"Fascinate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dream of in this world? Those exciting pictures of country life, so free from fears and troubles, the ocean of happy days that glitters incessantly before all young imaginations, are real allurements wherewith to fascinate a poor, unhappy prisoner, worn out by prison cares, emaciated by the stifling air of the Bastile. It was the picture, it will be remembered, drawn by Aramis, when he offered the thousand pistoles ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to have repelled the populace, attracted them irresistibly. The young, the brave, and the wealthy, in the full flower of their strength, abandoned at its call the religion of life and yoked themselves to that of death. It seemed to fascinate them. After conversion they despised all human passions and emotions, and when persecuted and hunted down they took their revenge by expressing profoundest pity for those who were powerless to accomplish the act of sacrifice which had brought them ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... appearance of so many different animals in this stele and in others of the same nature, has been given by Maspero, Etudes de Mythologie et d'Archeologie Egyptiennes, vol. ii. pp. 417- 419; they were all supposed to possess the evil eye and to be able to fascinate ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... that delight and fascinate the wide awake girls of the present day who are between the ages of eight and fourteen years. The great author of these books regards them as the best products of her pen. Printed from large clear type on a superior quality of paper; attractive multi-color jacket wrapper ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... for some time with an expression which the young man took for doubt, but which, however, was nothing but observation, or rather the wish to fascinate. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... are too insulting, and I tell you my thoughts without disguise. I love Don Garcia; he alone can fascinate a generous heart; his courage in Leon has nobly proved his passion for me; he dared on my account the greatest dangers, freed me from the toils of cowardly tyrants, and protected me against the horrors of an unworthy alliance by placing ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... that you fascinate all the navy as much at Palermo as you did at Naples. If we had many such advocates, every body would be a candidate ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... proved less insensible to the surpassing loveliness of the young maid of honour; her modest dignity in a private salon offering, in all probability, little attraction to the licentious monarch who was accustomed to see every eye turned towards himself, and every art exerted to fascinate his notice; but on the day of the rehearsal, when the graceful and blushing nymph of Diana was presented to him in her classic garb, her quiver at her back and her spear in her hand, he at once acknowledged the potency of the spell by which others had been previously subjugated. The ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... raised them to his lips with all the humility of a splendid savage paying homage to his intellectual conqueror! It was a scene Theos was destined never to forget, and he gazed upon it as one gazes on a magnificently painted picture, wherein two central figures fascinate and most profoundly impress the beholder's imagination. He heard, with a vague sense of mingled pleasure and sadness, the deep, mellow tones of the monarch's voice vibrating through the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... affections, which have been noted to fascinate or bewitch, but love and envy. They both have vehement wishes; they frame themselves readily into imaginations and suggestions; and they come easily into the eye, especially upon the present of the objects; which are the points that conduce to fascination, if any such thing ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... mocks with the sweetness which soothes us not. "She kept me awake all night, as a strain of Mozart's might do," Keats wrote of his Charmian. There was no song this special songstress sang which she did not make her own by a peculiar and powerful effort. Her instinct was to rouse, charm, fascinate her little audience. Not to move her hearers was to her not to sing, and when she sang as she wished she could sweep away his world of ideas from her listener and recreate a new one. In one song, an Italian composition called "The Dream," she always ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Beautiful— Whose very faulterings groundward come of flight Urged by a pinion all too passionate For heaven and what it holds of gloom and glow: Bravest of thinkers, bravest of the brave Doers, exalt in Science, rapturous In Art, the—more than all—magnetic race To fascinate their fellows, mould mankind. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... mattered to them most, and it is perhaps not a mere random guess that they were not in any case so aware of the interest of childhood and of children as Jesus was. Matthew and Luke record the miraculous birth, and each adds a story, that has never failed to fascinate men, of the Magi or the Shepherds who came to the manger cradle. Luke gives one episode of Jesus' ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... me, because I should have thought he was just the sort of person to attract and fascinate the other sex—a bachelor too, without ties, able to take advantage of any success in that line that came his way. I mean, of course, by offering marriage to the party who ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... delight us especially by their beauty, such as birds or butterflies; others may surprise us by their size, as Elephants and Whales, or the still more marvellous monsters of ancient times; may fascinate us by their exquisite forms, such as many microscopic shells; or compel our reluctant attention by their similarity to us in structure; but none offer more points of interest than those which live in communities. I do not allude to the temporary ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... strange and unexpected result. Heretofore she had always been sustained and kept up by an audience of some kind or quality, if only perhaps a humble companion; there had always been some one she could fascinate or horrify, and she could read her power mirrored in their eyes. Even the half-abstracted indifference of her strange host had been something. But she was alone now. Her words fell on apathetic solitude; she was acting to viewless space. She rushed to the opening, dashed ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... imbibe of beauty more in a breath, a glance, than I can pour into his soul in pages of spiritless delineation. I cannot charm the eye with that great stream of liquid light, which, during the long and lingering summer's day, issues from the valley like an eternal joy; I cannot fascinate his ear, and soothe his spirit with nature's deep mysterious sounds, so delicately slender and so soft, that silence fails to be disturbed, but rather grows more mellow and profound; I cannot with a stroke present the teeming ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... not fascinate—you do not charm me, but you bind me to you in a way I did not think it in the power of any human being ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and after black had come up six times consecutively, I thought it must be red's turn. It was not, however, and five times I lost my money; then I had sense enough to stop for a bit until the numbers began to fascinate me, and I picked nineteen, being my age. A lot of people may say I was old enough to know better, but it is so easy to make remarks of that kind, and until they find something a little less stale, they will never do any good. I stood by the ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... would succeed in her absurd attempt, 250 And fascinate by sinning, show herself Superior—guilt from its excess superior To innocence! That little peasant's voice Has righted all again. Though I be lost, I know which is the better, never fear, 255 Of vice or virtue, purity or lust, Nature ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... grandfather, counselled Enoch to give the boy a chance. But alas and alackaday for the instability of youthful affection! It befell in an evil time that there came over from the land of Nod a frivolous and gorgeously apparelled beau, who, with finely wrought phrases, did so fascinate the giddy Mizpah that incontinently she gave Methuselah the mitten, and went with the dashing young stranger ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... whatever remorseful love could do to soften such a strain and burden he tried to do. He encouraged her to find work among the poor; he tried in the tenderest ways to interest her in the great spectacle of London life which was already, in spite of yearning and regret, beginning to fascinate and absorb himself. But their standards were now so different that she was constantly shrinking from what attracted him, or painfully judging what was to him merely curious and interesting. He was really more and more oppressed by her intellectual limitations, though never consciously ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an end to it? A tempest ceases, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies down, a broken mast can be replaced, a leak can be stopped, a fire extinguished, but what will become of this enormous brute of bronze. How can it be captured? You can reason with a bulldog, astonish a bull, fascinate a boa, frighten a tiger, tame a lion; but you have no resource against this monster, a loose cannon. You can not kill it, it is dead; and at the same time it lives. It lives with a sinister life which comes to it from the infinite. The deck beneath it gives it full swing. It is moved ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... tradition may, by association of ideas, act like a magic mirror in bringing back hundreds of long-forgotten people, pastimes, and occupations. And whatever makes one young, if only for an hour, will ever fascinate. The greater number of those who kindly responded to the request for additional notes to my animal and plant lore were naturally those of somewhat literary or scientific tastes and pursuits. Many letters were from teachers, many others from physicians, ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... himself, as the finest man in the kingdom, as the person who appeared to her the most admirable. She loved him sincerely, with a degree of sentimentalism, if not with a profound passion. Her ideal had been on arriving at the court to fascinate him, to keep him amused by a thousand diversions suggested by art or intellect, to make him happy and contented in a circle of ever-changing enchantments and pleasures. A Watteau-like country, plays, ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... outline, and that her cheek possessed the polish and the roundness of early youth, or, thus robbed of a softening shade, the contours might have lost their grace. But what mattered that in the present society? Neither Calypso nor Eucharis cared to fascinate Mentor. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... they glared As Baba with his fingers made them fall To heaving back the portal folds: it scared Juan a moment, as this pair so small With shrinking serpent optics on him stared; It was as if their little looks could poison Or fascinate whome'er they fix'd ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... out; succeed in seeing her; feel a strange sensation in his heart towards her; that he should toy with her shining curls, feel proud to provoke her to smile and expose the ivory concealed by thin, ruby lips; that her sparkling eyes should fascinate; that he should propose; that they should marry? A short ac- quaintance was indeed an objection, but she saw him often, and thought she knew him. He never spoke of his enslavement to her when alone, but she felt that, like her own oppression, ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... had its pathos, its tragedy, and its gratification for Lane. He saw clearly, and felt with the acuteness of a woman. Helen had jilted him for such young men as these. So in the feeling of the moment it cost him nothing to thrill and fascinate these girls with the story of how he had been shot through the leg. It pleased him to see Helen's green eyes dilate, to see Bessy Bell shudder. Presently Lane turned to ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... which they meant to mould their own lives; and, instead of detesting their crimes, Rodney began to admire the skill and success with which they were perpetrated. The excitement and freedom, and wild, frenzied enjoyment of such a life, as depicted by the young knaves, began to fascinate and charm his mind. Something seemed to whisper in his ear, "As you are now disgraced, without any fault of your own, why not carry it out, and make the most of it? They have put you into jail, this time, for nothing; if they ever do it again, let them ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... abandon themselves. Their architecture forms a sort of border-land between the Byzantine of Venice and the Lombardic of Verona. The superb domes of St. Anthony's emulate those of St. Mark's, and the porticos of other Paduan churches rest upon the backs of bird-headed lions and leopards that fascinate with their mystery ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... master thus addressed the swine: "My house and garden both be thine; Feast on potatoes as you please, And riot 'midst the beans and peas; Turnips and carrots, pig, devour, And broccoli and cauliflower; But spare my tulips—my delight, By which I fascinate my sight." ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... was silent and reflective for a moment. "Men are so queer," she finally said. "If I'd been an honest working girl he'd never have noticed me. It's because I am what I am that I've been able to get acquainted with him and fascinate him. And he feels it's a sporty thing to do—to marry a fast girl. If I was to settle down to work, be a regular working girl—why, I'm afraid he—he'd stop loving me. Then, too, he likes to believe he's rescuing me from a life of shame. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... be so indignant, please. I am an artist—honestly. But some of these men I've met over here—well, they fascinate me. Such boundless energy and drive ought to go into a symphony. Plenty of drums and crashing brass. Good-bye, Mrs. Lanier," he added. "This has been a lucky ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... of Quincy seemed to pervade all hearts. Said that distinguished son of genius and patriotism, "Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a halter intimidate; for, under God, we are determined that, wheresoever, whensoever, and howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will die ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... assemble within a few square yards. There were no long illuminated vistas, or temples and saloons red hot with oil and gas—but a few slender materials, so scattered and intermixed with the natural beauties of the park, as to fascinate, and not fatigue the eye and ear. Even the pell-mell frolics of St. Cloud were better idealities of enjoyment, than the splendid promenade of Vauxhall, in the days of its olden celebrity; for diamonds and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... spirit, with its vein of tender pessimism, in puzzled revolt against the wrongness and cruelty of a shadowy world, the brooding thought too whimsical to be bitter, the fancy too refined to be boisterously merry—all these conspired to fascinate us as we came to perceive and appreciate them beneath the rather stiff little verses. To read Miss Coleridge's poems was to make acquaintance with a charming and delicate soul that wished to be understood and was willing to be intimate. Life astonished her, and her comments on life are ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... from Stumm. That large man was beginning to fascinate me, even though I hated him. Gaudian was clearly a good fellow, a white man and a gentleman. I could have worked with him for he belonged to my own totem. But the other was an incarnation of all that makes Germany detested, and yet he wasn't altogether ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... was gratified in this—Lord Hope was a changed man—a shadow had been swept from his path—hidden shame had changed to unchecked pride. The woman he had married, because of an overpowering love, was now in a position to fascinate society with her beauty, and win its homage with her genius. They had come out from the shadow and were ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... the room. Arriving at the table, she began fiddling with its contents. The pen seemed to fascinate her. She picked it up ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... that his happiness lies in defying his principles. What I don't understand is how Victor, with his religious views, can think of marrying a divorced woman. I've heard him say over and over again—once quite lately— that divorce is totally inconsistent with true Christianity. If she's been able to fascinate him to that point, I am afraid of her.—But how stupid of me to talk all the time! Have you spoken to him at all? What does he say? And don't you thoroughly agree ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... his hat. She seemed startled, but greeted him pleasantly, and entered into a discussion of the demerits which fascinate the crowd. ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... whether in the heavens above or the earth beneath or the waters under the earth. From star-dust in infinite space (which we hope to measure) to fossils on the bed of an ocean which is no longer unfathomed, nothing is too great or too small to attract man, to fascinate him, to influence his thought, his life, his literature. Darwin's Origin of Species (1859), which laid the foundation for a general theory of evolution, is one of the most famous books of the age, and of the world. Associated with Darwin were ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Madison she had seen a great deal. Following her old tactics, she had started out to fascinate the tall newspaper man, expecting to find him an easy victim. For once, however, she found that she had met her match. Directly she arrived in Denver she sent him her card, and he called at the hotel, his manner courteous, but distinctly ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... details, and may still be read for information as well as for pleasure. The 'Zanoni' species is undeniably interesting. The weird traditions of the 'Philosopher's Stone' and the 'Elixir of Life' can never cease to fascinate human souls, and all the paraphernalia of magic are charming to minds weary of the matter-of-factitude of current existence. The stories are put together with Bulwer's unfailing cleverness, and in all external respects ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... because the author has boldly faced the problem of constructing a story out of the materials available from purely native society, the stock themes and characters of Anglo-India being entirely discarded. Bijli is a professional dancing girl, whose grace and accomplishments so fascinate a great Mohammedan landholder of North India, that he persuades her to abandon her profession and to abide with him as his mistress. This arrangement is correctly treated in the book as quite consistent with the maintenance of due respect and consideration ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... wise grateful for this forbearance. She had acted with deliberate maliciousness; and she wanted to know that her malice had given pain. The whole thing was a failure if it had not hurt the girl who had been audacious enough to outshine Miss Rylance, and to fascinate Miss Rylance's father. Urania had no idea that the physician had offered himself and his two houses to Ida Palliser, nay, had even pledged himself to sacrifice his daughter at the shrine of his new love. She knew that he admired Miss Palliser ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... for a second, gave a swift look round, then came resolutely on. What was it made him love her so? What was the secret of her fascination? Certainly, no conscious enticements. Never did anyone try less to fascinate. He could not recall one single little thing that she had done to draw him to her. Was it, perhaps, her very passivity, her native pride that never offered or asked anything, a sort of soft stoicism in her fibre; that and some mysterious ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... should do, if Lambert proved obstinate, Chaldea also arranged to fascinate him, if possible, into loving her. She did not wish to use her power of knowledge until her power of fascination failed. And this for two reasons. In the first place, it was not her desire to drive the man into a corner lest he should defy her and fight, ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... down in an easy-chair, and he began to look at her fixedly, so as to fascinate her. I suddenly felt myself somewhat uncomfortable, with a beating heart and a choking feeling in my throat. I saw that Madame Sable's eyes were growing heavy, her mouth twitched and her bosom heaved, and at the end of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... cannot marry you. I couldn't, even if I loved you, and I don't think I do love you, though you fascinate me and, when we are dancing, I forget all the other things in you that I hate. I have been very foolish and maybe unkind to let it go on so far. I didn't quite know what I was doing. Girls don't know. That is why they play with men as they do. They ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... trial of public exhibition. His pictures do not command the eye by extraordinary combinations of assertive colors,—nor do they, through great pathos, deep tenderness, or any overcharged emotional quality, fascinate and absorb ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... come to us and swim the stream and pass into the Palace." But Ibn Ibrahim remained behind while Sahlub departed with those about him; and when they had left the company, Al-Hayfa asked, "O Ibn Ibrahim, say me, canst thou keep my secret and my being fascinate[FN239] by love?" and he answered, "Yea, verily, O my lady, how should I not conceal it for thee, when thou art my mistress and princess and the daughter of my master, even though I keep it inside ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... that he is valued for his simplicity and innocence. Then he resolves to break with the past, to put away childish things, to forgo affection, and to earn respect by imitating the activities of his elders. The strange power of words and the virtues of abstract thought begin to fascinate him. He loses touch with the things of sense, and ceases to speak as a child. If his first attempts at argument and dogma win him praise and esteem, if he proves himself a better fighter than an older boy next door, who has often bullied ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... moralist and philosopher while a slave to debauchery, and at other times affecting a love of retirement while a slave to ambition—Bolingbroke acted a part which made him one of the most conspicuous figures of the time. He knew how to fascinate men of greater genius than he possessed, and how to guide men intellectually his superiors. The witchcraft of his wit and the charm of his manners no longer disturb the judgment. As a statesman Bolingbroke is now comparatively ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... that dark savages of the pure blood often do possess the magnetism of perfect physical development and unfathomable mental strangeness; but real beauty they never have. Their innate repulsiveness is so great that, like the snake's charm, it may fascinate; yet an indescribable, haunting disgust goes with it. And, after all, if Alice had been asked to tell just how she felt toward the Indian she had labored so hard to save, she would ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... to fancy herself a mother of the Church, and dreams of your conversion," said the doctor, maliciously, for he now wished to tranquillize Adrienne at any cost; "but let us think no more about it. Your fire eyes must shine with all their lustre, to fascinate the minister that we are ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... are now two Black-Artists, of the first quality, busy on the unconscious Friedrich Wilhelm; and Seckendorf, for the next seven years, will stick to Friedrich Wilhelm like his shadow; and fascinate his whole existence and him, as few wizards could have done. Friedrich Wilhelm, like St. Paul in Melita, warming his innocent hands at the fire of dry branches here kindled for him,—that miracle of a venomous serpent is this that has fixed itself upon his ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the artist, who had intended to fascinate Madame Marneffe. "Society is not very amusing unless one is interested in it. That little Madame Marneffe is clever, but a ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... or two (Dressing them up in royal blue) You make so many shining Demoiselles,[3] Change me as well; Uplift me also from this narrow place, Where life runs on at such a petty pace; Give me a human form, dear Dame, and then See how I'll flit, and flash, and fascinate the race of men!" ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... services. She took up a book from the table and sat with it for ten minutes. It was Tupper's great poem, and she attempted to read it. Lady Linlithgow sat, totting up her figures, but said nothing. She had not spoken a word since Lucy's return to the room; and as the great poem did not at first fascinate the new companion,—whose mind not unnaturally was somewhat disturbed,—Lucy ventured upon a question. "Is there anything I can do ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... he felt the need of some great stroke that should astonish and fascinate the world. He understood that to maintain his fame he was condemned to work miracles. September 23, 1805, he had exposed to the Senate the hostile conduct of Austria, and had announced his speedy departure to carry aid to the Elector of Bavaria, the ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... I wished to know what those calm eyes were gazing at. In order that matter should have so much power, it should contain a spirit. The souls of the gods are attached to their images. Those who possess external beauty may fascinate us; but the others, who are abject or terrible ... how to believe ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... passion that reminded him of his pursuit. The deer trail led down through a break in the wall. Only a few rods of it could be seen. This trail was passable, even though choked with snow. But the depth beyond this wall seemed to fascinate Slone and hold him back, used as he was to desert trails. Then the clean mark of Wildfire's hoof brought back the ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... my shells, professor? They're indeed able to fascinate a naturalist; but for me they have an added charm, since I've collected every one of them with my own two hands, and not a sea on the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the snake with disrespect, not to say insolence; nothing, ophidian or otherwise, can fascinate a pig. If your back garden is infested with rattlesnakes you should keep pigs. The pig dances contemptuously on the rattlesnake, and eats him with much relish, rattles and all. The last emotion of the rattlesnake is intense astonishment; and astonishment ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... us one whole day and afternoon with the geysers. Our colored cook was simply wild over them, and would spend hours looking down in the craters of those that were not playing. Those seemed to fascinate her above all things there, and at times she looked like a wild African when she returned to camp from one of them. Not far from the tents of the enlisted men was a small hot spring that boiled lazily in a shallow basin. It ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... man of the world! But when you can dress in vermilion and purple and gold and wear the biggest cloak and the largest sword that ever was and twist your moustache as outrageously as you please, what's easier than to fascinate such a child as Columbine? She curtseys to him as he bows to her. She beckons to her husband to join them. But he, lost now in the landscape, now in his reopened book, waves only a distant greeting, and will not budge. The Man of the World smiles a most worldly smile, and soon he and pretty Columbine ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... think a great deal of him because he is so hard to please, and almost any of them would feel immensely flattered if he liked them, whether they chose to marry him or not. Trix has tried for years to fascinate him, and he can't bear her, and I 'm so glad! What a spiteful thing I am. Well, I can't help it, she does aggravate me so!" And Polly gave the cat such a tweak of the ear that Puttel bounced out of ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... whirling sword; that could grow chill as an arctic landscape, and yet again, that could warm and soften and be all a-dance with love-lights, intense and masculine, luring and compelling, which at the same time fascinate and dominate women till they surrender in a gladness of joy and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... and exaggerated the advantages which Parmalee possessed. To be sure, he was weak and delicate, while Drew had the strength of a young ox. But Parmalee had wealth and standing and a polished manner that appealed strongly to women. Why should he not, with his suavity and winning smile, fascinate an impressionable girl? ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... commit a solecism or two. Mrs. Little always noticed them, and told him. He never wanted telling twice. He was a genial young fellow, well read in the topics of the day, and had a natural wit; Mrs. Little was one of those women who can fascinate when they choose; and she chose now; her little parties rose to eight; and as, at her table, everybody could speak without rudeness to everybody else, this round table soon began to eclipse the long tables of Hillsborough ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... both Jim and Penelope. His physical beauty alone was a thing to fascinate far harsher critics than these two who grew to be his special friends. His hair was tawny and thick and wavy. His eyes were black and bright. His mouth was small and perfectly cut. His cleft chin was square and ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... carry; bring round to one's senses, bring to one's senses; draw over, win over, gain over, come over, talk over; procure, enlist, engage; invite, court. tempt, seduce, overpersuade^, entice, allure, captivate, fascinate, bewitch, carry away, charm, conciliate, wheedle, coax, lure; inveigle; tantalize; cajole &c (deceive) 545. tamper with, bribe, suborn, grease the palm, bait with a silver hook, gild the pill, make things pleasant, put a sop into the pan, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Li was the most dreaded of the trio of rebel chiefs, a man of marvelous strength, and who seemed to be able to fascinate his men and get them to do anything he wished—and Liu, the ch'en-tai, set himself the task of capturing him. Disguising himself in the garb of a pedlar, Liu went out towards Li's camp, and met three spies on ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... a fine picture it would have made for a Rembrandt! The bodies of the men were invisible in the darkness of the nave, and their heads alone emerged from the gloom. The effect was grand enough to fascinate the most sceptical of painters; it soothed and charmed one and wiped out all the miseries that the war had left in its wake. Men like these would be equal to anything, ready for anything; and I myself should much have liked to see a Monsieur Homais hidden away in ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... to a giddy height above the town; airy loggias imposed on great forbidding masses of brown stone, shooting aloft into a light aerial tower. The empty halls inside are of fair proportions and a noble size, and the views from the open colonnades in all directions fascinate. But the final impression made by the building is one of square, tranquil, massive strength—perpetuity embodied in masonry—force suggesting facility by daring and successful addition of elegance to hugeness. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Henry Wotton with his uncle, and again at lunch when he wishes to fascinate Dorian Gray, is an excellent reproduction of Oscar's ordinary talk. The uncle wonders why Lord Dartmoor wants to marry an American and grumbles about her people: "Has she ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... one) threw her wretched self upon his pity, then could Simon Jennings lash sternness into rage, and heat his brazen heart with the embers of inveterate malice. It was as if the serpent, that voluble, insinuating reptile, which had power to fascinate poor Eve, turned to rend her when she had fallen, erect, with flashing eyes, and bristling crest, with venomed fangs, and hissing. Behold, snake-worshippers of Mexico, the prototype of your grim idol, in Mammon's model slave ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... murmuring rill; Nor all the varied beauties of the year, That so can Scotland to our hearts endear— The merry both and melancholy strain, Their power assert, and o'er the spirit reign; Indebted more to nature than to art, They reach the ear to fascinate the heart; And waken hope that, animating, cheers, Or bathe our being in the flow ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... incomparable joys promised her by a flashy and fashionable life. The examples which come under her notice wherever she goes or wherever she turns her eyes,—the language which she hears, and the very air which she breathes,—all give her, as it were, a foretaste of the false pleasures which now fascinate her imagination. ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... the Gardens, Julius took possession of his companions, and exerted all his arts to charm and fascinate. He led the ladies from cage to cage, from enclosure to enclosure, showed himself as familiar with the characters and habits of their wild denizens as a farmer is with those of his stock, and they responded to his strange calls, to his gentleness ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... exerted his varied powers to fascinate and amuse me. Again I listened, and struggled, as formerly, against his wiles, and finally bent a too willing ear to his soft words of praise and admiration. With secret pleasure I reveled in his ardent language, hugging to my heart the belief that ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... vulgar and would not fascinate well-bred people. It is in her eyes, in her voice, in the very atmosphere about her, and she is wonderfully beautiful. She isn't the spider, she does not spin a net, but she looks at the mouse out of great, soft eyes, and he comes nearer, nearer, and ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... there was frequently something so inconceivably picturesque in the varying gestures of unrestrained passion, so irresistibly comic in their sallies, or so heart-piercingly pathetic in the little airs they would sing, frequently bursting out after an awful silence, as to fascinate the attention, and amuse the fancy, while torturing the soul. It was the uproar of the passions which she was compelled to observe; and to mark the lucid beam of reason, like a light trembling in a socket, or like the flash which divides the threatening ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... her and Morley, who had time much at his command, to some memorable spot in the neighbourhood, or in the sport which the river and the rod secured Egremont. In the evening, he invariably repaired to the cottage of Gerard, beneath whose humble roof he found every female charm that can fascinate, and conversation that stimulated his intelligence. Gerard was ever the same; hearty, simple, with a depth of feeling and native thought on the subjects on which they touched, and with a certain grandeur of sentiment ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... was rich. 'He admires me,' thought she,—'he is old, but wealthy; I will try to fascinate him, and if he desires me to become either his wife or mistress, I will consent, for a connection with him would be to my ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... now November. Lantier occasionally brought a bunch of violets to Gervaise. By degrees his visits became more frequent. He seemed determined to fascinate the whole house, even the Quartier, and he began by ingratiating himself with Clemence and Mme Putois, showing them both the ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... rest of it. Accordingly they strolled off to an adjoining room and made themselves comfortable in a retired corner, Gifford, nothing loath to have a quiet chat with the handsome girl whose self-possessed manner with its suggestion of underlying strength of feeling was beginning to fascinate and ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... great susceptibility to beauty, he could not invent an instrument better designed for that object than sex. Individuals that need not unite for the birth and rearing of each generation, might retain a savage independence. For them it would not be necessary that any vision should fascinate, or that any languor should soften, the prying cruelty of the eye. But sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another; makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... ate from silver, was dressed in silk and carried the fire of youth in her eyes. While the woman thought of that young man who could fight like a hero; was ready to work like a day laborer, to throw money away like a noble, to fascinate women like an angel, and to blaspheme the powers that ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... now?' she cried to Birkin, who was watching the water on the steps, to see if it would get any lower. It seemed to fascinate him. He ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... begins to talk of a man in this way, he is an ass who does not win her; and, for my part, I used to follow her about, and put myself in an attitude opposite her, 'and fascinate her with my glance,' as she said, most assiduously. Lord George Poynings, her former admirer, was meanwhile keeping his room with his wound, and seemed determined to give up all claims to her favour; for he denied her ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her charm. Looking back, I can now see that she, most wisely, took as much trouble to fascinate us as she did the rest of the world. She would not mind this remark, for she was no naturalist, but held that you ought to take as much trouble to be polite and to give pleasure to your nearest and dearest as to strangers. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... ourselves. This assemblage on the one hundred and forty-third anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill tells not only of the spirit of that day but of the spirit of to-day. What men worship that will they become. The heroes and holidays of a people which fascinate their soul reveal what they hold are the realities of life and mark out a line beyond which they will not retreat, but at which they will stand to overcome or die. They who reverence Bunker Hill will fight there. Your true patriot sees home and hearthstone ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... makes some fine distinctions between flirtation, coquetry and coyness. Flirtation means to fascinate and leave the lover in doubt as to his fate—to lead him on and leave him in a maze. It does not imply that he does not have reason for hope. Flirtation is coyness refined to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... so cluster his trees, that from every window of the feudal mansion the hitherto solitary occupant might behold incessant variety, accompanied by the pleasing associations growing out of prosperous industry and smiling plenty. Does Claude ever revel in solitudes? Does Poussin fascinate in exhibitions of mechanical nature? And when does Woollet enchant us but in those rich landscapes in which the woods are filled with peeping habitations, and scope given for the imagination by the curling smoke of others rising ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... a certain type of Indian painting began to fascinate the West. Unlike Mughal art, it was a product of Hindu courts in Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills and unlike Mughal painting, its chief concern was with the varied phases of romance. Ladies would be shown brooding in their chambers as storm clouds mounted in the ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... and found in it a new interest. It did not fascinate him, as did the story of the wandering prince. He persevered only as the spirit moved him, piling up pages on both ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was from that gentlemanly philosopher from Sweden, a great friend of the Governor, you know. But, alas, I might as well have tried to fascinate an iceberg! I do not believe that he knew, after a half-hour's conversation with me, whether I was man or woman. That was ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... let the viol's pleasing swifter grow— Let Music's madness fascinate the will, And all Youth's pulses with the ardour thrill! Hast thou, Old Time, e'er seen ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... to her the first day of her return, "you have come back to us once more, and now all you have to do is to fascinate some gentleman who is your equal in position and who has plenty of money. If you fail in that, back you ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... list," rejoined Philippa decidedly; "I certainly don't want them. I just want to be allowed to do nothing in particular except see a great deal of your lovely country in the quietest and laziest way possible, please. These little villages fascinate me—all clustering round a church which looks far too big and important for the number of cottages. Why have you so many churches about here? I counted eight on my ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... worth reading, do you?" replied To-no-Chiujio. "I have only just now discovered," continued he, "how difficult it is to meet with a fair creature, of whom one can say, 'This is, indeed, the one; here is, at last, perfection.' There are, indeed, many who fascinate; many who are ready with their pens, and who, when occasion may require, are quick at repartee. But how often such girls as these are conceited about their own accomplishments, and endeavor unduly to disparage those of others! There are again some who are special pets of their parents, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... feature alike, with a fair, childish face, framed in by loose light brown curls, and a pair of those clear, grave, wise, light hazel eyes which have the power of looking so young and so spiritually old at once. Those eyes are the first thing that Mrs. Eberstein sees, and they fascinate her already. Meanwhile kind arms are opened wide, and take the little ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... and coquettings and nibblings of your practised lovers, who have been in love a dozen times, would be as a trickling rill to an ocean wave, compared to what might be expected from the passion of a heart first strongly moved at the time of life the Marchese has reached. Fascinate such a man as that, and in such a position, bambina mia, and all the governors, and all the Cardinals that ever mumbled a mass, won't avail to prevent him ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... wise saying of Swift that there would be fewer unhappy marriages in the world if women thought less of making nets and more of making cages. The qualities that attract, fascinate, and dazzle are often widely different from those which are essential to a happy marriage. Sometimes they are distinctly hostile to it. More frequently they conduce to it, but only in an inferior or subsidiary degree. The turn of mind and character that makes the accomplished ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... lovers of Nature, and many students of Nature; but there are very few whom we may term philosophers of Nature. In other words, there are those who are charmed with the external world, its landscapes, its beauteous forms and tints, and all its various adaptations to fascinate the senses,—and those who delight in deciphering and describing all the details of individual objects, and their wonderful fitness to the role they have severally or unitedly to play; and there is the man who, endowed with all this, seeks to go still farther, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... there was danger of a lapse from the more serious kind of heroic composition into a more trivial kind. Certainly there is nothing in the plain story to give much help to the author; nothing in Grendel to fascinate or tempt a poet with a story ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... quickly forgotten when the occasion had passed. None the less, for that instant her dread was breathless. It was the fear of one who walks in a wood, at an inexplicable rustle. The darkness and the sense of moving water continued to fascinate her, and she slightly shuddered, not at a thought, but at the sensation of the moment. At last she closed her eyes, still, however, to see mirrored as in some visual memory the picture she was trying to ignore. In a faint panic, hardly conscious to her fear, she stared at her neighbour's newspaper, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... go against the grain at first to associate with such cads as Chad and his crowd; but perhaps that'll wear away in time, and I may come to enjoy what I now abhor. As these low pleasures have fascinated you, so they may fascinate me." ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... distaste for violent movement, their joy in parading their revolting costumes filled him with wondering contempt. As for the little French girls, he was at any time uninterested in girls; and these spindle-shanked precocities walked on two-inch heels, and tried to fascinate him with the graces of mature coquettes. His careful politeness was hard put to it to conceal his distaste for their conversation. Possibly he was hankering after a healthier life; but at any rate he, who was generally so full of energy, had mooned listlessly about the gardens all the morning, with ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... friendly smile. When Dolores smiled they appeared embarrassed; but truly greatly pleased. Barrow noticed that one of them was examining a book in English; the illustrations seemed to fascinate him. ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... single detail would fascinate him in a play. "The Waltz Dream" that he did at the Hicks Theater in London in 1908 was typical. Miss Gertie Millar, who sang the leading part, had an important song. Frohman did not like the way she ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... would most certainly come out. Your courting has been clandestine, behind the back of her family. It seems perfectly obvious that you're trying to lure her into a runaway match. She has grounds for believing that you do not trust her and, because of that, although you fascinate her, she finds it impossible to trust you in return. She trusts you so little that she did not dare to risk facing you and sent me in her stead. She's so sure that a marriage with you would be unfortunate that, in order to save herself from it, she's ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... leave mademoiselle's face through all this long speech, and I saw her expression slowly change. The generous indignation was still there, but I saw that the picture that he presented of the life that awaited her in Paris began to fascinate her. ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... benefited much by the sousing of the spray, while his recovery was expedited by the forcible ejection of the salt water he had swallowed. He raised himself on one hand, and looked about with an inquiring eye. The Brazilian officer's uniform seemed to fascinate him. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... cried in utter surprise, "do you suppose I'd want you to stay here with me when you've got the chance to get a 'higher education'?" (Those words seemed to fascinate her.) "That's better than if I could go. You're a boy—a man, I mean—and you have to know lots to be a mining engineer like the surveyor. I'm just a little girl, and it doesn't matter whether I know anything ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... that began and ended in the fallow on the slope. When a considerable distance had been placed between herself and her pursuers, she ceased to hurry. Indeed, the music of horn and hounds seemed almost to fascinate the creature, and frequently she lingered for a few moments to listen intently to the clamour of her enemies. A farm labourer, who tried to "grab" her as she passed down the grassy lane, said that she "was coming along as cool as a cucumber. Sometimes she'd sit down to tickle her ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... only some business papers. The cipher was no longer there. I searched among all the other papers to find it, but in vain. I then concluded that he had destroyed it. For several days I continued to examine that desk, but with no result. It seemed to fascinate me. At last, however, I came to the conclusion that nothing more ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... I was more or less dependent on Uncle Willoughby I couldn't very well marry without his approval. And though I knew he wouldn't have any objection to Florence, having known her father since they were at Oxford together, I hadn't wanted to take any chances; so I had told her to make an effort to fascinate the old boy. ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... overcome? A calm succeeds the tempest, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies away, we replace the broken mass, we check the leak, we extinguish the fire; but what is to be done with this enormous bronze beast? How can it be subdued? You can reason with a mastiff, take a bull by surprise, fascinate a snake, frighten a tiger, mollify a lion; but there is no resource with the monster known as a loosened gun. You cannot kill it,—it is already dead; and yet it lives. It breathes a sinister life ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... "eternal snow." This "mountain-chain" is, in places, of great breadth. Deep valleys lie in its embrace, many of which have never been visited by man. Some are desolate and dreary; others are oaeses of vegetation, which fascinate the traveller whose fortune it has been, after toiling among naked rocks, to gaze upon their ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... help it," Agnes grumbled. "You fascinate me. I should have thought you were clever if I had only heard you talk, and not known what a duffer ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... turn, ascended the steps of the stage and appeared behind the flower-wreathed desk. He passed close to Charity, and she noticed that his gravely set face wore the look of majesty that used to awe and fascinate her childhood. His frock-coat had been carefully brushed and ironed, and the ends of his narrow black tie were so nearly even that the tying must have cost him a protracted struggle. His appearance struck her all the more because it was the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... such a weltering sea "Peace, be still"? I dared not think. Every effort to reason upon what had befallen me, and realize what it implied, set up an intolerable swimming of the brain. The idea that I was two persons, that my identity was double, began to fascinate me with its simple solution ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... of. He was an experienced man, priding himself on a knowledge of human nature, and Phoebe's "little ways" amused him greatly. What did she mean?—to "catch" Clarence Copperhead, who would be a great match, or to fascinate Northcote? Oddly enough Mr. May never thought of Reginald, though that young man showed an eagerness to talk to Phoebe which was more than equal with his own, and had always subjects laid up ready ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... finesse. There is similar spirit in the Italian galleries, with a variation due to national characteristics rather than to difference of opinion or method. The Italian pictures fully occupy the mind and eye; the French often fascinate by something more than skill and color. Both countries have placed their older art, and some of its best, ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... a girl of some twenty-three summers, of middle height, thin, but possessing a face which, without being actually beautiful, had the rare quality of charm, and might fascinate even to the extent of ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... fascinate his eyes. He stared at it fixedly, and augured ominously of Barker's intentions, since that worthy obviously alluded to his having smiled in form, and chose to interpret it as an intentional provocation. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... with its corbeils of fruit, beautiful silver, floral pieces, snowy linen, fine crystal, the whole dominated by a superb electrolier, which cast color over all, was indeed a spectacle to delight and fascinate the eye. Jimmie was so overcome by the sight, that he nearly fell over the chair which the accommodating Oku held out for him. At last all were seated, Virginia at the right hand of the host, Fanny at the left, the shipping clerk at the other end of ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow |
