"Voluptuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of her weak arms round his neck thrilled him with an exquisite tenderness, a voluptuous pity. Surely, surely in his heart of hearts he had never loved any woman as he loved her. She comforted him; she whispered things too sacred for perfect utterance. It struck him from time to time that she had no clear notion of the nature of the wrongs she forgave, just as ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... "A voluptuous little wench, that Carmen! Keeping her for yourself, eh? But you will have to give her up. Belongs to the Church, you know. But don't let our worthy Don Wenceslas hear of her good looks, for he'd ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... on the fire. Hot water had the value of champagne. To take a warm hip-bath was an immense enterprise of heating, fetching, decanting, and general derangement of the entire house; and at best the bath was not hot; it always lost its virtue on the stairs and landing. And to splash—one of the most voluptuous pleasures in life—was forbidden by the code. Mrs Nixon would actually weep at a splashing. Splashing was immoral. It was as wicked as amorous dalliance in a monastery. In the shop-house godliness was child's ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Irish air so simply and tunably that Rolfe leaned back in his chair, with half closed eyes, in soft voluptuous ecstasy. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... a miracle out of the Arabian Nights. Your backyard becomes voluptuous with pomegranate and almond trees, lemon groves, and hedges of flowering cactus, dazzling banks of azaleas, marble- basined fountains, in which chestnut-and-white pond-herons step daintily amid exotic water-lilies, while golden pheasants ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... remember, has blamed the Sapphic intensity of "Antony and Cleopatra," where the lust of the flesh and desire of the eye reign triumphant. Professor Dowden indeed says: "The spirit of the play, though superficially it appear voluptuous, is essentially severe. That is to say, Shakespeare is faithful to the fact." Antony and Cleopatra kill themselves, forsooth, and thus conventional virtue is justified by self-murder. So superficial and false a judgement is a quaint example of mid-Victorian taste: it reminds me ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... the oak-panelled hall (where the essence of mediaeval England lingered) and came to the threshold of the conservatory. It was a scene confusedly beautiful. The air, as it touched his face, was tropically warm and indolent with voluptuous fragrance of flowers and plants. Luxuriant shrubs, with broad-drooping leaves, stood motionless in the heat. Two palm-trees uplifted their heavy plumes forty feet aloft, on slender stalks, brushing the high glass roof. In the midst of ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... a delicate hand, and a winning smile, and you have secured your passport to the satin and brocade of her mansion. A spring is heard to tick, a whisper of caution to some one within follows, and a block broad enough to admit your hat swings open, disclosing the voluptuous splendor of a great hall, the blaze of which flashes upon your senses, and fills you instinctively with curious emotions. Simultaneously a broad, cheerful face, somewhat matronly in its aspect, and enlivened with an urbane smile, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... together!" Then she made herself known to him, and he knew her for his wife, the Lady Budur, daughter of King al-Ghayur, Lord of the Isles and the Seas. So he embraced her and she embraced him, and he kissed her and she kissed him; then they lay down on the bed of pleasure voluptuous, repeating the words of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... from the time Edith left him, he married Abby Wilson. She had grown into a voluptuous though coarse maturity, and was dashing in dress and manner. Her father had recently died, leaving her a fine property. She had always coveted Ben, and did not delay the nuptials from any sense of delicacy, but rather hastened the hour which should ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... less, to feed voluptuous thought, The beauteous forms of Nature wrought,— Fair trees and gorgeous flowers; The breezes their own languor lent; The stars had feelings, which they ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... me now (Wednesday, April 17th, '44). A girl who should have been unhappily conscious of voluptuous hours, her you would call modest in case of her passing with downcast looks. But why, then, is she not so? That girl is immodest who reconciles to herself such things, and yet assumes the look ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... eve of this obscure and neglected young soldier's departure to spread the blessings of Fraternity in Italy, the voluptuous Barras was commissioned by him to announce to the Directory his marriage with Citizeness Tascher Beauharnais. Then began a period of devouring love and war such as the world has never beheld. In the midst of strife ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... the dark lustrous ringlets escaped, her eyes of fire gleamed as if they would burn their orbits. Her round face with its prominent cheek-bones, laughing lips and rather broad nose, that gave it a wild-wood, voluptuous expression, reminded the painter of the faun of the Borghese, a cast of which he had seen and been struck with admiration for its freakish charm. A faint down of moustache accentuated the curve of the full lips. A bosom that seemed ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... stamped their feet to the slow measure; they shouted in chorus the one word "Leap!" raising a ferocious roar; and between whiles the song of voice and strings came to me from a distance, softened and lingering in a voluptuous and pitiless cadence that wrung my heart, and seemed to eat up the remnants of my strength. But what could I have done, even if I had had the strength of a giant, and a most fearless resolution? I should have been shot dead before I had crawled halfway up the ledge. A piercing shriek covered ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... gathered there, from city and country, and bright Roman candles shone o'er fair men and brave women, and sixteen thousand nine hundred and twelve hearts beat happy, while music arose with its voluptuous swell, and soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, or words to that effect. At least that was what a young fellow from Racine told us, who was here to see a specialist to have a splinter from a rocket stick removed ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... nation: given the particular idolatry, it became possible to decipher the character of the idolaters. Where Moloch was worshipped, the people would naturally be found cruel; where the Paphian Venus, it could not be expected that they should escape the taint of a voluptuous effeminacy. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... sister. So long as I strive, while awake, to commit no such {attempt}, let sleep often return with the like appearance. No witness is there in sleep; and yet there is the resemblance of the delight. O Venus and winged Cupid, together with thy voluptuous mother, how great the joys I experienced! how substantial the transport which affected me! How I lay dissolved {in delight} throughout my whole marrow! How pleasing to remember it; although short-lived was that pleasure, and the night ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Amanda. He and Amanda were now very deeply in love again, more in love, he felt, than they had ever been before. They were now writing love-letters to each other and enjoying a separation that was almost voluptuous. She found in the epistolatory treatment of her surrender to him and to the natural fate of women, a delightful exercise for her very considerable powers of expression. Life pointed now wonderfully to the great time ahead when there would be a Cheetah cub in ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... rich and beautiful productions of the tropics. There the sugar-cane and indigo plant attain a perfection unequalled in any other part of North America. There flourish the olive, the fig, the date, the orange, the citron, the pomegranate, and other fruits belonging to the voluptuous climates of the south; with grapes in abundance, that yield a generous wine. In the interior are salt plains; silver mines and scanty veins of gold are said, likewise, to exist; and pearls of a beautiful water are to be fished ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... all other pleasures there is satiety; and after they be used, their verdure departeth, which showeth well that they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures; and that it was the novelty which pleased, not the quality; and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... disdainfully. "Why do I stand here and speak to a priest about a woman? When you take your vows of celibacy you pretend to dislike anything that wears petticoats. But I doubt whether even you could resist the temptation of a handsome face and voluptuous form." ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... to drink, put her to bed, and went away. He did not undress all night; wrote two or three letters, burnt two or three papers, took out a gold locket containing the portrait of a black-browed, black-eyed woman with a bold, voluptuous face, scrutinised her features slowly, and walked up and down ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... attitude of mind—poised—like a diver on a summer day, before he plunges into the glittering green water. A few more days, another meeting, and she knew that she would be immersed—deeply in love. Now she toyed with it, held the moment at arm's length, and let her eyes feast on the seeming voluptuous certainty of it. And when Mr. Arthur began the long preface to the point towards which his mind was set, it sounded distant, aloof, as the monotonous voice of a priest, chanting dull prayers in an empty church, must sound in the ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... higher than her family. The bride, chosen for the honour of mating with the ruler of Florence, was a Roman lady of such noble birth that it was not considered essential that she should bring a substantial dowry. Clarice Orsini was dazzled at her wedding-feast by the voluptuous splendour of the ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... in more swelling whiteness sails Cayster's swan to western gales, [3] When the melodious murmur sings 'Mid her slow-heav'd voluptuous wings." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... that rare and matchless shape termed Grecian; and her mouth—in form, a triumph of all things heavenly, in expression, a triumph of all things hellish. The magnificent turn of its short upper lip, and the soft voluptuous line of its under lip; its sportive dimples and ripe red colour; its even rows of dazzling, pearly teeth were adorable; but they appealed to the senses, and in no sense or shape to the soul. Her brows, slightly irregular in outline, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... glowing fire, during the sleep of a dangerous husband, whose snores would double their joy; to defy both heaven and earth in snatching the boldest of all kisses; to say no word that would not lead to death or at least to sanguinary combat if overheard,—all these voluptuous images and romantic dangers decided the young man. However slight might be the guerdon of his enterprise, could he only kiss once more the hand of his lady, he still resolved to venture all, impelled by the chivalrous and passionate spirit of ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... This is the African hemp plant: it is esteemed for the extraordinary and pleasing voluptuous vacuity of mind which it produces on those who smoke it: unlike the intoxication from wine, a fascinating stupor pervades the mind, and the dreams are agreeable. The kief is the flower and seeds of the plant: it is a strong narcotic, so that ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... the rose knows well a gay voluptuous beetle, whose pleasure is to lie embedded in a fount of beauty. Deep among the incurving petals of the blushing-fragrance, he loses himself in his joys sometimes, till a breezy waft reveals him. And when the sunlight breaks upon his luscious dissipation, few would have the heart to oust him, such ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... position for which he was designed, than by the interpretation of Bacon upon the legends of the Syren coast "When the wise Ulysses passed," says he, "he caused his mariners to stop their ears, with wax, knowing there was in them no power to resist the lure of that voluptuous song. But he, the much experienced man, who wished to be experienced in all, and use all to the service of wisdom, desired to hear the song that he might understand its meaning. Yet, distrusting his own power to be firm in his better purpose, he caused himself to be bound to the mast, that he ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... counties had pictured to themselves this osculation of intellects, and shrugged their shoulders, and decided once more that men were incomprehensible. These great ones in London, falling in love like the rest! But no! Love was a ribald and voluptuous word to use in such a matter as this. It was generally felt that the Reverend Archibald Jones and Miss Chetwynd the elder would lift marriage to what would now ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... he did the like upon Cain, and in short upon the whole World, one Man (Noah) excepted; when he blended the Sons of God, and the Daughters of Hell, for so the Word is understood, together, in promiscuous voluptuous ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... adds an epithet to crulean, which makes the common interpretation doubtful. 'The Germans,' he says (De Mor. Ger. 4.), 'have truces et crulei oculi, fierce, lively blue eyes.' With us, this colour is always indicative of a soft, voluptuous languor. What, then, if we have hitherto mistaken the sense, and, instead of blue, should have said sea-green? This is not an uncommon colour, especially in the north. I have seen many Norwegian seamen with eyes of this hue, which were ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... especially attractive, greenish-grey eyes fringed by long black lashes under curved dark brows contrasting with the warm auburn tint of the hair that showed under her sunhat. Her complexion was dazzlingly fair. Her mouth was rather large and voluptuous with full red lips and even white teeth. Bewitching dimples played in the pink cheeks. Even from a man like Wargrave, fresh from England and consequently more inclined to be critical of female beauty than ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... white, scenting the air over your head, and primroses and violets dappling the turf beneath your feet; it means lambs frisking around their tranquil mothers in the meadows, and children returning at evening with hands and pinafores full of the scented cowslip and the voluptuous woodbine; it means the pouring of wine-blood into empty veins, and the awakening of torpid faculties, and the deeper, stronger pulsations of the heart, and the fresh buoyancy of drooping and submerged spirits, and white clouds full of bird-music, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... heart on the fulsome greeting his dear one received. After a little the father retired, leaving his daughter to the care of the many handsome gallants who danced attendance upon her. The reception did not close until the small hours of the morning. Each waltz became more voluptuous; intoxicated by sensuality, the dancers became more bold, and lust was aroused in every breast. How many sins that reception occasioned, I do not know; this, at least, is sure, that this girl who entered that dancing-hall ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... translucent texture, and just encircling the outline of her oval face. This scarf, hanging down below the waist, but half concealed her white rounded arms, and only partially hindered the view of a figure of the most elegantly voluptuous tournure. Around her waist another scarf of bright scarlet formed a sort of cincture or belt, leaving its long fringed ends to hang over the skirt of her silken robe, and blending its colours with those of the light veil that fell down from her shoulders. It was a costume ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... fagging at school, who had not courage to earn a livelihood by reading the titles of bills in the House of Lords, and whose favourite associates were a blind old lady and an evangelical divine, could have nothing in common with the haughty, ardent, and voluptuous nobleman, the horse-jockey, the libertine, who fought Lord Ligonier in Hyde Park, and robbed the Pretender of his queen. But though the private lives of these remarkable men present scarcely any points of resemblance, their literary lives bear a close analogy to each other. They ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the sculptor Alfred Lenoir, in a remarkable work executed quite at the end of Edmond de Goncourt's life. His white marble bust well expresses the patrician of letters, the collector, the worshipper of all kinds of beauty. A voluptuous thrill seems to stir the nostrils, a flash of sympathetic observation to gleam from the ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... slave-character, not difficult to govern, but without instinct to improve, filled the colony. A colonist would hardly suspect the fiery Africa whose sun ripened the ancestors of his slaves, unless he caught them by accident in the midst of their voluptuous Calenda, or watched behind some tree the midnight orgy of magic and Fetichism. A slave-climate gnawed at the bold edges of their characters and wore them down, as the weather rusted out more rapidly than anywhere else all the iron tools and implements of the colony. The gentler traits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... a headlong rush without fear of collapse; the power to steer instantly in any direction by merely changing the angle of the body; the altered and enormous view of the green world below—looking down upon forests, seas and clouds; the easy voluptuous rhythm of rising and falling in long, swinging undulations; and a hundred other things that simply defy description and can be appreciated only by actual experience, these are some of the delights of the new world of wings and flying. And the fearful joy of very high speed, especially ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... particularly; for like poor Sparks there, my weakness was ever for the petticoats. I had, besides, no petty, contemptible prejudices as to nation, habits, language, color, or complexion; black, brown, or fair, from the Muscovite to the Malabar, from the voluptuous embonpoint of the adjutant's widow,—don't be angry old boy,—to the fairy form of Isabella herself, I loved them all round. But were I to give a preference anywhere I should certainly do so to the West Indians, if it were only for the sake of the planters' ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... may aptly be compared with that of the assassin neophytes, whom, according to the tale, the Old Man of the Mountain was wont to introduce into an enchanted garden, peopled with ravishing houris, whence, after a short enjoyment of the most voluptuous delights, he again thrust them forth into the dark and dismal night of the desert, with nothing remaining of their past pleasures save a wild confusion of the senses, a chaos of images and visions, and a burning desire to recover the lost paradise. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... meditating human fate. And they had pleasures, palaces. They stood, And sat, and went, all men admiring, Men of a day, in its brief life they lived, In its swift dying died. Men of a day, Brave, generous, and noble—not enough. Voluptuous Venice, Genoa superb, Far fascinating meteors that flashed, Then fell forgotten. Do I carp? Not I. Ye love your own, I mine, mine me, amen! O pious pilgrims and ye Genoese, Proceed, much meditating human fate, And meditate this well. A wanderer driven By every adverse gust of evil times. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... caravan yielded, and a pretty gypsy girt appeared in the opening. She was dark-haired, she was bright-eyed, she was warmly colored. She seemed to be about eighteen years of age, but her figure already had a rich Spanish fulness and her carriage was swaying and voluptuous. Most men would have been glad enough to stand for a while in adoration of so pleasing a picture, but AEsop was not as most men. His attitude to women when they concerned him personally was not of adoration. In this case ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... his villa near Puteoli, on the Bay of Naples, with the purpose of enjoying that life of voluptuous ease which he craved more than power and distinction. Here he spent the brief remainder of his life in nocturnal orgies and literary converse, completing his "Memoirs," in which he told, in exaggerated phrase, the story of his life ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... his will, concerns himself not in the slightest degree as to what becomes of his companions, is not an every-day touch. Nor is the strong contrast of the chambers of feast and dalliance—undisturbed, voluptuous, terrestrial-paradisaic—with "the horror and the hell" in the courts below. Nor, last of all, the picture of the more than half innocent Marion, night-garbed or ungarbed, but with sword drawn, first hanging over her slumbering betrayer, then ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... to feel a savage joy, a ferocious pleasure, in employing only the same means chosen by the Lydian king, and turning to account for the murder those very precautions which had been adopted for voluptuous fantasy. ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... seats common to both sexes. The use of the "speculum," or mirror, was also confined to the female sex; indeed, even Pallas or Minerva was represented as shunning its use, as only befitting her more voluptuous fellow-goddess, Venus.] ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... no human hand can improve? You would laugh at me if at this time of day I dealt in duels and ghosts and "womanly" women. As to mere libertinism, you would be the first to remind me that the Festin de Pierre of Moliere is not a play for amorists, and that one bar of the voluptuous sentimentality of Gounod or Bizet would appear as a licentious stain on the score of Don Giovanni. Even the more abstract parts of the Don Juan play are dilapidated past use: for instance, Don Juan's supernatural antagonist hurled those who refuse to repent into lakes of burning brimstone, there ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... readers of French poetry, his operatic poems are those which have rendered his memory illustrious. He died on November 29,1688. It is said that during his last illness he was extremely penitent on account of the voluptuous tendency of his works. All his lyrical dramas are full of beauty, but "Atys," "Phaeton," "Isis," and "Armide" have been ranked the highest. "Armide" was the last of the poet's efforts, and Lulli was so much in love with the opera, when ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men: A thousand hearts beat happily: and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... sympathetic. It was clear that the same passionate intensity which, united with the most exquisite perceptions, enabled her so perfectly to restore the Greek spirit to the Greek form, would as adequately represent the voluptuous southern life. If in the old drama she was sculpture, so in the modern she was painting, not only with the flowing outline, but with all the ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... new venture, the Satin Library, is a pretty enough thing in its satinesque way. The format is pleasant, the book-marker voluptuous, the binding Arty-and-Crafty. We cannot, however, congratulate Mr. Winter on the literary quality of the first volume. Mr. Henry S. Knight, the author of Love in Babylon (2s.), is evidently a beginner, but he is ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... do Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello. Sin for Antony and Cleopatra is not at all the unmixed cup of woe which it proves for Macbeth and his lady. Here at the end the lovers pay the price of lust and folly; but before paying that price, they have had its adequate equivalent in the voluptuous joy of life. Moreover, death loses half its terrors for Antony through the very military vigor of his character; and for Cleopatra, because of the cunning which renders it painless. What impresses us most is not the pathos of their fate, but rather ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... to the curtained window of the sitting-room. All the lights were softened by paper shades of a peculiar hot tint between Indian red and carmine, giving a rich, romantic effect to the gleaming pale enamelled furniture, and to the voluptuous engravings after Sir Frederick Leighton, and the sweet, sentimental engravings after Marcus Stone, and to the assorted knicknacks. The flat had homogeneity, for everything in it, except the stove, had been bought at one shop in ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven—an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... suited to the style of her lineaments; majestically tall and stately, and though attenuated something by the near approach of old age, preserving still the soft and flowing outlines of a form, which had in youth been noted for roundness and voluptuous symmetry. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... commanding all that part of the city; the other by the Alhambra, a royal palace and warrior castle, capable of containing within its alcazar and towers a garrison of forty thousand men, but possessing also its harem, the voluptuous abode of the Moorish monarchs, laid out with courts and gardens, fountains and baths, and stately halls decorated in the most costly style of Oriental luxury. According to Moorish tradition, the king ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Elizabeth resembled her mother, the beautiful Catharine, but was voluptuous and weak. She abandoned herself to puerile amusements and degrading follies. And she was as superstitious as she was debauched. She would continue whole hours on her knees before an image, to which she spoke, and which she ever consulted; ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... dairies that I am told resides the power to retain here below my soul, just ready to fly away. Alas! yes, I am forced to admit the fact; I must say I am very ill, and it is my own fault;—yes, my own undoubted fault. I have drank too deeply of voluptuous ease; I have tasted too often the luscious grapes of forbidden pleasures. I am no longer virtuous enough to wish to see the sun rise, and hence it is that I am suffering intensely in the capacity of a human pincushion, in which, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... comparatively domestic life, with a mistress who at least endeavoured to stimulate some of his higher aspirations, and smiled upon his wearing the sword along with the lyre. In the last episode of his constantly chequered and too voluptuous career, we have the waking of Sardanapalus realized in the transmutation of the fantastical Harold into a practical strategist, financier, and soldier. No one ever lived who, in the same space, more thoroughly ran the gauntlet of existence. ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... I can imagine that there is something rich and voluptuous and sating about amber, its color, and its lustre, and its scent; but for others, not for me. Yea, you have beauty, after all," turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye,—"beauty, after all, as you didn't say just now.—Mr. Willoughby is in the garden. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... his first artist, she would have presented him with his nephew! How different a figure did the same prince make in a reign of dissimilar complexion! The philosophic warrior, who could relax himself into the ornament of a refined court, was thought a savage mechanic, when courtiers were only voluptuous wits. Let me transcribe a picture of Prince Rupert, drawn by a man who was far from having the least portion of wit in that age, who was superior to its indelicacy, and who yet was so overborne by its prejudices, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Bologna, Milan, Florence, Vienna, Dresden, Paris, London, and Madrid. The most numerous are portraits, Madonnas, Magdalens, Bacchanals, Venuses, and other mythological subjects, some of which are extremely voluptuous. Two of his grandest and most celebrated works are the Last Supper in the Escurial, and Christ crowned with Thorns at Milan. It is said that the works of Titian, to be appreciated, should be seen at Venice or Madrid, as ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... noble Branches. Charles Beauclerk, Duke of St. Albans, born 8 May, 1670; James Beauclerk, born 25 December, 1671, ob, Septemher, 1680, the two sons of Nell Gwynne by Charles II. There is an exquisitely voluptuous painting by Gascar, engraved by Masson, of Nell Gwynne on a bed of roses whilst the two boys as winged amorini support flowing curtains and draperies. Her royal lover appears in the distance. There is also a well-known and beautiful painting of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... loves, and does inspire Phoebus is himself thy sire. To thee, of all things upon earth, Life is no longer than thy mirth. Happy insect! happy thou, Dost neither age nor winter know; But when thou'st drunk, and danced, and sung Thy fill, the flowery leaves among, (Voluptuous and wise withal, Epicurean animal!) Sated with thy summer feast, Thou retir'st to ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... he gave himself over for a few moments to the almost voluptuous delight of giving free rein to his grief. The hot Latin blood in him, tempestuous in all its passions, was firing his heart and brain now with the glow of devotion and ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... in luxuriant bloom, and a thousand other evergreens, on shore, vie with voluptuous aquatic flowers to bewilder and delight the astonished traveller, accustomed hitherto only to the more unassuming productions of the sober north. Everything here was new, strange, and solemn. The gigantic trees, encircled by enormous ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... on my bowels feed: Thou art my Father, thou my Author, thou My being gav'st me; whom should I obey But thee, whom follow? thou wilt bring me soon To that new world of light and bliss, among The Gods who live at ease, where I shall Reign At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems Thy daughter and thy darling, without end. 870 Thus saying, from her side the fatal Key, Sad instrument of all our woe, she took; And towards the Gate rouling her bestial train, Forthwith ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... truth, that in a certain ruby-colored elixir there lurked a divine power to chase away the genius of ennui, without subsequently abusing this power. True it is that generations have used laudanum as an anodyne (for instance, hospital patients) who have not afterward courted its powers as a voluptuous stimulant; but that, be sure, has arisen from no abstinence in them. There are in fact two classes of temperaments as to this terrific drug—those which are and those which are not preconformed to its power; those which genially expand to its ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... gazing at miracles and enchantment. Paris, with motions of his hands and body, was able to express things apparently impossible in a dance. His hands dimmed the air, creating a cloud, bright, living, quivering, voluptuous, surrounding the half-fainting form of a maiden shaken by a spasm of delight. That was a picture, not a dance; an expressive picture, disclosing the secrets of love, bewitching and shameless; and when at the end of it Corybantes rushed in and ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... became an enigma. I looked at her as she stood gravely gazing from the window. Is it Lady Macbeth? No; she never would have had energy to plan her husband's career and manage that affair of Duncan. A sultana rather—sublimely egotistical, without reverence—a voluptuous and haughty embodiment of indifference. I paused, looking at a picture, but thinking of her, and was surprised by her voice very ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... what I say, Rose smiles in answer to my smile and we remain silent; our eyes gaze without seeing and our idle hands trail in the wet grass. We hear, without listening, the hoarse, fat, cooing-voluptuous voices of the doves: in the cool air of the morning, among the leaves, the flowers and the branches, it is an undercurrent of joy rising and falling, suspended for a moment and then beginning again, ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... see, I think, by the southern press, that slave-holders begin to fear and tremble for the safety of their 'peculiar institution.' The death of John Brown is yet to be atoned for, by the slave-holding oligarchy. His undying spirit haunts them by day and by night, and in the midst of their voluptuous enjoyments, the very thought of John Brown chills their souls and poisons their pleasures. Their tarring and feathering of good citizens; their riding them upon rails, and ducking them, in dirty ponds; their destruction of liberty presses, and the hanging of John ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... an artist. As we have noted, his novels have, as their end, one of the greatest contradictions of human life,—the synthesis of the voluptuous representations of the religion of classical antiquity and the moral principles of Christianity. It is, therefore, natural to ask whether he has in any way approached his goal and just where he sees the salvation of humanity, the present situation of which ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... about him, at the rich table, and at the glittering chandelier overhead (albeit the lamps thereof were inferior to his own), and at the expanses of soft carpet, and at the silken-textured walls, and at the voluptuous curtains, and at the couple of impeccable gentlemen in-waiting, and at Joseph, who knew his place behind his master's chair—he came to the justifiable conclusion that money was a marvellous thing, and the workings of commerce mysterious ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... greatest enjoyment and most congenial occupation in drunkenness, duelling, and seduction, it is not to be expected that women should have retained an unappreciated refinement. Half-naked and ornamented with a profusion of jewels, they look out from the portraits of the time with a sleepy, voluptuous expression, which suggests a lack of intelligence and too great a susceptibility to physical impressions. Women as we find them in contemporary memoirs, and these most often deal with such as are about the court, are not unfit companions for the men. We see not a few the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... the presence and the chatter of his women; they displeased him because they were not Tahoser. He now thought ugly those beauties who had seemed to him formerly so fair; their young, slender, graceful bodies, their voluptuous attitudes, their long eyes brightened by antimony and flashing with desire, their purple lips, white teeth, and languishing smiles,—everything in them, even the perfume of their cool skin, as delicate as a bouquet of flowers or a box of scent, had become odious to him. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... is administered by the literary Kazi with exemplary impartiality and severity; "denouncing evil doers and eulogising deeds admirably achieved." The morale is sound and healthy; and at times we descry, through the voluptuous and libertine picture, vistas of a transcendental morality, the morality of Socrates in Plato. Subtle corruption and covert licentiousness are utterly absent; we find more real"vice" in many a short French roman, say La Dame aux ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... lowlander—and not by converting the lowland citizen into the mountain Gael. The habits of commerce, the substitution of democratic for oligarchic institutions, were sufficient to alter the whole character of the Dorians. The voluptuous Corinth—the trading Aegina (Doric states)—infinitely more resembled Athens ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... around her forehead. She had large azure eyes, telling of her happiness and the kindly emotions of her soul. Her finely-cut nose gave an aristocratic expression to her countenance, while her crimson lips, in their voluptuous fulness, contrasted not unfavorably with the remarkable refinement of the rest of her features. An enchanting smile played about her mouth, and spoke of her noble simplicity ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... nor could the utmost condescension on my side, though attended with continual presents and rewards, and raising his wages, content or please him. In a word, he was as absolutely my master as was ever an ambitious, industrious prime minister over an indolent and voluptuous king. All my other journeymen paid more respect to him than to me; for they considered my favor as a ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... time! Beat out thy last voluptuous beat Of hope and fear, my heart! I thought the clock I' the chapel struck as I was pushing through The ferns. And so I shall no more see rise My love-star! Oh, no matter for the past! So much the more delicious task to watch Mildred ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... have you come from?" cries Caroline, on seeing Adolphe standing in ecstasy before her voluptuous breakfast. ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... but the mind be wise, Gravina, With me haste to the tranquil haunts of Baiae, Haunts that pleasure hath made her home, and she who Sways all hearts, the voluptuous Aphrodite. Here wine rules, and the dance, and games and laughter; Graces reign in a round of mirthful madness; Love hath built, and desire, a palace here too, Where glad youths and enamoured girls on all sides Play and bathe in the waves in sunny weather, Dine and sup, and ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... of Asia," the prince, after leaving his young wife, is made to pass through a somewhat extensive harem en deshabille, which is described with voluptuous minuteness. Although there are some things in later Buddhistic literature that seem to justify it, I can but regard the introduction of an institution so entirely alien to every age, form and degree of Aryan civilization and so inconsistent with the tender conjugal love ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... riot in, bask in, swim in, drink up, eat up, wallow in; feast on; gloat over, float on; smack the lips. live on the fat of the land, live in comfort &c. adv.; bask in the sunshine, faire ses choux gras[Fr].. give pleasure &c. 829. Adj. enjoying &c. v.; luxurious, voluptuous, sensual, comfortable, cosy, snug, in comfort, at ease. pleasant, agreeable &c. 829. Adv. in comfort &c. n.; on a bed of roses &c. n.; at one's ease. Phr. ride si sapis [Lat][Martial]; voluptales commendat ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of bewildering images he beheld the irruption into Judaea of the headlong and indignant prophets, hurling imprecations against the crimes of the kings and the atrocities of that unstable race perpetually tempted by the voluptuous worships of Asia, always rebelling and complaining, and ready to break the iron bit with which Moses ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... of paper, have been used to portray the "finely-cut and well-moulded features," the "silken curls," the "dark and brilliant eyes," the "splendid forms," the "fascinating smiles," and "accomplished manners" of these impassioned and voluptuous daughters of the two races,—the unlawful product of the crime of human bondage. When we take into consideration the fact that no safeguard was ever thrown around virtue, and no inducement held out to slave-women to be pure and chaste, we ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... full-lipped. Here was none of smiling prettiness, for these eyes were grave and thoughtful, these lips, despite their soft, voluptuous curves, were firmly modelled like the rounded chin below, and, in all the face, despite its vivid youth, was a vague ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... "French Revolution" paints a wonderfully vivid picture of the idle, voluptuous noblesse of the eighteenth century: compare the views ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Galuppi's, wholly subordinates the science to the sentiment of the piece. It is steeped in the melancholy of pleasure; Venice of the eighteenth century lives before us with its mundane joys, its transitory passions, its voluptuous hours; and in the midst of its warmth and colour a chill creeps upon our senses and we shiver. Browning's artistic self-restraint is admirable; he has his own truth to utter aloud if he should please; but here he will not play the prophet; the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... every natural impulse is to be indulged. Rousseau was an enthusiast and a sentimentalist; he was a man of the exquisite organization of genius, and there are many passages in his writings which are colored with a half-voluptuous, half-devotional glow; but it seems to us a plain confusion of very obvious moral distinctions to represent such a man as imbued with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... impulse to his plebeian auditories. Ambition was his sole line of politics. Devoid of honour, principles, or morality, he only loved democracy because it was exciting. It was his element, and he plunged into it. He sought there not so much command as that voluptuous sensuality which man finds in the rapid movement which bears him away with it. He was intoxicated with the revolutionary vertigo as a man becomes drunken with wine; yet he bore his intoxication well. He had that superiority of calmness in the confusion he created, which enabled him to control ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... most popular room of all with visitors—and quite naturally—is the little boudoiresque study of Francis I, with its voluptuous ladies on the ceiling and the secret treasure-room leading from it, while on the way, just outside the door, is a convenient oubliette into which ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... that period of the year when, to those who look on the surface of society, London wears its most radiant smile; when shops are gayest, and trade most brisk; when down the thoroughfares roll and glitter the countless streams of indolent and voluptuous life; when the upper class spend, and the middle class make; when the ball-room is the Market of Beauty, and the club-house the School for Scandal; when the hells yawn for their prey, and opera-singers and fiddlers—creatures hatched from gold, as the dung-flies from the dung-swarm, and buzz, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... swarthier trace of Mexican with the Spanish, and she would have a sort of personal magnetism. She might prove dramatic if roused, but those Spanish-California women were indolent, and they grew heavy early. Big, handsome, voluptuous; just a splendid animal without ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... great impatience.] O! contemptible!—a trifling, quaint, haughty, voluptuous, servile tool,—the mere lackey of party and corruption; who, for the prostitution of near thirty years and the ruin of a noble fortune, has had the despicable satisfaction, and the infamous honour—of being kicked up and kicked down—kicked ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... really a march, a processional dance, grave, moderate, flowing, and by no means stereotyped. Liszt tells of the capricious life infused into its courtly measures by the Polish aristocracy. It is at once the symbol of war and love, a vivid pageant of martial splendor, a weaving, cadenced, voluptuous dance, the pursuit of shy, coquettish woman by ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... inextricable. She saw neither form nor face in her visions, and yet the impalpable and glowing impression stole upon her senses like an odour, or a strain of soft and soul-thrilling music. Her heart was wrapped in a delirium of such voluptuous melody, that she chided the morning when she awoke, and longed for night and her own forgetfulness. Night after night the vision was repeated; and when her lover came, it was as though some chord of feeling had jarred, some tie were broken, some delicious dream were ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... of wine at dinner had been, like Mr. Poe's conversation with his soul, "serious and sober." In the cellar no drop had passed our mouths. I was alert as a lark when I entered: I came out in a species of voluptuous dream. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... and your fancy is too true a prophet. Come again, after the second day's opening, and you start at the transformation which one hour has secretly produced. Can this be the virgin Victoria,—this thing of crimson passion, this pile of pink and yellow, relaxed, expanded, voluptuous, lolling languidly upon the water, never to rise again? In this short time every tint of every petal is transformed; it is gorgeous in beauty, but it is "Hebe turned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... forgot this in the memory of her misfortune, and envied not the dumb slave. They touched her fingers with henna dye, and anointed her with rare and costly perfumes, seeming to vie with each other in their interesting efforts to deck and beautify one who had only the voluptuous softness of her dark eyes to thank them with, for those lovely lips, of such tempting freshness in their coral hue, could ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... herself in a very handsome house which she rented for a term of years. Her arrival in this quiet village town was of course the sensation of the hour, or rather of the year. She was known as Baroness Le Fevre—an American widow of a French baron. Large, voluptuous, blonde, and handsome according to the popular idea of beauty, distinctly amiable, affable and very charitable, she became ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... hassocks, and the gilt casement looking down into the church. The church itself, designed by the Italian Papist, Frisoni, showed a wealth of delicate pink brocade and of rich azure hangings, of golden angels, of smiling goddesses whose voluptuous faces bore so unmistakable a likeness to the Landhofmeisterin. With a sigh the Duchess fell on her knees. 'God is everywhere,' she reminded herself, 'even in this frivolous chapel.' She prayed earnestly for some time, and, rising, would have turned to go, when her eye was caught ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... burning tropical sun, shooting above the eastern horizon as suddenly as the volcanic cone had been lifted above the fog. This hot sun burned away the mists in a few minutes and there, stretching below us, in all its oriental beauty was the sinewy, voluptuous form of the silver sand sea—Bromo's ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... we saw danced at a little theatre excellently well, but in a style quite different to ours, and the women very fat and plain. And though Moll, being but a slight slip of a lass, in whom the warmer passions were unbegotten, could not give the bolero the voluptuous fervour of the Spanish dancers, yet in agility and in pretty innocent grace she did surpass them all to nought, which was abundantly proved when she danced it in our posada before a court full of Spaniards, for there they were like mad over her, casting their silk ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... lobster, and a rare treat seemed to be in store for him. He breathed in what atmosphere there was in the dining-room, and waited for his bird. At last it was brought in. Mr. Visscher took one hasty look at the great scarlet mass of voluptuous limbs and oceanic nippers, and sighed. The lobster was as large as a door mat, and had a very angry and inflamed appearance. Visscher ordered in a powerful cocktail to give him courage, and then he tried to carve ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... looking into a pair of lustrous black eyes whose almond shape was that of the Orient; I found myself looking at a woman who, since she was evidently a Jewess, was probably no older than eighteen or nineteen, but whose beauty was ripely voluptuous, who might fittingly have posed for Salome, who, despite her modern fashionable garments, at once suggested to my mind the wanton beauty of the daughter ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... connected perhaps with his appreciation of the intimacy, the almost mystical communion of touch, between nature and man. "I am much better," he writes, "and my new and tender health is all over me like a voluptuous feeling." And whatever fame, or charm, or life-inspiring gift he has had as a speculative thinker, is the vibration of the interest he excited then, the propulsion into years which clouded his early promise of that first ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... frequently it is rather like acting than like what we Occidentals call dancing—acting accompanied with extraordinary waving of sleeves and fans, and with a play of eyes and features, sweet, subtle, subdued, wholly Oriental. There are more voluptuous dances known to geisha, but upon ordinary occasions and before refined audiences they portray beautiful old Japanese traditions, like the legend of the fisher Urashima, beloved by the Sea God's daughter; and at intervals they ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... leaves, ungracious sign Of devastation; but the hazels rose Tall and erect, with tempting clusters [9] hung, 20 A virgin scene!—A little while I stood, Breathing with such suppression of the heart As joy delights in; and, with wise restraint Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed The banquet;—or beneath the trees I sate 25 Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played; A temper known to those, who, after long And weary expectation, have been blest With sudden happiness beyond all hope. Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves 30 The ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... trapezes. But Duroy paid no heed to them, his eyes finding more to interest them in the grand promenade. Forestier remarked upon the motley appearance of the throng, but Duroy did not listen to him. A woman, leaning her arms upon the edge of her loge, was staring at him. She was a tall, voluptuous brunette, her face whitened with enamel, her black eyes penciled, and her lips painted. With a movement of her head, she summoned a friend who was passing, a blonde with auburn hair, likewise inclined to embonpoint, and said to her in a whisper intended ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... wild Oriental dream? Could it all be real—the glittering fires, the gayly-costumed crowds, the illuminated barge, the voluptuous strains of music? Might it not be some gorgeous freak of the emperor, such as the sultan in the Arabian Nights enjoyed at the expense of the poor traveler? Surely there could be nothing real like it since the days of the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... into a mighty outpour and passes, finally, away. Evenfall; last echo of the chant. As night breaks, magic sights and sounds appear, the whirlings of a fearsomely voluptuous dance are seen:— ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... before quoted) an air impregnated with the odours of innumerable flowers of the greatest fragrance, of which there is a perpetual succession throughout the year, the sweet flavour of which captivates the soul, and inspires the most voluptuous sensations." Although this luxurious picture may be drawn in too-warm tints it is not however without its degree of justness. The people of the country are fond of flowers in the ornament of their persons, and encourage their growth, as ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... tragedy is developed in this scene; Vittoria suggesting, under the metaphor of a dream, that her lover should compass the deaths of his duchess and her husband. The dream is told with deadly energy and ghastly picturesqueness. The cruel sneer at its conclusion, murmured by a voluptuous woman in the ears of an impassioned paramour, chills us with the sense of concentrated vice. Her next appearance is before the court, on trial for her husband's murder. The scene is celebrated, and has been much disputed by critics. Relying ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... by Odin's honour, Haste, hide thy tears and thee in shades of alder! Haste to the still, the peace-accustom'd valley, Where lazy herdsmen dance amid the clover. There wet each leaf which soft the west wind kisses, Each plant which breathes around voluptuous odours, With tears! There sigh and moan and the tired peasant Shall hear thee, and, behind his ploughshare resting, Shall wonder at ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... person in Europe. The Italian is diagnosed as a cruel voluptuary: the dog-starver is passed over as such a hopeless fool that it is impossible to take any interest in him. Why not test the diagnosis scientifically? Why not perform a careful series of experiments on persons under the influence of voluptuous ecstasy, so as to ascertain its physiological symptoms? Then perform a second series on persons engaged in mathematical work or machine designing, so as to ascertain the symptoms of cold scientific activity? Then note the symptoms of a vivisector performing a cruel experiment; and compare them ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... or Florentine, the Paduans contribute their chiselled drawing, their learned perspective, their archeological curiosity. Yet even early in the day the Venetians escape from that hard and learned art which is so alien to their easy, voluptuous temperament. Jacopo Bellini cannot conform to it, and his greatest son is ready to follow feeling and emotion, and in his old age is quick to discover the first flavour of the new wine. If Venetian art had gone on upon the lines we have been tracing up to now, there would have been nothing ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... or without fruit, as in America all such plants are still called vines. "Sweet upon the mountains," the excitement of which he loves so deeply and to which he constantly invites his followers—"sweet upon the mountains," and profoundly amorous, his presence embodies all the voluptuous abundance of Asia, its beating [63] sun, its "fair-towered cities, full of inhabitants," which the chorus describe in their luscious vocabulary, with the rich Eastern names—Lydia, Persia, Arabia Felix: he is a sorcerer or an enchanter, the tyrant Pentheus thinks: the springs of water, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... often some one great idea or principle which—for the time at least—determines the whole current of a nation's mental and spiritual being. But that idea may gradually lose its intensity and its energizing power, and the Saracen sinks into the voluptuous Mussulman. Hebraism and Hellenism, therefore, mean the diverse spirits of two peoples as they once were, not as they may be now, or ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... sheriff of Sanborn County straightway hailed a languorous cabby who sat dozing on the "high seat" of a coupe to which was attached the most voluptuous-looking white horse that Pete had ever seen. Evidently the "hospital stand" was a ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... must be understood that Caesar, in his early youth, was not wasting his gifts in what seemed to be a half-voluptuous, half-adventurous, wholly careless life, but was accumulating strength by absorbing into himself the forces with which he came in contact, exhausting the intelligence of his companions in order to stock his own, learning everything simultaneously, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... to the splendid and multiplied entertainments with which he regaled his Council. In these festivities, whilst his guests were engaged with the seductions of beauty, the intoxications of the most delicious wines of France, and the voluptuous vapor of perfumed India smoke, uniting the vivid satisfactions of Europe with the torpid blandishments of Asia, the great magician himself, chaste in the midst of dissoluteness, sober in the centre of debauch, vigilant ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... would mind. According to all the doctors he would have excellent reason for howling in a day or so. It recalled what his spiritual adviser had said of the decline of faith and fidelity, the degeneration of the age. He beheld himself as a pathetic proof of this; he, the subtle, able, important, voluptuous, cynical, complex Bindon, possibly howling, and not one faithful simple creature in all the world to howl in sympathy. Not one faithful simple soul was there—no shepherd to pipe to him! Had all such faithful simple creatures ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... lays of mine, but not to riotous halls, Where dancing sylphs supply voluptuous songs, But seek the huts where pestilence appals, And death completes ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... Muse's offspring, doom'd to try, Like a caged eagle panting tow'rds the sky, A foil'd ascent, while adverse fortune flings Her strong link'd meshes o'er his flutt'ring wings, Sinks, while exalted Ignorance supine, Unheeded slumbers like the pamper'd swine; Obsequious slaves in his voluptuous bowers Young pleasures warble, while the dancing Hours In sickly sweetness languishingly move, Like new-waked virgins flush'd with dreams of love— Him, when by Death's dark angel swept away From ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... accumulate riches, cooperating with a spirit of luxury and injustice, seems to be the leading cause of this peculiarly degrading and ignominious practice. Being once accustomed to subsist without labour, we become soft and voluptuous; and rather than afterwards forego the gratification of our habitual indolence and ease, we countenance the infamous violation, and sacrifice at the shrine of cruelty, all the finer feelings ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... remembers who has examined at all carefully the drawings by old masters at the Louvre. It is a face of doubtful sex, set in the shadow of its own hair, the cheek-line in high light against it, with something voluptuous and full in the eyelids and the lips. Another drawing might pass for the same face in childhood, with parched and feverish lips, but with much sweetness in the loose, short-waisted childish dress, with necklace and bulla, and in the daintily bound hair. We might take the thread of suggestion ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater |
