"Elegance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... martial music I ever heard played, by the band, we took steamboat for Greenwich, and, landing there, walked to Blackheath, where we had an engagement to dine at Lee Grove with a London merchant. Here we had a fine opportunity to witness the luxury and elegance of English social life. This gentleman, now in the decline of life, has an exquisitely beautiful place, situated in a park of some sixty acres. The railroad has been run through his estate, and, of ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... related one remarkable phase of his experience to Judge John Tyler, by whom it was given to Wirt. One of the examiners was "Mr. John Randolph, who was afterwards the king's attorney-general for the colony,—a gentleman of the most courtly elegance of person and manners, a polished wit, and a profound lawyer. At first, he was so much shocked by Mr. Henry's very ungainly figure and address, that he refused to examine him. Understanding, however, that he had already obtained two signatures, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... descriptions are mere landscape backgrounds with their own portraits in an engaging attitude in front. They are not observing or enjoying the scene, but doing the honours as masters of the ceremonies to nature, and arbiters of elegance to all humanity. If they tell a love-tale of enamoured princesses, it is plain they fancy themselves the hero of the piece. If they discuss poetry, their encomiums still turn on something genial and unsophisticated, meaning their own style. If they enter into politics, it is understood that ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... were important because they were impressive; there was no other reason. And they were impressive because they believed themselves important. The adults of the family were impregnably formal; they dressed with reticent elegance, and wore the same nose and the same expression—an expression which indicated that they knew something exquisite and sacred which other people could never know. Other people, in their presence, were ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... in a ride in that clumsy old vehicle, nor dreamed that its halting, uncertain gait was other than the very poetry of motion! Even mother's own wooden rocking-chair, a bit of boughten elegance, with its gay patchwork cushion, and dull, contented "creak! creak!" as its dear occupant swayed meditatively to and fro, knitting in hand, in the quiet, restful gloaming, was not quite equal to that dear, delightful ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... muslins and silks, and were very good friends. Lizzie could scarcely help wondering at Mrs. Ford's zeal on her behalf. Might she not have referred it to her guardian's principles? Her wardrobe, hitherto fashioned on the Glenham notion of elegance, was gradually raised to the Leatherborough standard of fitness. As she took up her bedroom candle the night before she left home, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... in the time of the last elder, Varsonofy? He didn't care for such elegance. They say he used to jump up and thrash even ladies with a stick," observed Fyodor Pavlovitch, as ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... face her employer. Save for a greater demureness of expression and the extreme simplicity of her attire, she had changed very little since she had given up her life of comparative luxury to become Peter Ruff's secretary. There was a sort of personal elegance which clung to her, notwithstanding her strenuous attempts to dress for her part, except for which she looked precisely as a private secretary and typist should look. She even wore a black bow at the ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... vicinity of a battery close to Prescott Gate, erected in 1797, was an old stone building, generally known as the Bishop's Palace. Like all the ancient structures of Quebec, this building had no claims to elegance of form, although much labour and expense had been bestowed on its construction. The chapel of this building, situated near the communication with the lower {306} town, was converted into a chamber, in which were held the first meetings ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... of Pisa, circular, of marble, with dome two hundred feet high, embellished with numerous columns, is a notable work of the twelfth century. The pulpit is a masterpiece of Nicola Pisano. Casa d'Oro at Venice is noted for its elegance. It was built in the fourteenth century. The Cathedral of Lisieux dates chiefly from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and contains many works of art. The Palais de Justice is of the fifteenth century. It was built for the Parliament ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... him to despise that species of mechanical knowledge which it was, just at this moment, so important to the commander of la Fontange to possess. He could dance to admiration, did the honors of his cabin with faultless elegance, and had caused the death of an excellent mariner, who had accidentally fallen overboard, by jumping into the sea to aid him, without knowing how to swim a stroke himself,—a rashness that had diverted those exertions which might have saved the unfortunate sailor, from the assistance of the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... The kind mistress of Castlewood looked so gay and handsome and spoke with such cheerfulness and courage to all her company that the few ladies who were present could not but congratulate Madame Esmond upon the elegance of the feast and upon her manner of presiding at it. But they were scarcely in the drawing-room, when her artificial courage failed her, and she burst into tears, exclaiming, "Ah, it may be an honour to have Mr. Braddock in my house, but he comes to take one of my sons away from ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... successfully, as they were his voluntary, not his necessary employment. The World became insensibly reconciled to Wisdom and Goodness, when they saw them recommended by him, with at least as much Spirit and Elegance as they had been ridiculed ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... up—whence the peculiar force of Seneca's "post quod non sunt lavandae manus." But exactly in proportion as our dinner has advanced towards evening, have we and has that advanced in circumstances of elegance, of taste, of intellectual value." That by itself would be much. Infinite would be the gain for any people that it had ceased to be brutal, animal, fleshly; ceased to regard the chief meal of the day as a ministration ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... returned. But with that eye she was henceforth enabled to see everything as it really passed in their secret abodes; she saw every object, not as she hitherto had done, in deceptive splendour and elegance, but in its genuine colours and form. The gaudy ornaments of the apartment were reduced to the walls of a gloomy cavern. Soon after, having discharged her office, she was dismissed to her own home. Still, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... as well as some others, with no greater probabilities or pretences have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. But I had before written a shrewd prophecy against myself, and I think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in the elegance of it ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... house-parties are given in these roomy old houses with broad verandas, surrounded with lawn and garden. But this need not deter those having less delightful surroundings from offering their best to their friends. It is not so much the elegance of what we offer as the manner in which it is offered that makes our friends remember ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... carpenter to examine the wood. To describe this part I walked through is simply to say that it nearly resembles a walk on Blackheath and the Park if we set out of question the houses and gardens of the latter. The hills and valleys rise and fall with inexpressible elegance. We discovered no water nor any new wood of consequence, but it is impossible that a great want of water can be here from the number of native huts and fires we fell in with in our march. From the top of a high hill I ascended and casting my eyes to the north-east ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... just look at it now (as I have copied it to the best of my humble ability), and compare Master Logic's countenance and attitude with the splendid elegance of Tom! Now every London man is weary and blase. There is an enjoyment of life in these young bucks of 1823 which contrasts strangely with our feelings of 1860. Here, for instance, is a specimen of their talk and walk, "'If,' says LOGIC — ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... was born in Mantua in the year 70 B.C. His great poem is ranked next to those of Homer, in the highest class of poetical composition, the Epic. Virgil is far inferior to Homer in originality and invention, but superior to him in correctness and elegance. To critics of English lineage Milton alone of modern poets seems worthy to be classed with these illustrious ancients. His poem of "Paradise Lost," from which we have borrowed so many illustrations, is in many respects equal, in ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... expensively—how expensively it was his business to know. Then he took in the room in which they sat. Simplicity again, but the simplicity of high art—the drawing-room of one rich enough to indulge in the final luxury of a highly cultivated taste, viz.: unostentatious elegance and the subjection of each carefully chosen ornament to ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... to Julien by his pupils! He made a speech in favour of Lefevre, and hoped that every one there would vote for Lefevre. Julien was very eloquent. He spoke of Le grand art, le nu, and Lefevre's unswerving fidelity to le nu ... elegance, refinement, an echo of ancient Greece: and then,—what do you think? when he had exhausted all the reasons why the medal of honour should be accorded to Lefevre, he said, "I ask you to remember, gentlemen, that he has a wife and eight children." Is ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... my happy spirit was conscious of a new and beautiful existence. I found myself in a large place, and a company of angelic spirits surrounded me; and we were seated at a table, adorned with an exceeding elegance, and having many varieties of food, of which we partook, but without a consciousness of taste—only there was a genial delight of mind arising from the mutual love of all those bright ones. An angel-woman spoke to me and said, 'This is the Lord's Supper; appropriate to thyself the goods and truths ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... carrying so many useless things. We don't want them. Our house is full now, and besides that, Mrs. Livingstone is very particular about the style of her furniture, and I am afraid yours would hardly come up to her ideas of elegance." ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... what elegance! Now will the senor ride in splendor that will dazzle the eyes to look upon!" Teresita bantered, poking a slipper-toe tentatively towards the saddle, and clasping her hands in mock rapture. "On every corner, silver crescents; on the tapideros, silver stars bigger than Venus; ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... characteristics which are almost entirely lacking in the other parts of Italy. Here there was no free city, here there was no republic, but, instead, a feudal court which followed the best models of the continent and in its time became famed for its brilliancy and elegance. Without dallying by the way to explain when battles were fought and kings were crowned, suffice it to say that, early in the fourteenth century, Robert of Taranto, an Angevine prince, ascended the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... many-coloured plumage, with fountains, and trees, and flowers, and ornaments of vast size, of gold and silver and precious stones, many in the form of the shrubs and plants among which they stood, and of workmanship so admirable that they seemed to vie with them in elegance and beauty. But the greedy spoiler came, and behold, stranger, what he made it! Alas! this garden is but an example of the condition to which our ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... opened its doors on November 18, 1833, and was the home of Italian Opera for two seasons; the second, built eleven years later, endured in the service for which it was designed four years; the third, which marked as big an advance on its immediate predecessor in comfort and elegance as the first had marked on the ramshackle Park Theater described by Richard Grant White, was the Astor Place Opera House, built in 1847, and the nominal home of ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... gold—the red-tiled floor was as brilliant as the scarlet geranium on the window sill—this meant that his servants were good and plentiful, that the custom was constant, and of that order which necessitated the keeping up of the coffee-room to a high standard of elegance and order. ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... writer of those lines might die before him,' of which he was so careful to secure the fulfilment, has to be discarded with it. The evidence for Ralegh's authorship is exceedingly weak; and the rude verses are marked by none of his elegance of style. But the attempt to father so wretched a foundling upon him is proof the more of the popular perception of the dissembled estrangement. In a less undignified shape than a scurrilous epitaph on a dishonest shepherd, the bitterness Ralegh felt was sometimes ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... thought she would be," he answered in a hesitating way, looking toward Lucy, and seating himself in his favorite attitude, hands in his lap, one leg crossed over the other and hanging straight beside its fellow; only a man like the doctor, of more than usual repose and of a certain elegance of form, Jane always said, could sit this way any length of time and be comfortable and unconscious of his posture. Then he added slowly, and as if he had given the subject some consideration, "You won't keep her long, ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... infinite compression, of almost imperceptible shadings. The lurid splashes and the heavy emphasis of the local colorists offended his sensitive taste: he would work with suggestion, with microscopic focussings, and always with dignity and elegance. He was more American than Henry James, more even than Aldrich. He chose always distinctively American subjects—New York City was his favorite theme—and his work had more depth of soul than Stockton's or Aldrich's. The story may be trivial, a mere expanded anecdote, yet ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... a house where tapestries abound, is to feel oneself welcomed even before the host appears. The bending verdure invites, the animated figures welcome, and at once the atmosphere of elegance and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... nobility, and amongst whom scarcely any of humble birth were mixed, for we cannot call thus some three or four of coarser stuff, who were admitted simply for the purpose of adding strength and beauty to the ballet, by the grace of their faces and the elegance of their movements, with a few dancing-masters to regulate and give the tone to the whole. Between this time and that I am now speaking of was an abyss. The education of those days instructed every one in grace, address, exercise, respect for bearing, graduated and delicate politeness, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... room into which I now stepped. Plain as was the furniture in comparison with the elaborate richness of the walls and ceiling, there were still scattered through the room, which was large even for a thirty foot house, articles of sufficient elegance to make the supposition that it was the abode of an ordinary seamstress open to suspicion, if ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... times the long struggle for Greek independence produced a crop of poets who, if they could not emulate the dignity and linguistic elegance of their predecessors, were none the less able to express their national aspirations in rugged but withal very tuneful verse which went straight to the hearts of their countrymen. The Klephtic ballads played a very ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... selfish beasts and unmanageable brutes!" Jessica began, hotly. Jessica's language was frequently too strong for elegance, and even at this exciting moment my sense of duty forced me to call the fact to her attention. I moreover, essayed judicious weighing of the situation as the most effective means of cooling ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... most beautiful gold-embroidered velvet robes, light crape and lace dresses, and hats and topknots of charming elegance. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... her figure could be seen, while seated, it appeared slight and delicate, without fragility, girlishly immature, yet not lean in form. The small head, supported by a slender, snow-white neck, was a marvel of grace and elegance, instantly recalling the bust of Clytie in the British Museum. One involuntarily looked for the sunflower from whose calyx it really ought to bloom. The brow was narrow and dazzlingly fair, the nose uncommonly delicate, slightly arched at the root, with mobile nostrils, so delicate ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... Elder (tree) sambuko. Elder pliagxa. Eldest (first born) unuanaskito. Elect (choose) elekti. Elect (by ballot) baloti. Election elekto. Elector elektanto. Electric elektra. Electricity elektro. Electrify elektrigi. Elegance eleganteco. Elegant eleganta. Elegy elegio. Element elemento. Elementary elementa. Elephant elefanto. Elevate altigi. Elevation (height) altajxo. Elf koboldo, feino. Elicit eltiri. Elide elizii. Eligible elektebla. Eligibility elektebleco. Eliminate ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... her warm full body against mine confirmed my conviction that we should never be parted. She put her arm in mine, and we strolled through the great rooms of the house. She was ecstatic at their size and elegance, exclaiming over the carpeting, the gnarled furniture, the ancient silver and pewter, the gallery of family paintings. When she came upon an early portrait of ...
— My Father, the Cat • Henry Slesar
... him as an equal, and are said even to have assisted him in the composition of his plays. He died in the 36th year of his age, in B.C. 159. Six comedies are all that remain to us. The ancient critics are unanimous in ascribing to Terence immaculate purity and elegance of language. Although a foreigner and a freedman, he divides with Cicero and Caesar the palm ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... home, and exchange calls and groceries, and wear dresses from the same piece, and talk scandal about each other, all in as neighborly a manner as they have been accustomed to do all their lives. Indeed, whatever aristocracy of wealth and elegance was growing up among us has been set back at least a generation by this war, which has brought out into such prominent notice and elevated so high in our hearts the rougher merits of the strong arm and the dextrous hand. Every ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Utility, comfort and elegance are, as Cowper shows, the three successive purposes for which furniture was designed. And to-day the order of development remains also the order of importance. The first things to be desired in any article of furniture are durability and simple application to its purpose. These ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... without any great show of emotion, feeling, I suppose, that without worldly goods we might consistently be without elegance. And in the back of my brain I was silently revising our old Kansas pioneer ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... maidens approached, I saw the glowing cheeks of Margaret pale a little, her lips press together, and her chin become a little proud, but her eyes never wavered; but Mistress Helen beats me to be describing. There was an elegance about her and an air of languor, maybe from her sombre dark eyes, yet her every movement was graceful, and her smile a thing to be looking for, and she was slender as the stalk of a bluebell. The Laird of Scaurdale was in great humour, ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... delicacy of taste, must be united an expansion of mind, and a refinement of thought, which is the result of high cultivation. To render this sort of conversation irresistibly attractive, a knowledge of the world is requisite, and that enchanting case, that elegance of manner, which is to be acquired only by frequenting the higher circles of polished life. In sentimental conversation, subjects interesting to the heart, and to the imagination, are brought forward; they are discussed ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... very elegant, combed and brushed and foppish on his cross, as Gabriele D'Annunzio's son posing as a martyred saint. The martyrdom of this Christ is according to the most polite convention. The elegance is very important, and very Austrian. One might almost imagine the young man had taken up this striking and original position to create a delightful sensation among the ladies. It is quite in the ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... style. The basement story is rusticated, and the principal front has a handsome pediment supported by four columns of the Corinthian order. A bold cornice extends on all sides, which are decorated at the angles with Corinthian pilasters. The whole has an air of substantial elegance, and is in extremely good taste, if we except the door and window cases, which we are disposed to think rather too small. The Piccadilly front is enclosed with a rich bronzed palisade between leaved pillars, being in continuation of the classical ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... fellow performers among the men were such sodden-faced blackguards as no shop-boy who applauded them at night would dare to walk out with in the morning. The place itself had as little of the allurement of elegance and beauty about it as the people. Here was no bright gilding on the ceiling—no charm of ornament, no comfort of construction even, in the furniture. Here were no viciously-attractive pictures on the walls—no enervating ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... that have not suffered in the service will run away with the booty." Under this appeal of the lord chief justice the spoils were divided and his honor was in part gratified. Many of the convicts were persons of family and education, and were accustomed to ease and elegance. ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... this, I assert with a writer, who (whatever was thought of him once, and whilst those who were the objects of his reproach still lived) is now the pride and boast of the country, both for the supreme elegance and the principles of his political writings, that "wherever the practice deviates from the theory so far the practice is vicious and corrupt." Now, saying no more than this, and when it would have been the merest stupidity ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... startled. He had an instant vision of Clayton Spencer, tall, composed, handsome, impeccably clothed. He saw him in the setting that suited him best, the quiet elegance of his home. Clayton unhappy! Nonsense. But he was uneasy, too. That very gravity which he had noticed lately, that was certainly not the gravity of an entirely happy man. Clayton had changed, somehow. Was there trouble there? And ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Does not he who extends among the people the use of this democratizing weed, emphatically give them a 'quid pro quo?' Are not slovenliness and filth the virtues of republics, while neatness and elegance are vices of court-growth, and expand into their most ramified and minute perfectness of polish only in the palaces of kings? Furthermore, oh laurelled and triumphant PICKWICK! if expectoration be filthy, it must be because the 'thing expectorated' ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... striving for years to slough off from my tongue a thick Irish brogue, and had not succeeded very well. The elegance and the chasteness of Jowett's English did more for me in this respect than my years of pruning. I have never heard such English, and behind this master language of a master mind, there was a man, a gentleman! I wrote Dr. Jowett a note one day, asking for an interview. It ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... melancholy heads—the sad "Portrait of a Rabbi"—or the sweet introspection of a Rousseau stream. A solemn Dutch housewife, rendered with the bold fidelity and resonant enameled surfaces of a Hals or the cold elegance of an Ingres, commanded his utmost enthusiasm. So he would sit and wonder at the vision and skill of the original dreamer, exclaiming at times: ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... moment when he ushered her into his friendly, low ceiled drawing-room with its tiers upon tiers of book shelves, he admitted her on terms of equality to the miraculous order of existence that it was the privilege of her life to share. The pink silk coverlet and the elegance of the silver coated steampipes at Beulah's; the implacable British stuffiness at the Winchester which had had its own stolid charm for the lineal descendant of the Pilgrim fathers; the impressively casual atmosphere over which the "hired butler" presided distributing after-dinner ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... poet much was learned by Marguerite of Navarre. Of his contemporaries, who were also disciples, the most distinguished was MELIN DE SAINT-GELAIS, and on the master's death Melin passed for an eminent poet. We can regard him now more justly, as one who in slender work sought for elegance, and fell into a mannered prettiness. While preserving something of the French spirit, he suffered from the frigid ingenuities which an imitation of Italian models suggested to him; but it cannot be forgotten that Saint-Gelais ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... father's sway Ctesius Ormenides, a godlike Chief. It chanced that from Phoenicia, famed for skill In arts marine, a vessel thither came By sharpers mann'd, and laden deep with toys. Now, in my father's family abode A fair Phoenician, tall, full-sized, and skill'd In works of elegance, whom they beguiled. While she wash'd linen on the beach, beside 510 The ship, a certain mariner of those Seduced her; for all women, ev'n the wise And sober, feeble prove by love assail'd. Who was she, he enquired, and whence? nor ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... clear sea-green hue, which was draped round her figure very gracefully, but entirely concealed her arms. Her full trowsers of rose-colored calico descended nearly to her ankles. The costume of the elder sister was marked by greater elegance. Her shawl was dark red, but of less size and thinner texture than that worn by her sister. After we had been a few minutes together, we became quite familiar friends, and the young ladies permitted me to have a minute inspection of their dresses. They ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... church. I looked earnestly at the altar-piece. I was astonished, hurt, disgusted. It was a coarse daub. The freshness of the painting had been long changed by the dark tarnish of years, and the blighting of damp atmosphere. There were some remains of beauty in the expression, and elegance in the attitude; but, as a piece of art it was but a second-rate performance. Age dispels many illusions, and suffers for it. Truly youth and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... had, to some extent, monopolized the treasures of classic culture, in order to parade their knowledge of which the multitude remained destitute, and so to become strange prodigies of learning and elegance. With his irresistible need of teaching and his sincere love for humanity and its general culture, Erasmus introduced the classic spirit, in so far as it could be reflected in the soul of a sixteenth-century Christian, among the people. Not he alone; but none more extensively and more ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... words on a page than the roman of that day, and was used as a body type, not as in our day for isolated words and phrases set apart for emphasis or other distinction from the rest of the text. Aldus also, though not the first to cast Greek type, gave his Greek fonts an elegance which was soon imitated, like the italic, by other printers. By the introduction of small types which were at the same time legible, and by adopting for his classical texts a small format suitable for pocket-size books, Aldus invented the modern ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... which their owner had surrounded himself partly for use, partly only to look at." Demidoff "was a tall, thin man," continues Mr. Hacklaender, "with light, almost yellow, complexion, and always dressed with extreme elegance. On the occasion of our first visit to his town-house the princess was painting in her studio, in which art she was more than a dilettante. The prince went first to her with Demidoff, and after they had come back we heard from her a peal of the heartiest laughter, which rung down ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... and the small boy in "Dr. Birch," singing in his nightgown to the big boy in bed. There is Betsinda dancing with her plum-bun in "The Rose and the Ring." The burlesque drawings of that delightful child's book are not its least attraction. Not arriving at the prettiness of Mr. Tenniel, and the elegance of Mr. Du Maurier, and falling far short of their ingenious fantasy, they are yet manly delineations of great adventures. The count kicking the two black men into space is a powerful design, full of action; and it would be hard to beat the picture of the fate of Gruffanuf's husband. These and ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... soil his to any great extent at first. The Captain was plainly overawed by the genteel elegance of his surrounding and the manner of his hostess. But Mr. Keith was very much at ease and full of fun and, after a time, a little of Shadrach's self-consciousness disappeared. When he learned that grandfather Wyeth had been a seafaring man he came ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... opposition to it. The worst he did was to teach Effie some picturesque Western phrases, which she used with innocent effectiveness; she committed the crimes against convention which he taught her with all the conventional elegance of her training. The most that he ever gained for her were some concessions in going out in weather that her mother thought unfit, or sitting up for half-hours after her bed-time. He ordered books for her from Goodban's, and it was Colville now, ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... evening of August 8, a week after the expedition to Robin Hill, in the dining-room of this house—'quite individual, my dear—really elegant'—Soames and Irene were seated at dinner. A hot dinner on Sundays was a little distinguishing elegance common to this house and many others. Early in married life Soames had laid down the rule: 'The servants must give us hot dinner on Sundays—they've nothing to do but play ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his own, whilst he scoffed at conventional elegance. Thus, he could not bear to hear the sound of his own steps, the grit of gravel; and therefore never willingly walked in the road, but in the grass, on mountains and in woods. His senses were acute, and he remarked that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... but there the resemblance to his host ended, Sir Charles Carew being a man who made it a point of honor to be clad like the lilies of the field on every possible occasion in life, from the carrying a breach to the ogling a milkmaid. The sultry afternoon had no power to affect the scrupulous elegance of his attire, or to alter the careful repose of his manner. In his hand he held a volume of "Hudibras," but his thoughts were not upon the book, wandering instead, with those of his kinsman, over the fertile fields of ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... them in the coarse cloth of the country, made in the style common among the peasantry of Bergen; but the delicacy of his limbs, the smallness of his head, the easy elegance of his poise, and the natural gracefulness of his movements and attitudes, all seemed to denote ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... my hostess, had all the elegance of Mrs. Bradford; but there was also a simple, friendly heartiness in her manner that stamped every word she spoke with sincerity. I was greatly pleased, and felt that the wealthy banker and his sister could find ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... habits of neatness and cleanliness encouraged; and the result justified the expenditure. At Lowell the same policy has been adopted and extended; more spacious mills and elegant boarding-houses have been erected;" as to the elegance, it may be a matter of taste, but as to the comfort, there is no question—"the same care as to the classes employed; more capital has been expended for cleanliness and decoration; a hospital has been established for ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... faith, his holiness, his genius, to the imagination, the heart, and the conscience of man, he should possess, or attain to, the mechanical ingenuity that can satisfy man's constructive understanding, the elegance that can please his sensuous taste, the fluency that can blend ease with instruction, and the music that can touch through the ear the inner springs of his being. Heart and genius, art and nature, sympathy with man and God, love of the beautiful apparition of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... people, particularly children, were afraid to look at him. In figure he was very small, and bent; but, at the same time, had hands and fingers of extraordinary size and coarseness, with which, nevertheless, he produced the cleanest and prettiest drawings. His chief diligence and most careful elegance he brought to work in the painting of his beloved cats. In right delineation of their forms he had the art to seize the general nature of this animal, and, in the portrait-like indication of their various physiognomies, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... lightness, might have served as the model for a sculptor in arming the hand of Minerva. Could these be the work of an uncultivated people? Impossible! The harp, too, was there, that unfailing mark of polish and social elegance. The bard and barbarism could never be coeval. But a relic was there, exciting still deeper interest—an ancient crosier, of curious workmanship, wrought in the precious metals and partly studded with jewels; but few of the latter remained, though the empty collets ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... numerous, but are confined chiefly towards the base of the cliffs, not scattered over them as I believe Burnes represents. These are of no size, finish, or elegance, and it is only their number, and the extreme obscurity of their history, that makes them interesting; the roofs are usually arched, and the walls are often supplied with niches, and covered with a ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... With dignity and elegance she passed— As moves the mountain partridge through the meads; Her tresses richly falling to her feet, And filling with perfume ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... I replied, and she began. Never had I seen a woman take off such fine linen before, never such legs in handsome silk stockings, and beautiful boots. I had had the cleanest, nicest women, but they were servants, with the dress and manners of servants. This woman seemed elegance itself to them. A nice pair of arms were disclosed, a big pair of breasts flashed out, a glimpse of a fine thigh was shown, and as her things dropped off, and she stopped to pick them up, with her face towards me; her laced chemise dropped, opened, and I saw darkness at the end of the ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... to have endowed our heroes yet with confidence or elegance in the art of ascending the Templeton platform. Dick still retained a painful recollection of his legs, and Heathcote was torn asunder by the cruel vagaries of his high collar, which would not keep on the button, but insisted on heeling over, choker and ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... air of familiarity their conditions seem not to warrant. Having greeted the visitor, and bid him be seated (he takes his seat, shyly, beside the door), the lady resumes her seat in a magnificent chair. For a moment the visitor scans over the great parlor, as if moved by the taste and elegance of everything that meets his eye. The hand of art has indeed been lavishly laid on the decorations of this chamber, which presents a scene of luxury princes might revel in. And though the soft wind of whispering silks seemed lending its aid to make complete ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the nobleman's face. The fierce desire to avenge himself at once on this man who threw the lie at him—august, illustrious—mingled, however, with yet another feeling—one of bewilderment. The fellow had spoken these last words in French, and choice French at that. His accents had all the elegance of ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... skill was as nothing to that of the Swedish professionals at St Moritz, could assuredly slide over snow in manner prodigious and beautiful. And he was exquisitely clothed for the part. His knickerbockers, in the elegance of their lines, were the delight of beholders. Ski-ing became the rage. Even Nellie insisted on hiring a pair. And the pronunciation of the word "ski" aroused long discussions and was never definitely settled ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... youth of seventeen, educated in the antique manner, and, though already married, still entirely under the tutelage of a strict mother, had been elevated to the highest position in the immense empire. He was ignorant of the luxury, pleasure, and elegance which were becoming general in the great families; outside of a lively disposition and docility toward his mother, he had up to this point shown no special quality, and no particular vice. Only one peculiarity had been noticed in him: he had studied with great zest music, painting, sculpture, ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... this principle is applied. A man, it is said, cannot be a governor of a state, a mayor of a city, a member of Congress, or hold any high office, unless his house, his equipage, his dress and his table, exhibit some appearance of elegance and wealth; and if a man live in a large and opulent city, he must be somewhat expensive in his style of living, that he may exert an influence in the higher walks of society. Then, country towns, and small villages, take pattern of the large cities, and the plea goes down through every ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... were summoned to the palace to write on themes assigned by the Emperor, that His Majesty might select a score of them for places in the Hanlin Academy. Here again fortune favoured young Chang; the elegance of his penmanship and his skill in composing [Page 222] mechanical verse were so remarkable that he secured a seat on the ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... artist's abode. Once within, I hardly dared to speak, lest what I saw might vanish away, as with the wave of a fairy's wand. Was I not a moment before down in that dusty, squalid street, and here I am now in a beautiful room whose appointments are all of quiet elegance—costly but in exquisite taste, and where absolute peace and quiet reign. The wide windows open upon a lovely green garden, which adds the final touch of restful repose to the ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... of this period, elegance of personal appearance was believed to rest more upon the texture of garments than upon their shaping. A silk dress needed no remodelling when it was a year or so old; it remained distinguished by merely ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... years, and the site of that once formidable building the Bastile is now occupied by one. None of these modern fountains (although many of them display much taste) are, however, by any means to be compared, in point of elegance, to that which stands in the market of Innocents, and which was erected in the year 1550. Its situation is too confined for so handsome a structure, and I had some difficulty in finding my way to it. It has the following inscription from the pen ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... would accuse herself of being too happy, too content, and would wonder whether she ought not to seek heaven by some austerity of scowling. Janet had everything: a kind disposition, some brains, some beauty, considerable elegance and luxury for her station, fine shoulders at a ball, universal love ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the sun was so great that, being very lightly clothed, we felt ourselves as wet as in a vapour bath. The road was bordered with a kind of bamboo,* (* Bambusa guadua.) which the Indians call iagua, or guadua, and which is more than forty feet in height. Nothing can exceed the elegance of this arborescent gramen. The form and disposition of its leaves give it a character of lightness which contrasts agreeably with its height. The smooth and glossy trunk of the iagua generally bends towards ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... and manly bearing, and as he had approached the spot where they now sat, with the graceful figure of his fair companion leaning upon his arm, he evinced that soft and persuasive mien, that easy elegance of manner and polish in his address, which travel and good society can alone impart. Around his noble forehead, now bared to the gentle breeze, his long auburn hair hung in waving ringlets, after the style of the period, ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... freight, in naval trade well skill'd, But dreads the athletic labours of the field." Incensed, Ulysses with a frown replies: "O forward to proclaim thy soul unwise! With partial hands the gods their gifts dispense; Some greatly think, some speak with manly sense; Here Heaven an elegance of form denies, But wisdom the defect of form supplies; This man with energy of thought controls, And steals with modest violence our souls; He speaks reservedly, but he speaks with force, Nor can one word be changed but ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... ago." And Miss Eunice gave a sigh, and fanned herself slowly, letting the fan which had been put into her hand turn itself quite over on her lap before it came up again. There was an air of antique elegance about this which amused Nan, who stood by the table wiping with her handkerchief some water that had dropped from the vase. A great many of the ladies in church the Sunday before had fanned themselves in this same little languishing way; she remembered one or two ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of fine old-world courtesy, suitably to entertain his strangely assorted neighbours. Poppy had an idea he found it rather hard work. She was not in the least sorry. That faded piece of feminine elegance, in fluffy black, bored her. She entertained a malicious hope that the said piece of feminine elegance bored Mr. Iglesias also. Finally, with rather bitter courage, she turned her eyes once more upon Lord Fallowfeild and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... evening. It was to be the most brilliant assemblage of the aristocratic families of the town that had ever been known in the wilderness and the first endeavour to transplant beyond the mountains the old social elegance of Williamsburg, Annapolis, and Richmond. Not to be seen in the dress that Mrs. Falconer, dreaming of her own past, had deftly made—not to have her beauty reign absolute in that scene of lights and dance and music—it was the long, slow crucifixion of all ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... Flaubert, He fished by obstinate isles; Observed the elegance of Circe's hair Rather than the mottoes ...
— Hugh Selwyn Mauberley • Ezra Pound
... Priscilla had seen elegance and beauty since she went away; she had entered into the life of the cultivated, the intellectually great. In spite of her deep affection for Aunt Raby, she came back to the ugliness and the sordid surroundings of home with a pang which she hated herself for feeling. She forgot Aunt ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... eyes had nothing to offer. He knew the thoughts behind them—of ice-cream and of something else. But those saint's eyes alongside—they offered all he knew and more than he could guess. They offered books and painting, beauty and repose, and all the fine elegance of higher existence. Behind those black eyes he knew every thought process. It was like clockwork. He could watch every wheel go around. Their bid was low pleasure, narrow as the grave, that palled, and the grave was at the end of it. But the bid ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... made their slender income yield the essentials of comfort and refinement, and seemed quite indifferent to non-essentials. Graham could never hope to possess wealth, but he found in Miss St. John a woman who could impart to his home the crowning grace of wealth—simple, unostentatious elegance. His aunt had said that the young girl had already refused more than one fortune, and the accompanying assurance that she would marry the man she loved, whatever might be his circumstances, seemed verified by his own observation. Therefore why might he not hope? Few men ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... their cushions of state, while, in sheer deference to his originality and humor, they laughed with the crowd at—themselves. And in sooth it was a goodly sight, the young scholar, who had hitherto only dabbled delicately with the treasures of poetry, whose name was a very synonym for elegance and the repose of a genial dignity, whom we suspected of no keen outlooks into the practical world of to-day,—to see this man suddenly flashing into the dusty arena, with indignation rustling through his veins and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Marchesino was married at Milan to a daughter of Count Giovanni Borromeo, and on this occasion, doubtless, he employed the gifted Roman sculptor to design the magnificent doorway which now adorns the Louvre and is a masterpiece of classic elegance. But now a fresh invitation reached ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... with the susceptibility of love? Must not the disposition be formed before even the object appears? I have witnessed the young artist of genius glow and start over the reveries of the uneducated BARRY, but pause and meditate, and inquire over the mature elegance of REYNOLDS; in the one he caught the passion for beauty, and in the other he discovered the beautiful; with the one he was warm and restless, and with the other calm ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... and sword-blades to perfection. They show great skill also in gold and silver work. Their mirrors are of bronze, the reflecting surface being of silver, and polished, the back and handle ornamented with various devices. Everything, indeed, that a Japanese artisan produces, exhibits a neatness and elegance which speaks well for ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... CHEVALIER SCOVEL as the Chevalier de Bernheim was not quite at home in his new surroundings. Accustomed to a more serious kind of entertainment, he appeared a trifle heavy, and his tenor notes (not unsuggestive of the Bank of Elegance) were sometimes of doubtful value. By this time, however, no doubt, he has regained his normal composure, and sings as successfully as ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various
... scholar, Foch is brilliant besides being profound. As a man, he is simple—and France admires simplicity; he is elegant—and France loves the elegance that is the expression of fine thinking, fine feeling; he is modest of his own attainments, ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... Everything ponderous, viscous, and pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying species of style, are developed in profuse variety among Germans—pardon me for stating the fact that even Goethe's prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, as a reflection of the "good old time" to which it belongs, and as an expression of German taste at a time when there was still a "German taste," which was a rococo-taste in moribus et artibus. Lessing is an exception, owing to his histrionic nature, which understood ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Septizonium of Severus was capable of standing against a royal army; [42] the sepulchre of Metella has sunk under its outworks; [43] [431] the theatres of Pompey and Marcellus were occupied by the Savelli and Ursini families; [44] and the rough fortress has been gradually softened to the splendor and elegance of an Italian palace. Even the churches were encompassed with arms and bulwarks, and the military engines on the roof of St. Peter's were the terror of the Vatican and the scandal of the Christian world. Whatever is fortified will be attacked; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... lady's elegance and the known fact that she owned and operated her own automobile cast a spell over most of her observers, and many faces, as Mrs. Tuttle proceeded to draw out her pet, were screwed into watchful ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... woman on board—distinguished for the sea—elegant in the style of Munich, with clothes of indescribable colors that suggested Persian art and the vignettes of mediaeval manuscripts. The husband admired Bertha's elegance, lamenting her childlessness in secret, almost as though it were a crime of high treason. Germany was magnificent because of the fertility of its women. The Kaiser, with his artistic hyperbole, had proclaimed ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of dress, whether for males or females, never change. Garments therefore not being thrown aside or altered with every month's variation of style as in the west, are frequently made of costly materials and adorned with such elegance of needle-work as to render them almost as precious as the sacred poet's vesture of gold wrought about with divers colors. This applies of course to garments of ceremony chiefly. A very fine paraja or mantle of camel or goat's hair, a skirt of brocade, or a scarf ornamented with ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... may deserve observation that, in that line of coast, the southern of Lesser Asia, ruins of cities, evidently of an age after Alexander, yet barely named in history, at this day astonish the adventurous traveller by their magnificence and elegance amid the desolation which, under a singularly barbarian government, has for so many centuries been daily spreading in the finest countries of the globe. Whether more from soil and climate, or from opportunities ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... demanded. "Who will baulk me if I have a mind to quarrel over it? Answer me!" and he half rose from his seat, moved by the anger into which he was lashing himself. "But patience!" he broke off, subsiding on a sudden. "I take it, it was not out of regard for my fine eyes, nor drawn by the elegance of my apparel"—and he raised a corner of his tattered cloak—"nor yet because you wish to throw a main with me, that you have sought my acquaintance, and called for this wine. You ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... did not resemble the detective officer of literature. His foppishness arose from an over-elegance of costume rather than any violence of color. The famous thief-taker might have stood for what was latest in fashionable dress, with every detail of hat and glove and cravat and boot worked out. There befell no touch of vulgarity; the effect was as retiringly genteel as ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... calls yours, for his entertainment and mine, when I pay my duty to you both, for a few happy days; and he has actually given orders to that effect; and that the three apartments be so fitted up, as to be rather suitable to your condition, than his own; for, he says, the plain simple elegance, which he will have observed in the rooms, as well as the furniture, will be a variety in his retirement to this place, that will make him return to his own with the greater pleasure; and, at the same time, when we are not there, will be of use ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... they were one grand expression of the well-known line: "I am a man, and interested in all that concerns humanity." In one hour and a half's conversation he touched on every topic that I brought before him with an even current of good sense, if he embellished it with little wit or verbal elegance. He spoke like a man who had felt as much as he had reflected, more than he had spoken; like one who had looked upon society rather in the mass than in detail, and who regarded the happiness of America but as the first link in a series of universal victories; ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... Crane, or Demoiselle, from the elegance of its appearance, and its singular carriage, is called the Demoiselle, which means the Young Lady; for this bird walks very gracefully, and sometimes skips and leaps, as though it ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... being so securely at her side; while the wash of privacy, as one might count it, the broad fine brush dipped into clear umber and passed, full and wet, straight across the strong scheme of colour, would represent the security itself, all the uplifted inner elegance, the condition, so ideal, of being shut out from nothing and yet of having, so gaily and breezily aloft, none of the burden or worry of anything. Thus, as I say, for our friend, the place itself, while his vivid impression lasted, portentously opened and spread, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... in one of the most splendid of the New York hotels; and preferring not to eat at the table d'hote, had his meals served in his own parlor, with all the elegance for which the establishment ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... for closing the exhibition at the neighboring hippodrome had arrived, visitors came pouring into Madame de Nailles's reception—tall, graceful women, dressed with taste and elegance, as befitted ladies who were interested in horsemanship. The tone of the conversation changed. Nothing was talked about but superb horses, leaps over ribbons and other obstacles. The young girls interested themselves in the spring toilettes, ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... doubt one of those performers who appeared in the dramatic scenes and processional representations of the outdoor spectacles already reviewed. His pleasing voice, his picturesque appearance, grace of bearing and elegance of gesture, together with his ability to play his own accompaniments, marked him as the ideal impersonator of the Greek poet, and accordingly Poliziano secured his services ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... hardly be a gentleman, unless he enjoy one or other of these advantages; and perhaps the surest way to give him good manners is to make a lord of him, or rather of his grandfather or great-grandfather. In the third generation, scarcely sooner, he will be polished into simplicity and elegance, and his deportment will be all the better for the homely material out of which it is wrought and refined. The Marquis of Lansdowne, for instance, would have been a very commonplace man in the common ranks ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... welcomed with a cry of triumph. When the noise had subsided the Jagd Junker rose, and prefacing the intended pledge by a few observations as remarkable for the delicacy of their sentiments as the elegance of their expression, he gave, pointing to Vivian, "The Guest! and may the Prince never want a stout arm at a strong push!" The sentiment was again echoed by the lusty voices of all present, and particularly by his Highness. As Vivian shortly returned thanks and modestly ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Godolphin are those with which such a man usually associates his life. They are designed to have a certain grace—a certain harmony with one form or the other of his twofold temperament:—viz., either its conventional elegance of taste, or its constitutional poetry of idea. But all alike are brought under varying operations of similar influences; or whether in Saville, Constance, Fanny, or Lucilla—the picture presented is still the picture of gifts misapplied—of life misunderstood. The Preacher who exclaimed, ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Queen" hard as she advanced. Astonishment and admiration were in his eyes when he recognized her at last. It was beyond belief that a mere matter of clothes could effect such a transformation as this. She looked the last word in feminine elegance. Filled with the wonder of it, he forgot for a moment the specter which had been his sleeping and waking companion for some weeks past and which had confronted him with the substance of reality at ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... everything, while remaining still our guest. But I rather wished that she might choose not to sit in Tom's company, though she might be introduced to him. Not but what he could behave quite as well as could, and much better, as regarded elegance and assurance, only that his honesty had not been as one might desire. But Lorna had some curiosity to know what this famous man was like, and declared that she would by all means have the pleasure of dining with him, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... because it is so unreasonable, and so inelegant (as our dainty critic says). As though the world was always reasonable, forsooth! or undoubted historical facts did not sometimes lack the important quality of elegance! ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... meanings attributed to the words in ecclesiastical controversies; and when the ancient documents appear in widely different forms, the various forms will be presented. At the same time, they will strive to combine with this strict accuracy and faithfulness as much elegance as may be consistent with the main aim. Short biographical [Pg 526] and explanatory notices will be prefixed to each translation; and in every case where there is variety of opinion, the writer will abstain from expressing his own sentiments, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... solitary spot, but attractive with its verdure and rocks, on a grassy knoll the saint is stretched out at full length, with her shoulder, her bosom, her arms, and her feet adorably bare. A blue fabric drapes the rest of her body and forms a coquettish hood for her head and neck. Her flesh has a robust elegance of line. Leaning on her right elbow, her hand, half hidden in her hair, supports a charming and meditative head, while her other arm is slipped under an open manuscript. Her hair, long and blonde, according to legend—which she loves and still cares for because it ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... forcibly those expressed by Darwin in similar terms at the close of his "Journal": "Delight ... is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who, for the first time, has wandered by himself in a Brazilian forest. The elegance of the grasses, the novelty of the parasitical plants, the beauty of the flowers, the glossy green of the foliage ... the general luxuriance of the vegetation, filled me with admiration. A paradoxical mixture of sound and silence pervades the shady parts of the wood ... ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of excellence as it was commenced. In this portion are two plates, exhibiting a comparative view of Inland Seas and Principal Lakes of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres—which alone are worth the price of the Part. Altogether, the uniformity and elegance of this work reflect high credit on the taste and talent of every one concerned in its production; and it really deserves a place on every writing-table not already provided with an Atlas. For constant reference, too, it is well calculated, by its convenient size, and is preferable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... magnifying-glass—pictures of Wagner, languishing and beautiful, in a mournful salon, and pictures of the athletic meetings of the other musicians, who were "too robust"! The amusing part is that this piece of wit has been taken seriously by certain arbiters of elegance, who are only too happy to be able to run counter to any current opinion, whatever it ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... containing epigrams by earlier and contemporary poets and himself, under the title of a Cycle of new Epigrams. About a hundred epigrams by Agathias have been preserved in the Greek Anthology and show considerable taste and elegance. After the death of Justinian (565), some of Agathias's friends persuaded him to write the history of his own times. This work, in five books, begins where Procopius ends, and is the chief authority for the period 552-558. It deals chiefly with the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... cost five shillings and sixpence, he glanced at himself in the mirror, which he was splashing. A stoutish, broad-shouldered, fair, chubby man, with a short bright beard and plenteous bright hair! His necktie pleased him; the elegance of his turned-back wristbands pleased him; and he liked the rich ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... I then went below, cleared off the table, washed the dishes, and put them in the lockers, swept out the cabin and cook-room, and put everything in good order. The interior of the yacht was a model of comfort and elegance, and it was unpleasant to see anything out of ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... Buchanan to produce plays for Eton or Harrow, and probably no young Montaigne to play the hero. The learned Scot, with his peasant breeding no doubt making him still more conscious of the strain of gentle blood in his veins, a little rough, irascible, and impatient in nature, notwithstanding the elegance of his Latin speech, and the little noble, gentilhomme to his fingers' end, half respectful, half contemptuous of the pedagogue, make a ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... so impossible, without laying an injurious restraint upon the natural movement of such a narrative, to prevent oblique gleams reaching the reader from such circumstances of luxury or aristocratic elegance as surrounded my childhood, that on all accounts I think it better to tell him, from the first, with the simplicity of truth, in what order of society my family moved at the time from which this preliminary narrative is dated. Otherwise it might happen that, merely ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... agreeable to her husband as it was exasperating to her sister-in-law. The domestic machinery ran without a jar. There were no upheavals, no debts, no squalid cookless hiatuses between intervals of showy hospitality; the household moved along on lines of quiet elegance and comfort, behind which only the eye of the housekeeping sex could have detected a gradually increasing scale ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... tired of it, my mind wanders from the close, fixed attention essential to the best use of words. Perhaps few are endowed with both the inventive and the critical faculty. A certain inner sense enables one to know, according to his lights, whether the story itself is true or false; but elegance of style is due chiefly to training, to a cultivation like that of the ear for music. Possibly we are entering on an age in which the people care less for form, for phraseology, than for what seems to them true, real—for what, as they would express it, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... and Tchekoff, Merezhkovsky was brought up in the midst of comfort and elegance; he received a correct and careful education; fate was solicitous for him, in that it allowed him to develop that spirit of objective observation and calm meditation which permits a man to look down on the spectacle of life, and indulge in philosophical ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... southern mines may be formed from the fact, that there are at this moment ten steamers plying between San Francisco and Sacramento. The latter are for the most part of a larger size than those on the San Joaquin river; and make the trip of about 120 miles in from seven to eight hours. In the elegance of their accommodations and the luxuries of their larder, they might compare favourably with any passenger-vessels in the world. There are ten other steamers plying from Sacramento to different places above that city. One year ago there was but one steamboat in Oregon—the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... procured by wealth— vanity, the desire to astonish and outshine other people—is difficult to satisfy in the country; and this, again, on account of the lack of inhabitants. In the country, there is no one to appreciate elegance, no one to be astonished. Whatever adornments in the way of pictures and bronzes the dweller in the country may procure for his house, whatever equipages and toilets he may provide, there is no one to ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... under part of the carriage white or drab, relieved by the same colour as the body, but in the present case the whole vehicle has been painted a dark green, the family colour of the Lord Mayor elect, relieved by large lines of gold upon the body, and gold and red upon the under carriage. The natural elegance of this arrangement of colouring is heightened by the beautiful heraldic paintings of the City arms and those of the Fishmongers' and Spectacle Makers' Companies, of which Mr. Alderman Lusk is a member. These have been executed ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... conscious instruction is likely to be efficacious only in the degree in which it falls in with the general "walk and conversation" of those who constitute the child's social environment. Thirdly, good taste and esthetic appreciation. If the eye is constantly greeted by harmonious objects, having elegance of form and color, a standard of taste naturally grows up. The effect of a tawdry, unarranged, and over-decorated environment works for the deterioration of taste, just as meager and barren surroundings ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... a nose slightly tending to the aquiline; a mouth of enticing sweetness, and an alabaster cheek, almost imperceptibly tinged with the faintest pink. Her hair of "bonny brown," and of which she had a luxuriant crop, was worn slightly off the cheek. Her dress was neatness and elegance combined; so made as to come up to the throat, and there terminate in a neat open collar; under which was a pink ribbon, contrasting pleasingly with the otherwise pale-looking features of the wearer. Her sleeves ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... largely used in many parts of the peninsula for the lyrical expression of emotion.[31] Poliziano did no more than treat it with his own facility, sacrificing the unstudied raciness of his popular models to literary elegance. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive donkey, not much bigger than a dog, the color of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined under-jaw. There was something neat and high-bred, a Quakerish elegance, about the rogue that hit my ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... lady of this city, with whom I am well acquainted, and to whom, indeed, I am distantly related, whose father is affluent, whose connections are eminently respectable, whose manners are engaging, whose mind is virtue, whose elegance of form and personal beauty defy competition, is the cause, sir, of this mission.—Early introduced into the higher walks of life, she has passed the rounds of fashionable company; numberless suitors sighed for her hand, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... Barley loaves and Galilee perch might be made to go round in a bigger crowd in the days of miracles, but this isn't Jordan's strand," he added, as he glanced around at the dripping, desolate slopes, and then, fortified in his opinion by the gloomy survey, concluded, with cavalry elegance, "not by a ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... to himself—how splendid was her acting! He could almost forgive himself for having played the fool. His helplessness, his defenselessness had been warranted. But—her smile could befuddle him no more. He took off his hat, with a certain cold elegance of grace. His face still wore that chiseled appearance of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... subsidiary to elegance, if not elegancies, and therefore worth attention. Do not habitually prop your sentences on crutches, such as Italics and exclamation-points, but make them stand without aid; if they cannot emphasize themselves, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... closer contact with the higher civilization of the Continent. This introduced fresh intellectual stimulus, and gave to the Anglo-Saxon a more progressive spirit. 3. It modified the English language by the influence of the Norman-French element, thus giving it greater flexibility, refinement, and elegance of expression. 4. It substituted for the fragile and decaying structures of wood generally built by the Saxons, Norman castles, abbeys, and cathedrals of stone. 5. It hastened influences, which were already at ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... not smoke. He was rendered conspicuous by the fact that he wore no hat, and by the deadly pallor of his face, relieved only by a reddening bump beneath the right eye. His clothes also were dirty and disheveled till he seemed scarcely the superior in elegance of ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... were all arranged in the new rooms by Lily Rose, and the elegance of the new apartment was overwhelming ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... me saying she would bring in tea, and I, seating myself in an easy chair by the fire, spread out my feet in front of the blaze, and looked about me curiously. Comfort certainly was more studied than elegance in this room. No flimsy draperies or works of art adorned the chairs and couches. A small square oak table stood in the centre of the room. On it was a beautiful chrysanthemum, some magazines and papers, and a pair of riding ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... but some, instead of this, have a kind of cap like a bee-hive, which does not fall below the bottom of the ear. They are all barefooted; but the nobles never walk a-foot, being carried by men on a seat of some elegance, having a hat made of leaves to keep-off the rain and sun; or else they ride on horseback, having their bare feet in the stirrups. All women, of whatever degree, wear a shift or smock down to the girdle, and from thence down to their feet a cloth of three yards ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr |
