"Seductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... national aggrandizement will ever be realized. But when Germany has the chance of gaining and holding such advantages as these from a successful war, it is no wonder that she remains the chief possible disturber of the European peace. In her case certainly the fruits of victory look more seductive than the penalties of defeat look dangerous; and the resolute opposition to the partial disarmament, which she has always offered at the Hague Conference, is the best evidence of the unsatisfied nature of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... splendour. He had stepped to the altar fancying she might keep to her part of the contract by appearing the miracle that subdued him. Seen by light of day, this bitter object beside him was a witch without her spells; that is, the skeleton of the seductive, ghastliest among horrors and ironies. Let her have the credit of doing her work thoroughly before the exposure. She had done it. She might have helped—such was the stipulation of his mad freak in consenting to the bondage—yes, she might have helped to soften the sting of his wound. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the first duties of a political party is to capture the offices, for without them in its power it cannot carry out the principles for which it stands. The possession of wealth represents vast possibilities for service. Thousands of tragic experiments have demonstrated, however, the fallacy of the seductive doctrine that the end justifies the means. The tragedy that overshadows many of the seemingly most successful men of to-day is the memory of the iniquitous methods whereby they have acquired wealth or mounted to power. Lavish philanthropy and the beneficent use of power can never wholly ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... magnificently dressed. The latter is Leonardo's well- known type, as a magically fascinating personality. Its essential feature is a profoundly serious melancholy, but the beauty of the figure is seductive. She is by no means smiling, and yet she looks as though a very slight alteration would produce a smile, and as though the heavens themselves would open, if smile she did. The powerful glance of the dark blue eyes is in harmony with the light-brown ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... story, not because he intended to read it, but in payment for his hour of disillusionment. Then he slung his pack over his shoulders and tramped out into the country. He laughed aloud at the thought of Helen and her idolaters. A poetic hoax. Overripe words. Seductive sounds. Nonsense! ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... should like, however, to ask my sisters one question: Are they quite sure that women gain by these changes? Do they imagine, these "sporty" young females in short-cut skirts and mannish shirts and ties, that it is seductive to a lover, or a husband to see his idol in a violent perspiration, her draggled hair blowing across a sunburned face, panting up a long hill in front of him on a bicycle, frantic at having lost her race? Shade of gentle ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... were appreciated, and that his fame was increasing, led him for a while to cheerful views of life, and to regular habits of conduct. He wrote to a friend, the author of "Edge Hill," in Richmond, that he had quite overcome "the seductive and dangerous besetment" by which he had so often been prostrated, and to another friend that, incredible as it might seem, he had become a "model of temperance," and of "other virtues," which it had sometimes been difficult for him to practice. Before the close of the summer, however, he relapsed ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... visions, putting them to the proof in an argument which is of its kind—direct demonstration being out of the question—quite unequalled. Because, in the third place, he broke down the opposition which the most scientific had felt to the seductive modal formula of evolution by bringing forward a more plausible theory of the process than had been previously suggested. Nor can one forget, since questions of this magnitude are human and not merely academic, that he wrote so ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... stifle my memories, and, as it were, to punish myself for the cheeses and preserves with which I had been regaled at the engineer's. But all the same, as soon as I lay in bed, wet and hungry, my sinful imagination immediately began to paint exquisite, seductive pictures, and with amazement I acknowledged to myself that I was in love, passionately in love, and I fell into a sound, heavy sleep, feeling that hard labour only made my body stronger ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... be given for turning away from this seductive proposal, and leaving capital (not consumer's wealth merely) in private hands,—and that not only in the hands of what we may call mentally productive capitalists, men who oversee their own enterprises ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... was very sharp in his answers; and it is also related of him that once, being told by a priest that his figures were too seductive for altar-pieces, he replied: "A lusty fellow you must be, if painted figures so move you. Think how much you are to be trusted in places where there are living people for you to touch." At Isola, a place on the Lake of Garda, he painted two ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... splendour; there she unfolds herself in glittering mist. On the unbounded plain, you behold her in the form of an enchanted city—a paradise of leafy loveliness, or it may be simply as a fantastic Erl-King, a giddy dazzling vapour. Let her appear, however, where and how she will, she is ever seductive, mysterious, and beautiful, and attended with the awe of a strange ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... expense in what each considers the perfection of style and taste, and walk down the vacant central space and back again with that multitude of critical eyes on them. All that the competitor knows of fine airs and graces he throws into his carriage, all that he knows of seductive expression he throws into his countenance. He may use all the helps he can devise: watch- chain to twirl with his fingers, cane to do graceful things with, snowy handkerchief to flourish and get artful effects out of, shiny new stovepipe hat to assist in his courtly bows; and the colored ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... candy, which tempted in the smaller youth with coppers in their fists, up to ornamental articles of apparel, pocket-books, breast-pins, gilt-edged Bibles, stationery, in short, everything which was like to prove seductive to the rural population. The Colonel had made money in trade, and also by matrimony. He had married Sarah, daughter and heiress of the late Tekel Jordan, Esq., an old miser, who gave the town-clock, which carries his name to posterity in large gilt letters as a generous benefactor of his native ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... peril in the shape of a vast store of novels, poems, and romances, which Miss Cornelia had accumulated, and to which she was continually making additions. In that young lady's bedchamber, where Helen slept, there was a large bookcase full of these seductive volumes; even the upper shelves of the wardrobe closet, and a cupboard over the mantel, were closely packed with them; and there was not one of them all which Helen had not read by the time she was fifteen. Thus, in spite of natural good sense, strengthened and educated by much wise and wholesome ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... young woman. Her voice was sweet, but it sounded to Natalya like the voice of Lilith, stealer of new-born children. Her rosy cheek seemed smeared with seductive paint. In the background glistened the dual crockery of the erst pious kitchen which the new-comer profaned. And between Natalya and it, between Natalya and her grandchildren, this alien girlish figure seemed to stand barrier-wise. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... well-knit figure; so light and nimble on his feet; such a pair of eyes in his head, leaking tears one minute and flashing hate the next. And his mouth! I tried, but I couldn't paint it—nobody could—so I did his profile; one of those curving, seductive mouths you sometimes see on a man, that quivers when he smiles, the teeth ...
— Fiddles - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to the great rock, and through the passage into the great chamber, bursting in upon a situation of growing intensity. Dolores sat on a corner of the table, with all her seductive lures in her beautiful face, smiling invitingly at Rupert Venner. Craik Tomlin glared at both, yet his gaze seemed hard to restrain from wandering around the gorgeous chamber, whose wealth he saw now for the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... unwise it is to allow children yet in their teens to wander so far from home. It more especially illustrates the folly of giving them long holidays in a foreign land, full of seductive dissipation. Port for men, claret for boys, cried Dr. Johnson. Even so, men only should drink the strong drink of travel; boys should still be kept on milk and water at home. Middies! you may despise your mother's leading-strings, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... earth because thou hearest unforgotten voices, then will the gods send messengers on wings to soothe thee in Pegana, saying to them: "There one sigheth who hath remembered Earth." And they shall make Pegana more seductive for thee still, and they shall take thee by the hand and whisper in thine ear till ...
— The Gods of Pegana • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... counted all the glamour of public life compared to the possession of Nance Oldfield and an honoured seat at the festive board of the Kit-Cat Club? Love and conviviality, youth and wit, carried the day, and through the influence of these seductive companions handsome Arthur failed to achieve greatness as a statesman. But when it came to waging political warfare against sour Swift, or to assisting Dick Steele with the "Tatler," or—better still—toasting ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... acquaintances and no friends, if we except Conward, whom he frequently met in the pool rooms, and for whom he had developed a sort of attachment. His first underlying sense of distrust had been lulled by closer acquaintanceship; Conward's mild manner and quiet, seductive voice invited friendship, and it became a customary thing for the two to play for small stakes, which Dave won as often as ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... give me a bit of mutton at one o'clock I shall be very much your debtor, but as I have business to attend to afterwards at the Home Office I must stipulate that my intellect be not imperilled by those seductive evil genii who are apt to make their appearance at your lunch table. [This is accompanied by a sketch of a champagne bottle in ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... felt surely that one with such courtly dress and bearing could be nothing less than a Duke and his wearing of a full masque made her doubly sure of it. She flushed and reached out her hand for the letter and spoke in her most seductive tones,— ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... intolerable weight upon the soul, I protest that we have richly deserved death, not on account of any heresy or sin of which ourselves or our order have been guilty, but because we have yielded, to save our lives, to the seductive words of the Pope and of the King; and so by our confessions brought shame and ruin on our blameless, holy, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... exquisite pictures in water-colour. The floor was covered with a very rich and handsome Turkey carpet, into which one sank almost to the ankles, as into a thick bed of soft moss; chairs, couches, and divans of exquisite shape and seductive capacity were scattered here and there about the apartment, and at its fore or wider end stood, close together, a grand piano and a chamber organ, both in superbly modelled aethereum cases, and both, it need scarcely ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... is said, and some five or six in America. Of the four authorities named above, each has some representative value for American players. Mayne Reid was the pioneer, Routledge is the most compact and seductive, Fellow the most popular and the poorest, and "Newport" the newest and by far the best. And among them all it is possible to find authority for and against ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... if mortal happiness be recorded anywhere, then those rubbers with their three-and-sixpenny points are scored on tablets of celestial brass. He always held an honour - generally two. On that eventful night we stood at eight. He raised his eyes (luminous in their seductive sweetness) to my agitated face. 'CAN you?' said he, with peculiar meaning. I felt the gentle pressure of his foot on mine; our corns throbbed in unison. 'CAN you?' he said again; and every lineament of his expressive countenance added the words 'resist ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... there may be truth in this," I returned, scarcely knowing how best to speak at such a time, marking the agitation of her breathing. "Naladi is a fair woman, softly spoken and seductive when it is her purpose to please. There are not many men who could resist her wiles. Yet possibly, Madame, were you to have converse with the Chevalier your plea might break ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... Putnam, Jr., an hereditary tendency to hallucination, if not insanity. One of her uncles had seen the Devil by broad daylight in the novel disguise of a blue boar, in which shape, as a tavern sign, he had doubtless proved more seductive than in his more ordinary transfigurations. A great deal of light is let in upon the question of whether there was deliberate imposture or no, by the narrative of Rev. Mr. Turell of Medford, written in 1728, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... of consequence—they become gamblers; and of the many bad passions which gambling sometimes calls into activity, and of the destructive consequences which it entails, no one is ignorant. If you once get into the habit of playing, you will, perhaps, not know when to stop. Cards are very seductive, and you may find yourself become a gambler almost before you are aware of it. Perhaps the best plan is not to know how to play, which ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... made a detailed appraisal of the mirror image of the slim, green, backless, half-thigh-length sheath which had looked so breath-taking and seductive in a Ceyce display window. Trigger's eyes narrowed a little. The major had appraised the dress ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... however unclassic in mould, if criticised separately, taken as a whole, formed a picture of surpassing fascination. If her eyes and cleft chin meant mischief, her mouth engaged to make amends by smiles and seductive words, more sweet than honey, because their flavor would never clog upon him who tasted thereof. Her attire was striking—it would have been bizarre upon any other lady in the room, but it enhanced the small ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... with songs and dances; "the gates of joy are opened," they wrote to Constantinople. At Smyrna itself the exile was received with delirium, with cries of "Messhiach! Messiah!" which he would not acknowledge, but to which Melisselda responded with seductive smiles. His aged ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that her charms were not sufficient to blind him to all others. That was the fly in the ointment. It was an affront to her beauty, and she was still beautiful. She was unctuously full-bodied, not quite so tall as Aileen, not really as large, but rounder and plumper, softer and more seductive. Physically she was not well set up, so vigorous; but her eyes and mouth and the roving character of her mind held a strange lure. Mentally she was much more aware than Aileen, much more precise in her knowledge of art, music, literature, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... young life broken By sin's seductive art; And touched with a Christlike pity, I took him to my heart. He lived with a noble purpose And struggled not in vain; But the life that sin had stricken ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... other, which consisted chiefly of spirits (potheen, home-made whisky), beer, fine flour, geese, turkeys, and hares. A beverage called 'Mead,' which was extracted from honeycomb, was also a favourite liquor, and when mixed with a little alcoholic spirit, was an agreeable drink, but deceitful and seductive, as well as intoxicating. This used to pass in large quantities amongst neighbours. 'Christmas cakes' and puddings were extensively made and sent as presents. The latter were particularly fine, and made with fine flour, eggs, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... voyage aimed to establish a colony on that coast; and all who served them, or were controlled by them, were easily moved to tell seductive stories of the country "upon the main." The chief aim of Brereton's account of this voyage was to incite emigration. Therefore he gave this wonderfully colored account of mines, flax-growing, copper chains and collars, and "other rich commodities" ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... contract alliance with a foe who has shown no reverence to our gods and heroes, and who has burned their statues and houses." The league was renewed with Sparta for mutual defense and offense, in spite of seductive offers from Mardonius; but the Spartans displayed both indifference and selfishness to any interests outside the Peloponnesus. They fortified the Isthmus of Corinth, but left Attica undefended. Mardonius accordingly marched to Athens, and again ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... so Henry began to use seductive wiles in this affair of washing a wagon. It was not until he began to spin a wheel on the tree, and the sprinkling water flew everywhere, that the boy was visibly moved. He had been seated on the sill of the carriage-house door, but at the beginning of ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... a custom be either through the influence of fashion, or its own seductive nature, or any other cause, very generally (which is the second case) connected with its abuse, and the abuse be also of the nature supposed, then the user or practiser, if the custom be unnecessary, throws himself wantonly into danger of evil, contrary to the watchfulness ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... fanatically French, the new Seigneur had set himself to revive certain old traditions, customs, and privileges of the Seigneurial position. He was reactionary, seductive, generous, and at first he captivated the hearts of Pontiac. He did more than that. He captivated Madelinette Lajeunesse. In spite of her years in Paris— severe, studious years, which shut out the social world and the temptations of Bohemian life—Madelinette retained a strange ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... attained as yet, is high and pure. No one can walk along our streets and not see how debased and sensual our tastes have become. The saying of Burke (so unworthy of a great man), that vice loses half its evil by losing all its grossness, is practically acted upon, and voluptuous and seductive figures, recommended only by a soft effeminacy, swarm our shop-windows and defile our drawing-rooms. It is impossible to over-state the extent to which they minister to, and increase the foul sins of, a corrupt ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... from the wedding, and I am bringing you for the first time into our home—to be alone with you for the first time—quite alone with my shy little darling! All this evening I have longed for nothing but you. When I watched the seductive figures of the Tarantella, my blood was on fire; I could endure it no longer, and that was why I brought you ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... seemed to have weighed too heavily on her head. She had untwisted it, and thrown it back over her shoulders. The old man looked at her flowing hair, as it lay red over the black shawl—at her supple, long-fingered hand, as it slid down the banisters—at the smooth, seductive grace of every movement that took her further and further away from him. "The night will go quickly," he said to himself, as she passed from his view; "I shall dream of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... his rare reminiscent moods, that Browning felt the artistic impulse stirring within him, like the rising of the sap in a tree. He remembered his mother's music, and hoped to be a musician: he recollected his father's drawings, and certain seductive landscapes and seascapes by painters whom he had heard called "the Norwich men," and he wished to be an artist: then reminiscences of the Homeric lines he loved, of haunting verse-melodies, moved him most ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... revolting, we find was the practice of our own forefathers, offering up as burnt offerings the lamb or the ox; hence we cannot censure this people, but, from a comparison of conditions, credit them with a more strict observance of our Holy Book than pride and seductive fashions permit ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... and the valley, the elemental play and succession and the perpetual presence of the infinite sky. In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity. Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect. The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... poverty, obloquy, or death could induce her to smother it. Neither wealth, nor fame, nor tyrant fashion, nor all that the high position of her birth had to offer, could bribe her to abate one syllable of her testimony against the seductive system.... Let us hope that South Carolina will yet count this noble, brave, excellent woman above all her past heroes. She it was, more than all the rest of us put together, who called out what was good ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... volumes were in no way seductive. They boasted not the most elementary drawings to help the reader; not the slightest woodcut to give a direct idea of the insects described; of their shape, aspect, or physiognomy; and a simple sketch, however poor, is often worth more than long and laborious descriptions. The first ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... Knew," Francis Wilson has preserved a number of these touching "notes" to Shackelford, in prose and verse, but none of them equals in the shrewd, seductive style, of which Field was master, the following, which was composed with becoming hilarity ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... force and quality as may fit men, far better than the old morality, for the purposes of such a state as theirs, and may go much further in supporting their power and destroying their enemies. They have therefore chosen a selfish, flattering, seductive, ostentatious vice, in the place of plain duty. True humility, the basis of the Christian system, is the low, but deep and firm foundation of all real virtue. But this, as very painful in the practice, and little imposing in the appearance, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a man whose sister was in the world. She was young and vain, and the world was gay and seductive. Without a hand to guide and guard her, what evils might not befall? She was sunk already in shame and degradation, and he had put it out of his power to save her. Whatever had happened in the past, whatever might happen in the future, he ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... a long Talma of crimson cashmere, and her face was in that most seductive of frames, a scoop bonnet of dark green velvet, For a fleeting second her eyes met his, and then her lashes fell. But he was aware, when he had turned away, that she was looking at him again. He grew uneasy. He wondered whether ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... great is always discontented with his work, ready to rub out and begin again. He follows a bee, and never quite touches that which drew him on. Plainly, the mere ability to do is a dry straw, but through it our seeker tastes an intoxicating, seductive liquor, from which he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... after the era of their highest efforts,—the desire to make life one long holiday, dividing it between tournaments and the dalliance of courts of love, or between archery-meetings (skilfully substituted by royal command for less useful exercises), and the seductive company of "tumblers," "fruiterers," and "waferers." Furthermore, one may notice in all classes a far from eradicated inclination to superstitions of every kind,—whether those encouraged or those ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Orations, a very few books of Seneca, some things of the poets, and such few volumes of his own sect as were written in Latin and neatly, and was daily practised in speaking, he acquired a certain eloquence, which proved the more pleasing and seductive because under the guidance of a good wit, and with a kind of natural gracefulness. Is it not thus, as I recall it, O Lord my God, Thou judge of my conscience? before Thee is my heart, and my remembrance, Who didst at that time direct me by the hidden mystery of ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... Last of the Barons,—the play of human passion and adventure, intensity of reproduction however inaccurate in detail; it has "go," intelligibility, memorability. The characters interest us, the scenes amuse us, the pictures are not forgotten. The stately beauty of Hypatia, the seductive fascination of Pelagia, the childlike nature of Philammon, the subtle cynicism of Raphael Aben-Ezra, the mighty audacity of the Goths, the fanaticism of Cyril, and the strange clash of three elements of civilisation,—Graeco-Roman, Christian, Teutonic—give us definite ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... though she listened to the chanting of demon voices underground, . . and again, with her waving white hands, appearing to summon spirits downward from their wanderings in upper air. Her figure was in perfect harmony with the seductive grace of her gestures,—not only her twinkling feet, but her whole body danced,—her very features bespoke entire abandonment to the frenzy of rapid movement,—her large black eyes flashed with something of fierceness as well as languor; her raven hair streamed ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... from the grass, fresher and more penetrating than that which exhaled from the trees around him; the warm and balmy air which enveloped him for the first time for many years past; the ineffable enjoyment of liberty in an open country, spoke to the prince in so seductive a language, that notwithstanding the preternatural caution, we would almost say dissimulation of his character, of which we have tried to give an idea, he could not restrain his emotion, and breathed a sigh of ecstasy. Then, by degrees, he raised ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to them with sufficient zeal to make henceforth a decent though never a brilliant record. His heart was already elsewhere. For some time past he had been nourishing his soul on forbidden fruit,—books that had to be smuggled in and were of course all the more seductive for that very reason. With a few intimates—Scharffenstein, the Von Hovens and Petersen—he formed a sort of literary club which read and discussed things. What they read spurred them to imitation and to mutual criticism. Presently they commenced sending their ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... credit to myself for this; circumstances favored me. Shortly I quitted the land of temptation where I had been born, and was back again up North living on dining cars and in hotels, with nothing more seductive to resist than processed pastry and machine-made shortcakes and Thousand Islands dressing; which made the fight all the easier to win, especially as regards the last named. I sometimes wonder why, with a thousand islands to choose from, the official salad mixer of the average ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... November it lies hot, still, and unbearable, sick with violent unrelieving storms; then on until April, chill, quiescent, drinking its scant rain and scanter snows; from April to the hot season again, blossoming, radiant, and seductive. These months are only approximate; later or earlier the rain-laden wind may drift up the water gate of the Colorado from the Gulf, and the land sets its ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... he hastily disengaged himself from the arms of Don Manuel, and endeavouring to conceal his own emotion, gave the word of command. He bounded lightly on his spirited barb, and the martial display of his men, the glitter of armour, and the seductive prospect of future glory and renown, powerfully contributed to dispel the cloud that hung over him. Yet it was a sad parting, for there was something peculiarly affecting in the sight of a father who, like Monteblanco, found ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... of her hundred triumphs still shines upon her palaces, baths, and temples. The Roman people, diminished in number, but unaltered in character, still frequented the baths of Nero, of Agrippa, of Diocletian; and Sidonius recommends instead baths less splendid, but less seductive to the senses.[13] ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... habit prevails to an alarming extent throughout the country, but no race is so dependent on this seductive and fatal stimulant as the Chinese. There are several hundred dens in San Francisco where, for a very moderate sum, the coolie may repair, and revel in dreams that ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... and surveyed her as she crossed the floor toward him. He had been expecting some such seductive French beauty as he had occasionally seen on the stage on the rare occasions when he went to a play; so that the trimness of this little figure in widow's dress, with white bands and cuffs, after the English fashion, somewhat disconcerted him. Unaccustomed to the ways of banks, Diane half offered ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... between her and 'Chopin' struck him. The swaying he had noticed in her walk was in her playing too, and the Nocturne she had chosen and the soft darkness of her eyes, the light on her hair, as of moonlight from a golden moon. Seductive, yes; but nothing of Delilah in her or in that music. A long blue spiral from his cigar ascended and dispersed. 'So we go out!' he thought. 'No more ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... briskly towards him, her short skirt yielding the seductive rustle of the silk beneath it. Her movements were beyond words in grace. Her tall figure, so beautifully proportioned, and so daintily rounded, displayed the becoming coat-frock she usually wore in business to ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... more successful. His fur had thickened, and, like all good voles, he had the sense to defer his exit until the evening. Still, even when he had reached the mature age of three weeks, the murky, warm atmosphere below ground proved more seductive than any other, and he spent the greater portion of his existence there, sleeping, nest-making, or fighting with a companion ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... Middleton. But the man of law shook his head, and, though deferentially, declined to have any active concern with the matter that threatened to lead him beyond the bounds which he allowed himself, into a seductive but perilous region. ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that same day, he walked into Ballochcoil, and when he returned, he offered her, with a solemn twinkle in his eye, a good-sized paper bag of the seductive sweetmeat; taking up his position on the top of a low dyke, and watching her, while she proceeded to make of that plump white bag, a lank and emaciated bag, surprising to behold. He sat and looked on, enjoying his idleness with the zest ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... hundred and thirty paces. He had counted them when his plan only floated through his brain like a vague dream. At that time, he himself would not have believed it capable of realization; he merely dallied in fancy with a chimera which was both terrible and seductive. But a month had elapsed, and he had already begun to view it in a different light. Although he reproached himself throughout his soliloquies with irresolution and a want of energy, he had accustomed himself, little by little, and, indeed, in spite of himself, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... carefully-selected specimens, and, until this could be attained, other acquisitions need not be sought for. In making purchases, such an object, steadily kept in view, exercises a powerful influence against the seductive attractions of 'great bargains,' which often turn out to be great misfortunes to a museum. Moreover, in accepting donations, it is sometimes convenient to be able to refer to a fixed plan. Where room is scanty, as in most museums, nothing is more subversive ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... popular majority in the Assembly withstood Mr. Dickinson's rhetoric, and, to quote the forcible language of Bancroft, "proceeded to an act which in its consequences was to influence the world." That is to say, they carried the appointment. Franklin likewise set aside Dickinson's seductive counsels, and ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... an inch or two long, to whom any leaf is ample screen, to note every movement lest he slip out of sight, and to make memorandum of each morsel of food he gets. There were, also, of course, the most seductive sounds about me; never so many birds came near. Cat-birds whispered softly behind my back; a vireo cried plaintively over my head; the towhee bunting boldly perched on a low bush, and saluted me with his peculiar cry; flickers uttered their ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... most fantastic part of the scene—the wooing of the nymph by the gorilla. It was a kind of dance itself—eccentric and prankish, with the nymph in coquettish and seductive retreat, followed by the gorilla as he sang "I'll Woo ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... was low in the west, and the breeze soft and languorous that came up from the south, charged with the seductive odor of the sea. Children freshly befurbelowed, were gathering for their games under the oaks. Their ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... years, every day and night of which was a battle with the visions. He left two sheepskins to as many bishops, and one haircloth shirt to two favorite disciples—they had been his armor against the visions. Finally, lest the seductive goblins should assail him in death, he bade the disciples lose him by burial in an unknown place. Sergius, my good friend"—here the Greek drew nearer, and laid a hand lightly on the monk's flowing sleeve—"I heard some of your replies to my father, and respect ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... gone out from their own walls to sue or receive judgment; but so seductive and treacherous were the professions of Ivan that, unsuspicious of his designs, they consented to appear before his throne. Throughout the whole of these encroachments on the ancient usages in which the rights of the people resided, he appeared to be lifted above all personal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... seductive, and we do not become slaves at the tap of a fan, when the hand that holds it is palsied and withered. We have in the volume before us the melancholy spectacle of an aged female of quality setting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... of money, he had also a rude sense of honor, which taught him to be faithful to his employer. He did want the money, and then there was something in our hero's look that made him pretty sure that he would keep his promise. So he put away the seductive temptation, ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... spoor of so many odours, warned him that something disquieting was at hand. He felt a nameless horror as the sinister bitter odour of honeysuckle, sandalwood, and aloes echoed from the sacred grove. A score of seductive young witches pranced in upon their broomsticks, and without dismounting surrounded the garden god. A battalion of centaurs charged upon them. The vespertine hour was nigh, and over this iron landscape there floated ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... dilemma of the piece, called upon to sacrifice that cloistral whiteness to sisterly affection, become in a moment the ground of strong, contending passions, she develops a new character and shows herself suddenly of kindred with those strangely conceived women, like Webster's Vittoria, who unite to a seductive sweetness something of a dangerous and tigerlike changefulness of feeling. The swift, vindictive anger leaps, like a white flame, into this white spirit, and, stripped in a moment of all convention, she stands before us clear, detached, columnar, among the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... of escaping with the machine himself by night that he refused to admit that Usanga was entirely capable of handling it alone and therefore in no further need of help or instruction, and so in the mind of the black there formed a determination to outwit the white man. The lure of the twenty-four seductive wives proved in itself a sufficient incentive and there, too, was added his desire for the white girl whom he had long since determined ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... spite of her rude and uncertain accompaniment, she was dancing it with a grace, precision, and lightness that was wonderful; in spite of its doubtful poses and seductive languors she was dancing it with the artless gayety and innocence—perhaps from the suggestion of her tiny figure—of a mere child among an audience of children. Dancing it alone she assumed the parts of the man and woman; ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... newspapers and enjoy a bowl of punch. Until an arch fellow from Dublin came to be master of the chief coffee-house, nine o'clock was the hour for these worthy mercantile gentlemen to be at home in the evening. The seductive Irish stranger began his wiles by placing a few nice cold relishing things on the table, and so gradually led the way to hot suppers and midnight symposia. Towards the end of his college-session, Carlyle was introduced to a club which gave him great satisfaction. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... mind like Motley's, the department of history presented the most attractive features. There could honestly be no dabbling with the specious and seductive alchemy of Fiction. Truth had molded every period of the world's life. Truth defied had tripped up nations in their headlong race after dominion and unrighteous power. Truth victorious had smiled upon their steady ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... told Arethusa she was very likely to be needing Miss Letitia's sort, when after her second glass of a beverage of a most seductive taste, she expressed a desire for a third drink of this new ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... of knowledge from which we may view the pomps and vanities of the world, realizing the superior insight that gives power, then comes the decisive question—shall God or mammon gain our allegiance? Shall we forego the seductive allurements of mortal thought (which is really only the negative thought or the false power called the world's beliefs reflected upon us), or shall we, in ringing tones cry out, 'Get thee behind me, adversary (or opposer). Thou shalt worship the ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... observed that I propose no guarantee of absolute security. Not being a sufferer from delirium tremens I can live without it. Security is no doubt the Militarists' most seductive bait to catch the coward's vote. But their method makes security impossible, They undertook to secure the English in Egypt from an imaginary Islam rising by the Denshawai Horror, as a result of which nobody has ventured to suggest that we should trust the Egyptian army in this conflict, though ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... which is only betrayed by murmurs of horror, is not of the kind to make a dramatic career seductive; and besides the old actor had always hidden in a corner of his heart the bucolic ideal which is in the heart of almost all artists. He sighed for an old age of leisure, and the comfortable dignity of a retired shopkeeper; the house in the country, where he could live with his family, ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... not have been assured of the moral value, he was so convinced of the seductive powers of poetry that he deliberately utilized them to make palatable the forbidding thoughts of his essay On the Nature of Things. The long passage is worth quoting entire because his comparison is borrowed so frequently by renaissance critics ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... of course, as graceful and elegant, as witty and seductive, as she could possibly manage to be; for here were all the ladies to outshine, and all the gentlemen to charm,—and Mr. Lawrence, especially, to capture and subdue. Her little arts to effect his subjugation ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... nature as an earthquake rocks the solid plain. Though not surprised at her appearance, for Edith's schemes had all been foreseen, he felt surprise at his own indifference. So utterly had she gone out of his thought, that her sudden appearance, lovely and seductive as of old, gave him no twinge of hate, fear, repugnance, ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... ultra-maleness and turn gladly to the ultra-femaleness. Also, in keeping our women as feminine as possible, we see to it that when we turn to them we find the thing we want always in evidence. Well, the atmosphere of this place was anything but seductive. The very numbers of these human women, always in human relation, made them anything but alluring. When, in spite of this, my hereditary instincts and race-traditions made me long for the feminine response in Ellador, instead of withdrawing so that I should want her more, she deliberately ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... early master appeals to me than his greater pupil. I well remember how, as a boy of fifteen, in the old National Gallery, I would linger long before Raphael's "St. Catherine." There was no picture in the whole gallery that appealed to my youthful brain as that picture appealed, with its seductive blend of feminine grace and heavenly aspiration. But a little later the glory of Rubens suddenly broke on my vision. I could never look again with the same eyes on Raphael. By an intellectual effort I can appreciate the gracious plenitude of ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... Surely Inez could not be encouraging a secret intrigue! Oh! no! she was too artless, too pure, too ingenuous! But then the Spanish females were so prone to love and intrigue; and music and moonlight were so seductive, and Inez had such a tender soul languishing in every look.—"Oh!" would the poor scholar exclaim, clasping his hands, "oh, that I could but once behold those loving eyes beaming on ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... that Mrs. Dupont, and those connected with her, think otherwise. They are presuming on Gaskins' being in love with you. Mrs. Dupont can be very seductive. Little by little she has drawn the Lieutenant into her net. Believing him engaged to you, they have him now where he must either pay money for silence or be exposed. Just how it was worked, I do not know. The shooting last ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... his contemporaries for not having learned long ago what the modern Voltaire had to offer them. "Even his excellences are wonderfully uniform," he says: "simple naturalness, transparent clearness, vivacious mobility, seductive charm. Warmth and emphasis are also not wanting where they are needed, and Voltaire's innermost nature always revolted against stiltedness and affectation; while, on the other hand, if at times wantonness or passion descend to an unpleasantly ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... odd bits of rusty iron. The first thing was to provide the breakfast for the following morning. This their landlady offered to do for them. The next thing was to go to bed utterly wearied and worn out. They both slept soundly, and both woke much refreshed and full of buoyant hope. A pleasant and seductive vista lay before them—seductive and pleasant, although they were in Nelson Square, as that which we see in one of Turner's Italian pictures—a temple at the side, a lake in front and beyond it a valley embosomed in woods and ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... most pathetic sight to be witnessed on that sad, chill, autumn night, was the small boy in a threadbare gray sweater and shabby cap who stood gazing wistfully into the seductive windows of Pfiffel's Home Bakery. The sight of him standing there with his small nose plastered against the glass, looking with silent yearning upon the jelly rolls and icing cakes, was enough to arouse pity ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... whether some vindictive spirit of rage provoked the huge beast; or that he fancied a rival bull were challenging him to mortal combat, just as in the case of the fellow, whom Sebattis had previously lured within gunshot, with his seductive moose call. ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... gave him with regard to His servant Job. He was allowed to throw temptations in her way, to cause her strange sufferings, to persecute her by fearful manifestations of his visible presence, to haunt her under various shapes, some seductive in their appearance, others repulsive and terrific in their nature; but he was not permitted (as, thanks be to God, he never is permitted,) to deceive or to injure His faithful servant, who for every trial of the sort obtained some divine favour in compensation; who for every vision of diabolical ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... measure, just la, la!" and she started the melody. There were two long paths of moonlight through the wide-open shutters. Moonlight and sunshine were welcome visitors. She held out her hands. Just that way she had charmed others, and he yielded to the seductive influence. For, oh, she was so ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... his country, and nevertheless, despite his treason, remains an idol for half Germany, which, dazzled by him, accepts unresisting the poison poured out by him in his periodic pamphlets, wrapped up and protected as he is by the seductive mantle of a great poetic reputation. Incited by him, the princes of Germany, who have forgotten their promises, will allow nothing free or good to be accomplished; or if anything of the kind is accomplished in spite of them, they will league themselves with the French to annihilate it. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... that the author gives a no less clever and a much more convincing impression of the normal, settled and pleasant characters who are incidental to the plot. Make for yourself the acquaintance of the charming Wilfred Vail and the most amusing and seductive Cockney artiste, Betty Barnfield, and you will admit, however pessimistic your views, that there may be something ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... were always held at a distance by a certain diffidence of his. There were rare occasions—when he was in the heat of work or of ideas—when he forgot to be shy, but they were so exceptional that no flattery was quite so seductive as being taken for a moment into Hartwell's confidence. Even in the matter of opinions—the commonest of currency in our circle—he was niggardly and prone to qualify. No man ever guarded his mystery more effectually. There was a singular, intense spell, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... what a surprise it was indeed! He never now will leave my side, my legs, or my presence, but I cannot but think, alas, of that seductive piece of mutton!" ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... his tale of thirty millions of souls, as computed in 1789, or the Assembly's computation of twenty-six millions of that year, or even M. Necker's twenty-five millions in 1780. I hear that there are considerable emigrations from France,—and that many, quitting that voluptuous climate, and that seductive Circean liberty, have taken refuge in the frozen regions and under the British ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... if awaked from slumber, and shaking off the dust of libraries, came rushing in from every side—thoughts which Germany had suffered to sleep among her poets and philosophers, every one which could lend a seductive or striking form to a conviction already made! Henceforth German imperialism had a theory of its own. Taught in schools and universities, it easily moulded to itself a nation already broken-in to ...
— The Meaning of the War - Life & Matter in Conflict • Henri Bergson
... the passers-by; these manners, stamped with a sort of respectful familiarity, seemed to belong to another age. Scarcely had Miss Dimpleton and her companion appeared in the long passage occupied by those who sold bedding, than they were surrounded by the most seductive offers. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... Mary Leighton were chattering incessantly, and did not pay much attention to us. Kilian drove pretty fast almost all the way, but sometimes forgot himself when Mary was too seductive, and let the ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... meshes of that pantheistic idolatry which kneels only to "Natural Laws"; and spring as suppliants to Him, who made Law possible. We take our portion of happiness and prosperity, and while it lasts we wander far, far away in the seductive land of philosophical speculation, and revel in the freedom and irresponsibility of Agnosticism; and lo! when adversity smites, and bankruptcy is upon us, we toss the husks of the "Unknowable and Unthinkable" behind us, and flee as the Prodigal who knew ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... o'clock. He had finished reading his second act, and the reading had been a bitter disappointment. The idea floated, pure and seductive, in his mind; but when he tried to reduce it to a precise shape upon paper, it seemed to escape in some vague, mysterious way. Enticingly, like a butterfly it fluttered before him; he followed like a child, eagerly—his brain set on the mazy flight. It led ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... which left sober analysis far behind in the race. The girl's exuberant vitality asserted itself all over her, from head to foot. Her figure—taller than her sister's, taller than the average of woman's height; instinct with such a seductive, serpentine suppleness, so lightly and playfully graceful, that its movements suggested, not unnaturally, the movements of a young cat—her figure was so perfectly developed already that no one who saw her could have supposed that she was only eighteen. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... subjects of the House of Savoy had to bear many grievous acts of injustice, from which they were exempted by the express words of the royal edicts. However, they endured all these irritations from papal lawlessness without being led away by the seductive promises and the illusory hopes of freedom and happiness which so largely unsettled the continent of Europe by the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Indeed so sensitive were they of anything which might bring their loyalty into question that they actually ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... drooped her eyes in a confusion, which, because more than half of it was genuine, made her look very fascinating. Nothing is more seductive than a little truth. As Bressant looked at her, and thought of what lie had done at that last interview, soft thrills crept sweetly through his blood, and he felt a most ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... in all the long list of brilliant dissertations on every subject under the sun, no English essayist should have yielded a word under the seductive title of "Gossip." Even Leigh Hunt, who wrote vivaciously and exquisitely on so many light topics, was not attracted by the enticing possibilities of this subject to which both the learned and the unlearned are ready at all times to bestow a willing ear or eye. One usually conceives ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... With that first seductive kiss the soul-stirring melody was full born within her, as a world is called into the firmament by one spoken word of God. And as she played, Theodore moved silently toward her, for the fiddle was flashing out the fervor of the kisses ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... caution born of experience, lit one of his own cigars and made room for Geoff at his side, an idea came to him so seductive, so simple and so compelling that he wondered why he had never thought of it before. When Geoff asked: "Are you down here for long, or are you going back on Monday?" ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... pair of cavalier's jack-boots, standing just below, most truculent and ungainly of foot-gear, wooden, hinged, leather-covered. A trophy of Polynesian spears, shields, and canoe paddles. A bronze Antinous, seductive of bearing and dainty of limb, but roughened by green rust. A collection of old sporting prints, softly coloured, covering a bare space of wall, beneath a moose skull, from the broad flat antlers of which hung a pair of Canadian snow-shoes. Along the inside wall of the great room, placed at regular ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... should pick it up, it might become the means of identifying its owner and obstructing his plans. But these were mere contingencies. The probability was that young Helwyse would ultimately appear at his uncle's house, and would there be ensnared in the seductive meshes of Manetho's web. The ring was most likely at the bottom of the Sound. So, smiling his subtle feminine smile, the Egyptian fell asleep, to dream of the cordial welcome he ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... PAS"],—while the Empress-Queen was writing her the most flattering letters. The Prince of Prussia, King's eldest Brother, wished ardently to obtain her Portrait, and had applied to me for it; as had Prince Henri to my Predecessor. The King, who has such gallant and seductive ways when he likes, could certainly have reconciled this "celebrated Lady",—a highly important Improper Female to him ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... second act which he could admire without enormous reservations. The writing in the chorus of the "Flower Maidens" was, of course, irresistible—little cries, meaningless by themselves, but, when brought together, they created an enchanted garden, marvellous and seductive. But it was the duet that followed that compelled his admiration. Music hardly ever more than a recitative, hardly ever breaking into an air, and yet so beautiful! There the notes merely served to lift the words, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... wont to do. I trembled to think of the ruined purses this day's performances might result in. I could not help reflecting bodingly upon the intemperate zeal with which middle-aged men are apt to surfeit themselves upon a seductive folly which they have tasted for the first time. And yet I did not feel that I had a right to be surprised at the state of things which was giving me so much concern. These men had been taught from infancy to revere, almost to worship, the holy places whereon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in a seductive voice. "Such an opportunity never before was accorded you and may never again be offered. It is the king for whom you are ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... Narayan Singh, the indomitable Sikh. (Who cuts throats with an outward thrust.) Later the multimillionaire, Meldrum Strange, hires them to fight evil. Then, Athelbert King, a hero of novels in his own right, joins up, making a quartet. Other characters from Mundy's novels appear—the seductive and dangerous Princess Yasmini; Cotswold Ommony, the forester of India; the Babu, Chullunder Ghose; the Gunga Sahib, ...
— Materials Toward A Bibliography Of The Works Of Talbot Mundy • Bradford M. Day, Editor
... and delightful visions of her. A clever creature! Uncannily clever! Wealthy! Under thirty! Broad-minded! No provincial prejudices!... Her voice, that always affected his spine! Her delicious flattery!... She was no mean actress either! And the multifariousness of her seductive charm! In fact, she was a regular woman of the world, such as you would read about—if you did read!... He was sitting with her again in the obscurity of the discussion-room at the Azure Society's establishment. His heart ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... the hour, of course, was the wanderer Zotique. He stood in the main room of the house, the kitchen, near the long improvised table, with its burden of seductive viands, and shook hands with the guests without even the slightest tinge of the superiority which it was thought he ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... stimulating scent of roses moved with every zephyr, and the closer odors of jessamine, honeysuckle, and orange flowers hung heavily in the hollows. It seemed to Courtland like the mourning of beautiful and youthful widowhood, seductive even in its dissembling trappings, provocative in the contrast of its own still strong virility. Everywhere the grass grew thick and luxuriant; the quick earth was teeming with the germination of the ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Jump, then, Finn!" The gate was less than five feet high, and the seductive odour of this peculiar meat floated just beyond it in the still night air. Finn drew back a pace or two, and then, with a beautiful spring, cleared the gate easily. While giving Finn the piece of meat he had ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... curiosity. There is hardly anything in the world which Godfrey will not find out if he is given time. A secret has the same attraction for him that cheese has for a mouse. Some day, I hope, he will find a trap baited with a seductive mystery. ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... at that time is thus graphically sketched. "He is middle-sized, of an agreeable countenance, and has a military air. To personal advantages he joins the more seductive distinction of manners simple, natural, and full of good taste and ease. At first sight I was struck with his resemblance to Prince Eugene, and to the Empress Josephine, his grandmother. But I did not remark a like resemblance to the Emperor. But by ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... raised her smiling, seductive face. She was young—younger than Concepcion; less battered by the world's contacts than Concepcion. She had the inexpressible virtue and power of youth. He was nearing fifty. And she, perhaps half his age, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... eats, my lad, I buy everything in sight that looks worth while—if Mr. Pffeffenfifer sells. Mr. Pffeffenfifer sells in such a soulfully seductive way that eats acquire virtues above and beyond their own base selves. Mr. Pffeffenfifer can infuse soul into a sausage. Behold now, eats the most alluring. See, what's this! Ah, yes, here we have, item: Salmi, redolent of garlic! Here again a head cheese, succulent and savoury; ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... intelligent oversight and skilful direction, the more you increase the love of labor. We have already manufacturing communities so well supplied with tasks for brains and hands, that everybody works, or would do so but for Circe and her seductive hollow-ware. We are beginning to push machinery into agriculture, where it will have still greater scope. With the means we now have, in the enormously increased production of iron, our almost omnipresent and omnipotent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... B."—and I called him Mr. B. instead of Jim, because I wished to be severe and yet retain the basis of familiarity—"however low we may set the standard of man, I think man as a rule prefers his home to the most seductive roof-garden life ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... would think so—it's only human nature. But Otto is a handsome man and has a fine seductive voice; and mind you, music has charms to soothe the breast, savage or otherwise; as for your prospects, you may apply to me for a testimonial of ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... binder to, spare the margins; and, almost equally of course, the binder, durus arator, will cut them down with his abominable plough. One is almost tempted to say that margins should always be left untouched, for if once the binder begins to clip he is unable to resist the seductive joy, and cuts the paper to the quick, even into the printed matter. Mr. Blades tells a very sad story of a nobleman who handed over some Caxtons to a provincial binder, and received them back MINUS 500 pounds worth of margin. Margins make a book worth perhaps 400 ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... foreign cabinets, and to detach venal powers from the coalition, and to foment revolutionary symptoms in Belgium. Dumouriez alone knew the channels by which this money was to flow. His exhausted personal fortune, his costly tastes, his attachment to a seductive woman, Madame de Beauvert, sister to Rivarol; his intimacy with men of unprincipled character and irregular habits,—reports of extortion charged on his ministry, and falling, if not on him on those he trusted, tarnished his character in the eyes of Madame Roland and her husband. Probity ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of the engine, in chapter two, the non-human thing is a personality, even if it is not beautiful. When it takes on the ritual of decorative design, this new vitality is made seductive, and when it is an object of nature, this seductive ritual becomes a new pantheism. The armies upon the mountains they are defending are rooted in the soil like trees. They resist invasion with the same elementary stubbornness with which the oak ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... the fact that it is a defect which rarely goes with a bad heart. Had Cicero been less vain, he might have been more ambitious; as it was, his ridiculous self-conceit injured no one but himself. His wordiness is of all his faults the most seductive and the most conspicuous, and procured for him even in his lifetime the epithet of Asiatic. He himself was sensible that his periods were overloaded. As has been well said, he leaves nothing to the imagination. [61] Later critics ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... belongs to an ancient family, and in passing from the regions of monkish superstition to those of pure mythology we find that, like her kinsman the werewolf, she had once seen better days. Christianity made a demon of the Mara, and adopted the theory that Satan employed these seductive creatures as agents for ruining human souls. Such is the character of the knight's wife, in the monkish legend just cited. But in the Danish tale the Mara appears as one of that large family of supernatural wives who are permitted to live with mortal men under certain conditions, but who ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... appointed hour Count Konrad and his company went silently forth, escorting a score more who carried sacks of the newly baked bread on their backs, or leathern receptacles filled with wine, as well as a stout cask of the same seductive fluid. Near the Schloss Bernstein the rescuing party came upon the Archbishop's outpost, who raised the alarm before the good sword of the Captain cut through the cry. There were bugle calls throughout the camp and the sound of men hurrying to their weapons, but all the noise of preparation ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... house the dimmed headlights of what was presumably Jerry Mitchell's hired car shone faintly like enlarged fire-flies. A boat of some description was tooting reflectively far down the river. Such was the seductive influence of the time and the scene that Jimmy might have remained there indefinitely, weaving dreams, had he not been under the necessity of making his way down to the library. It was his task to close the French windows after his ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... ever let you out of my sight? Why did I not remain in servitude and slavery, rather than let you into the care of the cruel, false-hearted stranger? O villanous deceiver! O infamous prevaricator! Parson Dilman, why did I listen to your seductive promises?" ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... sure the jury were all his friends; they had known him when he was little "barefoot Dave Dunne." Still, they were captivated by this new oratory, warm, vivid, and inspiring, delivered to the accompaniment of dulcet and seductive tones that transported them into an enchanted world. Their senses were stirred in the same way they would be ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... a fearful thing for young men, released from all the restraints of their native land, to find the house of revelry and dancing so near the house of God, and the gates of hell, alluring by all the fascinating and seductive attractions of harmonious sounds, so near ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... This is the truth. But what has happened? Instead of getting hold of man's freedom, Thou has enlarged it still more! Hast Thou again forgotten that to man rest and even death are preferable to a free choice between the knowledge of Good and Evil? Nothing seems more seductive in his eyes than freedom of conscience, and nothing proves more painful. And behold! instead of laying a firm foundation whereon to rest once for all man's conscience, Thou hast chosen to stir up ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky |
