"Delicacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... handling of the subject a question of much delicacy and difficulty was solved, discipline was preserved, and a practical illustration of the perils of deceit afforded to a youngster who was at an age best suited to receive such impressions. That he should ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... days of his sojourn at Plessis-les-Tours king Louis, not wishing to hold his drinking-bouts and give vent to his rakish propensities in his chateau, out of respect to her Majesty (a kingly delicacy which his successors have not possessed) became enamoured of a lady named Nicole Beaupertuys, who was, to tell the truth, wife of a citizen of the town. The husband he sent into Ponent, and put the said Nicole ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Lady," and some others you wrote in your youth, there is more fire of poetry than in any of mine. You excelled in the pathetic, which I never approached. I will also allow that you hit the manner of Horace and the sly delicacy of his wit more exactly than I, or than any other man who has written since his time. Nor could I, nor did even Lucretius himself, make philosophy so poetical, and embellish it with such charms as you have given ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... the dasht-i-namek, and wandering bands of these animals occasionally stray up in this direction. The Persians consider the flesh of the wild donkey as quite a delicacy, and sometimes hunt them for their meat; they are said to be untamable, unless caught when very young, and are then generally too slender-limbed to be of any service in carrying weights. Wild goats abound in the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... her photograph and again examined it, but not as a lover. Had she really grown stouter and more self-complacent? Was the spirituality and delicacy he had worshiped in her purely his own idiotic fancy? Had she always been like this? Yes. There was the girl who could weakly strive, weakly revenge herself, and weakly forget. There was the figure that he had expected to find ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... here upon a most auspicious day, a red-letter day for me and my poor house, when all are welcome. Suffer me, with all delicacy, to inquire if you are not in ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... that if force should prove necessary to compel the people to leave, the Marshal should call upon the commanding officer at Fort Snelling for such aid. In that case he was instructed to act "with as much forbearance, consideration, and delicacy as may be consistent with the prompt and faithful performance of the duties ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... his face. Rare conjunction, the whole of the countenance was remarkable both for symmetry and expression—the latter mainly a bright intelligence; and if, strangely enough, the predominant sweetness and delicacy at first suggested genius unsupported by practical faculty, there was a plentifulness and strength in the chin which helped to correct the suggestion, and with the brightness and prominence of the eyes and the radiance of the whole, to give a brave, almost ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... But beans cooked in the Mexican way might well be adapted in English households, whether for reasons of novelty or economy. In the United States they are used in the form of "Boston baked pork and beans," but are considered a delicacy rather than ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... appointment called forth discussions and strong comments in the Melbourne papers. Gentlemen who considered their own qualifications as superior to his, and their friends who thought with them, expressed their opinions with more ardour than justice or delicacy in their respective organs. The committee of management, selected originally from the "Royal Society of Melbourne," now became united to another body called "The Exploration Fund Committee." The board comprised the following members:—Chairman, the Honourable Sir William Stawell, ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... 'investigators' by the score, unless you confine your university education to matters which dull men can investigate, your laboratory training to tasks which mere plodding diligence and submissive patience can compass. Yet, if you do so limit and constrain what you teach, you thrust taste and insight and delicacy of perception out of the schools, exalt the obvious and merely useful things above the things which are only imaginatively or spiritually conceived, make education an affair of tasting and handling and smelling, and so create Philistia, that ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... loftiness. But in all the world there is no cathedral whose marble or onyx columns can vie with those straight, clean, brown tree-boles that teem with the sap and blood of life. There is no fresco that can rival the delicacy of lace-work they have festooned between you and the far skies. No tiles, no mosaic or inlaid marbles, are as fascinating as the bare, russet, fragrant floor outspreading about their feet. They are the acme of Nature's architecture, and in building them she has outrivalled ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... broad shadows would catch the eye instead. He has therefore left, as you see, rude square edges to his niche, and carved his leaves as massively and broadly as possible: and yet, observe how dexterously he has given you a sense of delicacy and minuteness in the work, by mingling these small leaves among the large ones. I made this sketch from a photograph, and the spot in which these leaves occurred was obscure; I have, therefore, used those of the Oxalis acetosella, of which ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... specimen of this variety. Each face, each stone of the venerable monument, is a page not only of the history of the country, but of the history of science and art as well. Thus, in order to indicate here only the principal details, while the little Red Door almost attains to the limits of the Gothic delicacy of the fifteenth century, the pillars of the nave, by their size and weight, go back to the Carlovingian Abbey of Saint-Germain des Pres. One would suppose that six centuries separated these pillars from that door. There is no one, not even the hermetics, who does not find in the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Adelaide sat alone by the bedside, Mrs. Travilla having found it necessary to return to Ion for a few hours, while Chloe had gone down to the kitchen to see to the preparation of some new delicacy with which she hoped ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... Poll," said Kneebone, becoming very red, "you might have a little more delicacy than to tell him ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... And now at last had come the worst thing of all: Gibbie had discovered the corn-bin, and having no notion but that everything in the stable was for the delectation of the horses, had been feeding them largely with oats—a delicacy with which, in the plenty of other provisions, they were very sparingly supplied; and the consequences had begun to show themselves in the increased unruliness of the more wayward amongst them. Gibbie had long given up resorting ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... know a man, not otherwise dainty, who cannot touch common sausages unless they are almost burned to a coal. He wants his sausages fried to rags, yet he does not insist on his shirts being boiled to rags. I do not say that such points of culinary delicacy are of high importance. I do not say that the communal ideal must give way to them. What I say is that the communal ideal is not conscious of their existence, and therefore goes wrong from the very start, mixing a wholly public thing with a highly individual ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... we must advance by far other methods. If we carve the subject with real delicacy, the cast shadow of the incision will interfere with its outline, so that, for representation of beautiful things you must clear away the ground about it, at all events for a little distance. As the law of work is to use the least pains possible, you clear it only just as far back as you need, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... kindred. They believed, of course, that they recognised in it an effect of her skill in managing; they agreed to suppose that she had got Mavering for Alice, and to ignore the beauty and passion of youth as factors in the case. The closest of the kindred, with the romantic delicacy of Americans in such things, approached the question of Dan's position and prospects, and heard with satisfaction the good accounts which Mrs. Pasmer was able to give of his father's prosperity. There had always ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Why did they envy him her? Why did they not leave him in his sweet delusion? But perhaps she was not guilty. No, she was not. The eye of a culprit is not thus bright and clear. The air of infidelity is not thus unembarrassed—of such maidenly delicacy. ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... its delicacy, its sweetness, its gentle or sometimes heroic virtues, its amiable weaknesses, and strange defects—than to attempt an accurate analysis of the hardest subject man ever attempted to ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... has very little; so ill is the satire disguised. I agree with you in thinking it ought not to be published yet, as nothing is more cruel than divulging private letters which may wound the living. I have even the same tenderness for the children of persons concerned; but I laugh at delicacy for grandchildren, who can be affected by nothing but their pride- -and let that be hurt if it will. It always finds means ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... or pretext for this delay. His appointment, however, has been finally announced to Mr Jay by the Minister, and was made at the time mentioned in my former letters. It is probable that little will be done in this business, until the Court goes to the Pardo the 7th of next month. A principle of delicacy perhaps prevents it from seeming at present to precipitate its conduct, in consequence of the favorable aspect of our affairs, since the news of the capture of Lord Cornwallis, and the victory obtained by General Greene in South Carolina. But ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... gently fervent appeal that—if her prayer were granted—something "might happen" which would result in her becoming a Countess of Lawdor. One could not have put the request with greater tentative delicacy. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... found one other delicacy in greater perfection, both as to size, quantity, and flavour, than is to be met with perhaps in any other part of the world. This was sea craw-fish, usually weighing eight or nine pounds each, of a most excellent taste, and in such vast numbers near the edge of the water, that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... master of English composition, a critic of uncommon delicacy, an honest and unflinching investigator of received opinions, a philosophic inquirer—DE QUINCEY has departed from us full of years, and left no successor to his rank. The exquisite finish of his style, with the scholastic vigour of his logic, form a combination which ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... female attractions so captivating to men as delicacy and modesty. Let not the familiar intercourse which marriage produces, banish such powerful charms. On the contrary, this very familiarity should be your strongest incitement in endeavouring to preserve them; and, believe, me, the modesty so pleasing in the bride, may always, in ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... afternoon before when he patted it to comfort her. Such remembrances would be bound to bring a warmth into his remarks which wouldn't be fair. The situation demanded the most scrupulous fairness and delicacy in its treatment, the most careful avoidance of taking any advantage of it. But how difficult, thought Mr. Twist, his hand shaking as he poured himself out a glass of iced water, how difficult when he loved ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... bamboos show the exotic delicacy of their foliage, and the village roofs grow sharper in the singularity of their curves, and yellow men hidden behind advance to reconnoitre; their flat faces are contracted by fear and spitefulness. Then suddenly they rush out screaming, and deploy into a long line, trembling, ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... him were unknown, and which Christian grace has alone surpassed. One cannot read the book without thinking of the sadness of Pascal and the gentleness of Fenelon. We must pause before this soul, so lofty and so pure, to contemplate ancient virtue in its softest brilliancy, to see the moral delicacy to which profane doctrines ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... grow one indeed. One end we have, one land we love, one vow binds us both. Take me to thy heart, Harmachis, set me by thee on the Double Throne, and I swear that I will lift thee higher than ever man has climbed. Reject me, and beware lest I pull thee down! And now, putting aside the cold delicacy of custom, stung to it by what I saw of the arts of that lovely living falsehood, Cleopatra, which for pastime she practises on thy folly, I have spoken out my heart, and answer thou!" And she clasped ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... every hour he thought of Gabrielle; but how changed the complexion of his love for her! Now it was a tender, tranquil sentiment, a disinterested affection, a sweet, soothing reverie. It was a vision of a wondrous delicacy, such as loneliness and unhappiness alone can form in the souls they shield from the rude shocks of the common life—the dream of a holy life, a life dim and overshadowed, vowed wholly and completely, without reward or recompense, to the woman worshipped from afar, ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... their services might be required, for which purpose they receive a suitable education, in an Hospital at Paris, in such branches of medicine and surgery as may render them useful. They are distributed throughout the kingdom to attend the hospitals and prisons, which they do with the delicacy and attention peculiar to their sex. Of all the classes of females who thus devote themselves to a religious life, and to acts of charity, none are more respected, or more truly serviceable to their fellow-creatures. ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... Min's dark eyes and perfectly chiselled features, refined by suffering into cameo-like delicacy, and the silken hair fell in soft, waving masses about the spiritual little face. By his side nestled a tiny dog, with satin ears and paws ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... elaborate, but she was as unhappy as if she had fallen from a higher rank, for with women there is no inherited distinction of higher and lower. Their beauty, their grace, and their natural charm fill the place of birth and family. Natural delicacy, instinctive elegance, a lively wit, are the ruling forces in the social realm, and these make the daughters of the common people the ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... were I not so excessively tired now, would write to them. I cannot add a word more, but to think of the Princess:(475) "Comment! vous avez donc des enfans!" You see how nature sometimes breaks out in spite of religion and prudery, grandeur and pride, delicacy and 'epuisements! Good ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... flattery and admonition to the Royal bride; which, for the most part, is as dull and commonplace as might be expected from the occasion; though there are some passages in which the author has reconciled his gratitude to his Patron, and his monitory duty to his Daughter, with singular spirit and delicacy. After enjoining to her the observance of all public duties, and the cultivation of all domestic virtues, Britannia is made to sum up the whole sermon in this ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... he cast loose his belt and flung it on the floor, and plucked his shirt up so as to leave his side bare. He stood up, with one arm raised above his head, showing his naked flank to the slow eyes of his shipmates. His body had still a boyish delicacy and slenderness; the labor of his trade had not yet built it and thickened it to a full masculinity of proportion. Measured by any of the other men in the watch, it was frail, immature, and tender. The moving sunlight that flowed ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... sir, have always been a superfluous luxury patronized mostly by the infirm and aged. As for beefsteak, it cannot compare with a luscious cut of moosemeat, the epicurean delight of the Northwest. It is a thing you may not have at the Waldorf, and a delicacy that not even the gold of the gourmet may lure from ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... made the way clearer. Mrs. Falcon, though not a lady, had all a lady's delicacy, and all a woman's tact and tenderness. He knew no one in the world more fit to be trusted with the delicate task of breaking to his Rosa that the grave, for once, was baffled, and her husband lived. He now became quite anxious for Falcon's departure, and ardently hoped that worthy had not deceived ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Nature of the thing, wou'd have cry'd out upon the Language, and have damn'd it (because the Persons in it did not all talk like Heros) as too debas'd and vulgar as to entertain a Man of Quality; but I am secure from this Censure, when your Lordship shall be its Judge, whose refin'd Sence, and Delicacy of Judgment, will, thro' all the humble Actions and trivialness of Business, find Nature there, and that Diversion which was not meant for the Numbers, who comprehend nothing beyond the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... wider and deeper pool than ordinary producing a corresponding delay on the part of Roland, who was somewhat averse to plunging with Edith up to the saddle-girths in mire, drew from him a very unmannerly, though not the less hearty execration on the delicacy of "them thar persons who," as he expressed it, "stumped at a mud-hole as skearily as if every tadpole in it ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... possible. When the leaves are well developed they are torn off, and scraped with a sharp instrument to separate the fleshy part and leave the fiber; this is washed, dried in the sun, combed out, and classed in four grades according to its fineness. The cloth has a peculiar softness and delicacy; and it is said that that made formerly (one or two centuries ago) was much finer ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... schoolgirl; Cynthia with her golden mane wound smoothly round her head, with blue shadows under the sweet eyes, and hollows where the dimples used to dip in the rounded cheeks. At the first glance the air of delicacy was painfully pronounced, but as she smiled and flushed, the old merry Cynthia ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... on January 15, he arrived at Dhacca, "the once famous city of muslins." But the muslin trade has now almost wholly disappeared; and with it "the thousands of families of muslin weavers, who, from the extreme delicacy of their manufacture, were obliged to work in pits, sheltered from the heat of the sun and changes of the weather; and even after that precaution, only while the dew lay on the ground, as the increasing heat destroyed the extremely delicate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... silk, and a large locket that she wore gave her a settled, tranquil air as though she had always been the same, and would continue so for many years. She had a high, fresh colour, a beautiful complexion and her hands had the delicacy of fragile egg-shell china. She was cheerful and friendly, but was, nevertheless, a sad woman; her eyes were dark and her voice was a little forced as though she had accustomed herself to be in good spirits. ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... the rich and powerful empire of Mexico. The explorers had been much struck with the marks of a more advanced civilization than that existing in the Antilles, with the superiority of the architecture, the skilful cultivation of the land, the fine texture of the cotton garments, and the delicacy of finish of the golden ornaments worn by the Indians. All this combined to increase the thirst for riches among the Spaniards of Cuba, and to urge them on like modern Argonauts to the conquest of this new golden fleece. Grijalva was not destined to reap the fruits of his perilous and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... told that he relished the idea. Georgie, to whom apple dumplings were as yet an unknown delicacy, looked grave and asked, 'Is appy ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... delicacy with which he meant to continue the fiction of her sex. But he certainly ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... against his surroundings or suffers a disintegration of aim and standard, which perceptibly lowers the plane on which he lives. In either case the power of enjoyment from contact with a genuine piece of creative work is sensibly diminished, and may be finally lost. The delicacy of the mind is both precious and perishable; it can be preserved only by associations which confirm and satisfy it. For this reason, among others, the best books are the only books which a man bent on culture should read; inferior books not only waste his time, but they dull the edge of his perception ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... garments made of such thick materials as plush, corduroys, and cheviots are too heavy to be manipulated under needle machinery by women and consequently employ only men operators. Where light weight materials are used, as in the manufacture of dresses and waists, delicacy in handling is required, and nearly all ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... fumes of the stoves, the necessity of frequent drinking, and often of bad beer, to moisten a parched throat; in short, every thing around him conspires quickly to vitiate the organs of taste; the palate becomes blunted; its quickness of feeling and delicacy, on which the sensibility of the organs of taste depends, grows daily more obtuse; and in a short time the gustatory ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... had a good deal in him; but nevertheless he was greatly surprised at the sight of Antonio's fine pictures. Everywhere he found boldness in conception, and correctness in drawing; and the freshness of the colouring, the good taste in the arrangement of the drapery, the uncommon delicacy of the extremities, the exquisite grace of the heads, were all so many evidences that he was no unworthy pupil of the great Reni. But Antonio had avoided this master's besetting sin of an endeavour, only too conspicuous, to sacrifice expression ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... I might have been of giving you proofs of the high place you hold in my esteem, I should have been cautious of wounding your delicacy by thus publicly addressing you, had not the circumstance of our having been companions among the Alps, seemed to give this dedication a propriety sufficient to do away any scruples which your modesty might ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... taken in cooking food for the invalid, so that all of the flavor and delicacy of each dish may be preserved. We take it for granted that the food is the best that can be had, and that absolute cleanliness is used in preparation. But, really, the important thing is to make the tray as attractive and dainty as possible, or the food will not be ...
— The Community Cook Book • Anonymous
... of names in some pocket-book of Hunter's that has fallen into his hands. I myself have long known that Hunter was Duvillard's vote-recruiter in the affair of the African Railways. But to understand matters one must first realise what his mode of proceeding was, the skill and the kind of amiable delicacy which he showed, which were far from the brutal corruption and dirty trafficking that people imagine. One must be such a man as Sagnier to picture a parliament as an open market, where every conscience is for sale and is impudently knocked down to the highest bidder. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of the Balungu up here is, they retire when they see food brought to anyone, neither Babisa nor Makoa had this sense of delicacy: the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... stout; it must have been, as she herself said, "a cross" she had to bear. She seemed to eat very little at her meals, and could not control her astonishment at the appetites of the rest of the company. Only at times, when she was alone in her room, she seemed to have a fancy for some little delicacy, and Miss Cordsen used to bring her a little bit of just ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... did not mention it yourself? His omission was natural delicacy, in keeping with your own attitude. Isn't it part of the custom of Little Rivers that pasts melt into the desert? There is no standard except the conduct ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... replies to all our questions showed a guarded suspicion that seemed quite hopeless. Our cheerful interpreter talked on, nevertheless, and finally won a quiet smile and the offer of some roast duck (a great delicacy among Chinese). All warnings about the dangers and wickedness of Chinatown apparently fell on deaf ears. "I am a married woman, my husband can take care of me. I do not need your protection!" was the rather indignant response. So we presented ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... in silence, considering the statement. Kilbourne's punctiliousness was exaggerated, but she thought she understood it. It was delicacy carried to an extreme, perhaps, but she was proud to think it ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... that ere long, under our good genius the automobile, would grow into reality. The road that wound among forest crowned hills was one of the most pleasant we remember. The air was filled with silvery haze, which made distance mysterious; and grain fields and the nearer hills, touched with the rarest delicacy of tone and softly blended color, were dreamy and full of suggestion of Indian summer. Through the trees we beheld a fine sheet of water and presently emerged upon a grand view of the lake. It has fine boat landings, ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... fortuitous delicacy in this distribution, the woman being placed farthest from the social and physical dirtiness of Atzerott, and nearest the unblanched ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... a chair and, interlacing those fingers whose delicacy baffled and disturbed Sinclair, stared over them ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... by satire, which he knew she would never grant upon any principles of honour, or humanity. This expedient proved successful; whether shame still survived, though compassion was extinct, or whether her relations had more delicacy than herself, and imagined that some of the darts which satire might point at her, would glance upon them: Lord Tyrconnel, whatever were his motives, upon his promise to lay aside the design of exposing his mother, received him into his family, treated him as his equal, and engaged ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... as it was in my nature to be offended, and I began to meditate apologies for shortening my visit at Ormsby Villa: but, though I was shocked by the haughtiness of Lady Geraldine, and accused her, in my own mind, of want of delicacy and politeness, yet I could not now suspect her of being an accomplice with her mother in any matrimonial designs upon me. From the moment I was convinced of this, my conviction was, I suppose, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... above, for delicacy of detail rival the choicest Daguerreotypes, specimens of which may ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... least of this feeling, on your part, arises from the apprehension that your secret is less safe because it is in my keeping, I can assure you that such is my grateful sense of Miss Gray's goodness, in communicating, to save me pain, an affair of such delicacy to herself and you, that wild horses should tear me limb from limb before they forced a word of it from ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... the valley of Reate. For if the best of those delicious fish we call muraenae flutae are taken on the coast of Sicily and the best sturgeons at Rhodes, it does not follow that they are of equal delicacy in ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... experience. There is no objection to character, and poverty is not the impediment: the reverse. You will permit me, no doubt, to consult my partner, Mr. Merton; we have naturally no secrets between us, and he possesses a delicacy of touch and a power of insight which I can only regard with admiring envy. It was he who carried to a successful issue that difficult case in the family of the Sultan of Mingrelia (you will observe that ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... comparatively short, and the shadows of the evening were beginning to settle down upon the great city. Lamps were beginning to burn with that mellow radiance which seems almost watery and translucent to the eye. There was a softness in the air which speaks with an infinite delicacy of feeling to the flesh as well as to the soul. Carrie felt that it was a lovely day. She was ripened by it in spirit for many suggestions. As they drove along the smooth pavement an occasional carriage passed. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... and Francis got to Leeds; of which enterprising and important commercial centre it may be observed with delicacy, that you must either like it very much or not at all. Next day, the first of the Race-Week, they took train ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... of the evils this error produces. The law of God. Medical testimony. Entire celibacy, or purity, not unfavorable to health. Youth ought to consider this, and study the human frame. Causes of the error in question. 1. False delicacy. Our half Mohammedan education. 2. Books, Pictures, &c. Great extent of this evil. Opinion of Dr. Dwight. 3. Obscene and improper songs. Anecdote of a schoolmaster. 4. Double entendres. Parental errors. Evening ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... whither they were bound, had a juncture of antique wall, pierced with grilles of beaten iron; its gate, a delicacy of filigree, let them through to the ordered beauty of the lawns, over which the mansion presided, a pale, fine presence of a house. Hedges of yew, like walls of ebony, bounded the principal walks. The prisoner ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... those laws, as they are construed, everything is to be done for two nations at war with each other; but nothing is to be done for all the nations of the world that can manage to maintain the peace. The belligerents are to be treated with every delicacy, as we treat our heinous criminals; but the poor neutrals are to be handled with unjust rigor, as we handle our unfortunate witnesses in order that the murderer may, if possible, be allowed to escape. Two men living in the same street choose to pelt each other across ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... The delicacy of the domestic matters with which the following correspondence deals cannot be exaggerated. It seems that Belinda (whose Memoirs we owe to Miss Rhoda Broughton) was at Oxford while Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... I found great delicacy as a stranger in making my observations upon these resolutions, and yet I thought I ought not to pass them over wholly in silence, but particularly the last. I therefore rose up, and stated that there was one resolution, of which I did not ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... and again went out, whether from a sense of delicacy, or because he saw an opportunity of renewing the fight outside, is not certain. He closed the door of ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... former bards will now attract an audience: yet the genius of ancient writers was assisted by various tales, for plots, of which they have deprived the moderns; they had, besides, the privilege to write without either political or moral restraint. Uncurbed by law or delicacy, they wrote at random; and at random wrote some pages worthy posterity—but along with these, they produced others, which disgrace the age that reprints and ...
— The Dramatist; or Stop Him Who Can! - A Comedy, in Five Acts • Frederick Reynolds
... a hand. Weyburn longed to enfold her, and she desired it, and her soul praised him for refraining. Both had that delicacy. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... again he made a suggestion to the young woman following him, but for the most part he trusted her to choose her own foot and hand holds. Her delicacy was silken strong. If she was slender, she was yet deep-bosomed. The movements of the girl were as certain as those of ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... Pryor were exceedingly astonished when they heard that Wigfall had been carrying on negotiations in Beauregard's name, and stated that, to their certain knowledge, he had had no communication with Beauregard. They spoke of the matter with great delicacy, for Wigfall was a parlous man, and quick to settle disputed points with the pistol. Anderson replied with spirit that, under the circumstances, he would run up his flag again, and resume the firing. They begged him, however, not to take action until they had had an opportunity ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... Besar and his stately wife, of Oma-Suling nobility, accompanied by the kapala of the kampong and others, paid me a visit, presenting me with a long sugarcane, a somewhat rare product in these parts and considered a great delicacy, one large papaya, white onions, and bananas. In return I gave one cake of chocolate, two French tins of meat, one tin of boiled ham, ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... she desired not to be hurried. As for the seventy-five thousand roubles, Mr. Totski need not have found any difficulty or awkwardness about the matter; she quite understood the value of money, and would, of course, accept the gift. She thanked him for his delicacy, however, but saw no reason why Gavrila Ardalionovitch should not ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... often with salad, or together with smoked ham and potatoes in their jackets. Neither the ham nor the herrings are ever cooked when they have been smoked, and the ham is very tough in consequence. The breast of a goose, too, is eaten smoked but not cooked, and is considered a great delicacy. Poultry varies in quality a good deal. Everyone knows the little chickens that come round at hotel dinners, all legs and bones. A German family will sit down contentedly to an old hen that the most economical of us would ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... stage in the operation the utmost skill and delicacy of handling are required to convert what might easily pass for a heap of rubbish swept together from a macadamised roadway into the smooth, glittering, lustrous plate which the French so picturesquely call a ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... lives backwards, beginning, as old men and women, with little more knowledge of the past than we have of the future, and foreseeing the future about as clearly as we see the past, winding up by entering into the womb as though being buried. But delicacy forbids me to pursue this subject further: the upshot is that it comes to much the same thing, provided one ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... sufficiently broad basis for the theoretical presentation of all physical phenomena, still we must grant it a considerable measure of " truth," since it supplies us with the actual motions of the heavenly bodies with a delicacy of detail little short of wonderful. The principle of relativity must therefore apply with great accuracy in the domain of mechanics. But that a principle of such broad generality should hold with such exactness in one domain of phenomena, and yet should be invalid ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... accepted a call to Park Church, Glasgow. During the following year he published a volume of sermons marked by great chasteness and beauty of language, strength and delicacy of thought, and, above all, by spirituality of tone, and breadth of earnest sympathy with men. By this time his fame as a preacher had reached its zenith. The demands made upon his powers of endurance were ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... country more beautiful, also more poignant and catastrophic in natural connotation, than the one which includes these cypresses of Monterey. Yet this same mordant area holds Point Lobos, a headland which displays in moss and lichens all the minute delicacy of a gleeful, elfin world. I challenge the earth to produce a region more beautiful, yet also more gay and debonair in natural connotation, than the one which enfolds San Francisco. For here the water presents gorgeous, plastic color, alternating blue and gold. Here Mount Tamalpais ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... Legislature would necessarily be Protestant; and the great ground of argument on the part of the Catholics would be done away, as, compared with the rest of the Empire, they would become a minority. You will judge when and to whom this idea can be confided. It must certainly require great delicacy and management; but I am heartily glad that it is at least in ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... was hewn from marble so pure and white that even now, after all those ages, it shone as the moonbeams danced upon it, and its height was, I should say, a trifle over twenty feet. It was the winged figure of a woman of such marvellous loveliness and delicacy of form that the size seemed rather to add to than to detract from its so human and yet more spiritual beauty. She was bending forward and poising herself upon her half-spread wings as though to preserve her balance as she leant. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... me your word that this will not wound Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's delicacy in regard to his feeling for me, from whom he ne-e-ver conceals anything... and if you are convinced also that your doing this will ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... With instinctive delicacy Mr. Bernard softly closed the door, and retired, feeling that the scene had become too sacred for ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... Chatham was to be devoted. He was the fourth child and second son; the third son and last child of Chatham was born two years later. William Pitt was delicate from his infancy, and by reason of his delicacy was never sent to school. He was educated by private tuition, directly guided and controlled by his father. From the first he was precocious, full of promise, full of performance. He acquired knowledge eagerly and surely; what he learned he learned well and thoroughly. Trained from his ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... tired, and we longed for fresh buffalo-beef. The praises lavished by our guides upon the delicacy of this viand— their talk over the camp-fire, about "fat cow" and "boudins" and "hump-ribs," quite tantalised our palates, and we were all eager to try our teeth upon these vaunted tit-bits. No buffalo appeared ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... going on, and a weakening of the fibre of character on one side, or on both sides. The particular dispute, whether it be about money or about anything else, is only the occasion which reveals the slackening of the morale. The innate delicacy and self-respect of the friend who asks the favor may have been damaged through a series of similar importunities, or there may have been a growing hardness of heart and selfishness in the friend who refuses the request. Otherwise, ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... a fair young man, travel-soiled and looking weary, like an over-taxed child. He was very slender, and with a sort of a lily paleness on his forehead, that fatigue or sorrow had lent to its natural delicacy. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... able to do something to help Mrs. Littlejohn, but I might not be able to afford to take her down the two or three pounds of sugar you promised her, nor to spend several dollars on fresh salmon—a delicacy which we have had on our own table but once this season. Besides, there are thirty or forty sick people in town, probably, who are as poor and as much in need of assistance as this one old woman. You see, don't you, that I could not give salmon and peas and white ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... and Nature of the Motor Impulse.—Whatever may be the means of movement, the exterior tentacles, considering their delicacy, are inflected with much force. A bristle, held so that a length of 1 inch projected from a handle, yielded when I tried to lift with it an inflected tentacle, which was somewhat thinner than the bristle. The amount or extent, also, of the movement is ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... morning brought a visitor—Mrs Abbott, from the Angel, after whose stay Edith declared that a day's hard work would have fatigued her less of the two inflictions. This lady's freedom in asking questions, without the remotest sense of delicacy, was only to be paralleled by her readiness to impart information. The party at the White Bear knew before she went home, that she had recently had her parlour newly hung with arras, representing the twelve labours of Hercules: that she intended to have roast veal to supper: that her ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... from 6d. to 11d. per lb., the fins bringing the best price on account of the extra amount of glutinous matter they contain, and the which are highly relished by the richer classes of Chinese as a delicacy. The tails are also valued as an article of food in China; and, apart from their edible qualities, have a further value as a base for clear varnishes, &c.; and I was informed by a Chinese tea-merchant that the glaze upon the paper coverings of tea-chests was due to a preparation composed principally ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... little curiosity about other lands, except, maybe, Bible lands, and felt an honest contempt for city ways and city people. He was as unaffected as a child and would ask a man his politics or a woman her age as soon as ask them the time of day. He had little delicacy of feeling on the conventional side but great tenderness of emotion on the purely human side. His candour was at times appalling, and he often brought a look of shame into Mother's face. He had ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... quickly, "but you don't need to spend that much, you know. I say, you let me manage this thing." And fortunate it was for Ranald that he had his friend's assistance in this all-important business, but it took all Harry's judgment, skill, and delicacy of handling to pilot his friend through the devious ways of outfitters, for Ranald's ignorance of all that pertained to a gentleman's wardrobe was equaled only by the sensitive pride on the one hand that made him ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... home use fresh Mushrooms are a delicious, highly nutritious and wholesome delicacy; and for market they are less bulky than eggs, and, when properly handled, no crop is more remunerative. Anyone who has an ordinary house cellar, woodshed, or barn can grow Mushrooms. This is the most practical work on the ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... "the more than Greek delicacy with which the tragedy is told. No mutilation, no gore; just an effacement—prompt and absolute—'there wasn't any.' It would be hard to ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... delicacy of conscience revolts at it; the mere cowardice of a boy. Who are you, that now takes the part of conscience against me? Are you a better man ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... Belfield, who hitherto had kept out of sight, made her appearance. She found her, alike in person, manners and conversation, a coarse and ordinary woman, not more unlike her son in talents and acquired accomplishments, than dissimilar to her daughter in softness and natural delicacy. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... of the milk, certainly," responded Mrs. Norris, laughing; "but—" then she hesitated. How could she hamper the mind of this ingenuous little lad of hers with false and finical ideas of refinement and delicacy! Why should she suggest to him that it is at least not customary to go about giving the poor to drink out of our own especial milk cans? There came to her mind the noble lines which but frame as with jewels the simple Christian precept,—the ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... It does not address itself to common emotions and every-day sympathies. His flour is bolted too fine. One must almost be a poet himself to enter into full communion with him. In intellectual productions the refining process should not be carried too far: beyond a certain point, what is gained in delicacy is lost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Jusserand has once more made English literature his debtor by his admirable monograph on Piers Plowman.... It is a masterly contribution to the history of our literature, inspired by rare delicacy ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... inexpressible longing to have Garth with a hint or a look assure her that he loved her, and so, thrusting the wretch Mabyn out of their charmed circle, reinstate her in her self-respect. But poor Garth in his clumsy, masculine delicacy thought that to obtrude himself at such a moment would only hurt her more. He kept silent, and he averted his eyes, and Natalie, misunderstanding, tasted the ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... The delicacy of his behavior penetrated the mind of Thaddeus, and without demurring, he followed him into a room. While Mr. Burket offered his guest a chair, the count took off his hat and laid it on the table. Burket contemplated the saddened dignity ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... are there want to see Jim a minute, Harry?" asked Lefever, calm but conveniently close to the rock and quite conscious of the delicacy of his position ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... scarce, and is at present but little known; and hence a very small portion of it will no doubt be highly acceptable to the cultivated reader; especially as this noble epic is written with great felicity of expression and the sweetest delicacy of feeling." ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... excellent quality of the landlady's claret. He had recognised, as soon as he tasted it, that finest vintage of Bordeaux, which conceals its true strength—to a gross and ignorant taste—under the exquisite delicacy of its flavour. Encourage Mr. Vimpany by means of a dinner at the inn, to give his opinion as a man whose judgment in claret was to be seriously consulted—and permit him also to discover that Hugh was rich enough to have been able to buy the wine—and the attainment of ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... known to such as have grown up in grievous ignorance of the lore inseparable from "deestrick school," hold the most practical significance in the mind of boy and girl; for they bring forth (I know we thought for our delight alone!) a delicacy known as flag-buds, everlastingly dear to the childish palate. These were devoured by the wholesale in their season, and little mouths grew oozy-green as those of happy beasties in June, from much champing and chewing. Did we lose our appetite ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... his daughter. There were objections to each line of conduct, and his confidence in Mr. Ferrers was very great, although he did not exactly know who he was: he was decidedly a gentleman; and there was, throughout his conduct and conversation, a tone of such strict propriety; there was so much delicacy, and good feeling, and sound principle, in all he said and did, that the Consul at length resolved, that he had no right to suspect, and no authority to question him. He was just on the point, however, of conferring with his daughter, when the town was suddenly enlivened, and his attention ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli |
