in a plush Gainsborough hat and a gown of wine-coloured silk, sat, an apparent queen, among her rude surroundings and companions. The dusky litter of the cabin set off her radiant trimness: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sun was mellowing the grey stone of the terrace and enriching the green of the weeds thrusting themselves into life between the uneven flags when she reached Stornham, and passing through the house found Lady Anstruthers sitting there. In sustenance of her effort to keep up appearances, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Henderson." In one respect the speech explaining his resignation which the right hon. Member for Barnard Castle delivered this afternoon resembled this eponymous beverage, for it was decidedly effervescent. But the other ingredients were wrongly apportioned—too much of the bitters and not enough of the mellowing spirit. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... as it becomes more rich and extensive, all nature seems to rise up and rejoice. The birds chirp merrily among the foliage; the flowers raise their drooping heads, and the thirsty ground drinks in with eager haste the mellowing rains. All day long, perhaps, does the rain continue to fall, until the earth is fully moistened and "enriched with vegetable life." At length, towards evening, the sun peeps out from among the broken clouds, and lights up, by his sudden radiance, the lovely scene. Myriads of rain-drops ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... and swiftly went. A bewildering, ever changing, and glorious panorama presented itself, green hillsides struck first with flaming crimsons and yellows, and later mellowing into a wondrous blending of gentler, tenderer hues; lavender, and wine, and the faintest of rose colours where the bare beeches massed. Thus the slopes were spread as with priceless carpets for a festival. Sometimes Honora, watching, beheld ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... brought him to the end of the forest. The dawn was breaking, and the track leading to the settlement was just beginning to exhibit the mellowing influence of the first rays of the sun. There was an exhilarating freshness in the air that made Van Hielen keenly sensitive to the ambitious demands of a newly awakened stomach. Opposite him was the hut of the ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... the park; the ivy-grown church among the trees; the distant woods and plantations; the purple outlines of the fells. Just as in the room within, so the scene without was fused into a perfect harmony and keeping by the mellowing light. There was in it not a jarring note, a ragged line—age and dignity, wealth and undisputed place: Martindale expressed them all. The Gaddesdens had twice refused a peerage; and with contempt. In their belief, to be Mr. Gaddesden of Martindale was enough; a dukedom ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the alkali deserts, and the Sierras, to California and the Pacific Coast; how these frontiersmen, at every stage of our history, had sent back wave after wave of strength and virility to keep alive the sturdy ideals of toil and effort and independence,—ideals that would counteract the mellowing and softening and degenerating influences of the hothouse civilization that grew up so rapidly in the successive regions that they left behind. Turner's theory that most of what is typical and unique in American institutions ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... expected, the most detailed information, for Clark had gone in there on his way to the hotel and, sitting down, remarked "shave please" and at the end, without another word, gave Jim fifty cents and walked out. And if you add to all this the sound of the crier's bell mellowing softly up the long street, it will be understood that the excitement was considerably intensified. Even Filmer, as he ate supper, did not say much, but kept his gaze on the lid of the teapot as though it were a Pandora's box in which ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... to note an hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire. All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture- fields, and cornfields, and wood; and a glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain, the sombre woodland, the clear and sunny lea. Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me, I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill, and not far beyond were two cows and their drover. Human life and human labour were near. I must struggle on: strive ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... is, for the most part, nothing offensive in it, and in fact, except a little of his apparently inevitable indulgence in nasty detail, there is nothing at all offensive in the book. The contrast of its general tone with that especially of his first two; the softening and mellowing of the general presentation—is very remarkable in a man of undoubtedly not very gentle disposition who had long suffered from extremely bad health, and whose chief original works recently—the Journey and the Adventures—had been, the first a ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... sought out and found, But his dear God? Who yet his glorious love Embosoms in us, mellowing the ground With showers, and frosts, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... whose gray, moss-covered towers had borne witness to the conflicts of armor-clad warriors in the days of Castilian knighthood and glory. What enchantment hangs about these rude battlements, "rich with the spoils of time!" In looking back upon the ancient days it is fortunate that the mellowing influence of time dims the vision, and we see down the long vista of years as through a softening twilight, else we should behold such harshness as would arouse more of ire than of admiration. The olden time, like the landscape, appears best in the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... are also traces of declining powers, a greater tendency to digression, a lack of concentration and vigour, and even of dexterity of language. But the change is due in all probability not merely to advance in years nor to the calming and mellowing influence of old age, but also to a change that was gradually passing over the Roman world. The material for savage satire was appreciably less. Evil in its worst forms had triumphed under Domitian. With Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian virtue began slowly and uncertainly to reclaim part ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... to your children all, These New-Year's gifts I bring; And though the price be small, They're fit for queen or king: Fair pippins red Kept in my bed A-mellowing since last year, Whose beauty bright So clear of sight Their hearts will glad ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... the farce of Foreign Missions." "No, no, indeed," he continued, "they are not green, for greenness implies verdure, and beauty, and there is not a single atom of verdure in their parched and withered up souls." Under the burning satire and mellowing pathos of his tremendous appeal for heathendom, tears welled out from every eye in the house. I leaned over toward the reporter's table; many of the reporters had flung down their pens—they might as well have attempted ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... balance, once moved; not easily sway'd From the centre, and, star-like, retracing thy orbit through sunlight and shade! —Without hate, without party affection, we now look back on the fray, Through the mellowing magic of time the phantoms emerging to day! Grasping too much for self, unjust to his rival in strife, Each foe with good conscience and honour advances; war to the knife! Lo, where with feebler hand the Stuart essays him to guide The ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... imagination; and the idea of long perpetuation and survival always appears to have filled him with a kind of horror and disapproval. Conservative, in a certain degree, as he was himself, and fond of retrospect and quietude and the mellowing influences of time, it is singular how often one encounters in his writings some expression of mistrust of old houses, old institutions, long lines of descent. He was disposed apparently to allow a very moderate ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... climate. On rather stiff clay soils, the other conditions being right, the most satisfactory results are obtained from sowing the seed in the spring, and on land that has been plowed in the autumn and exposed to the mellowing influences of winter. But to this there may be some exceptions. On lands so light as to lift with the wind, that season should be avoided in sowing, if possible, when lifting winds prevail. Such winds are common in some localities in the spring, and may uncover ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... without doubt the Holy Spirit was brooding in unusual measure over this man, reviving early memory, bringing to his remembrance all things of other days, deepening impressions, bringing old facts into new perspective, giving clearer vision, mellowing and maturing both mind and heart into fresh plastic openness to further truth. And so we have this little book with its Hebrew ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... be made profitable upon a piece of rough or newly cleared ground: No other crop is so effective in mellowing rough, cloddy land. The seed in northern localities should be sown before July 12; otherwise early frosts may catch the crops. Grass and clover may sometimes be sown ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various |
