"Fineness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peculiar to themselves. It is called the tahly. It is a piece of gold, on which is engraven the image of some one of their gods. This is fastened around the neck by a short yellow string, containing one hundred and eight threads of great fineness. Various ceremonies are performed before it is applied, and the gods, of whom I will tell you something by and by, with their wives, are called upon to give their blessing. When these ceremonies are finished, the ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... camp. On the morning of the 3rd the firmament was again cloudy, but the wind shifted at noon to west, and the sun set in a sky so clear that we could hardly believe it had been so lately overcast. On the following morning he rose bright and clear as he had set, and we had a day of surpassing fineness, like a spring ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... fineness of Shakspeare's sense of musical period, which would almost by itself have suggested (if the hundred positive proofs had not been extant,) that the word 'aches' was then 'ad libitum', a dissyllable—'aitches'. For read it, 'aches,' in this ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... wanted to save David anything unpleasant. (The word "unpleasant" startled Bassett, by its very inadequacy.) He knew now that David had built up for him an identity that probably did not exist, but he wanted Bassett to know that there could never be doubt of David's high purpose and his essential fineness. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stood at the bed's side. It was covered with a white cloth, and a china bowl set thereon with a silver spoon beside it; a delicate goblet and china pitcher also, both carefully covered with a napkin. Did Mrs. Roberts know how homely Sallie gloried in the thinness of that china and the fineness of that napkin? How does it happen that some of the very poor seem born with such aesthetic tastes? Mrs. Roberts had intuitions, and was given to certain acts, concerning which she could not give to others satisfactory ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... once as the type and realization of all the heroes of all those darling, greasy volumes which the young girl had devoured. Mr. Pen, we have seen, was rather a dandy about shirts and haberdashery in general. Fanny had looked with delight at the fineness of his linen, at the brilliancy of his shirt studs, at his elegant cambric pocket-handkerchief and white gloves, and at the jetty brightness of his charming boots. The prince had appeared and subjugated ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... underhung, and when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded themselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin. He had been dining with royal personages, and wore his garter and ribbon. A short man was his Lordship, broad-chested and bow-legged, but proud of the fineness of his foot and ankle, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... world was to lose that fineness, that distinction, that originality, that disturbing subtlety, which constituted Paquita ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... alive, as though lingering to accuse and to convict, lay the body of Greathouse, the missing man. Not merely a charred, incinerated mass, the figure lay in the full appearance of life, a cast of the actual man, moulded with fineness from the white ashes of the fire! Not a feature, not a limb, not a fragment of clothing was left undestroyed; yet none the less here, stretched across the bed of the burned-out fire, with face upturned, with one arm doubled beneath the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... a fine and beautiful piece, very different from those he had showed her first. Even Ellen could see that, and fumbling for her little pattern of merino, she compared it with the piece. They agreed perfectly as to fineness. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... would have guessed even without the aid of print which consistently described it as Our Best Society, for it was a Best attested to by all the marks by which Clarice herself expressed the essential fineness of things. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, the fineness of which the minister noted mechanically—with other details which had before escaped him; such as the extreme, yellowish pallor of the man's face and hands and the extraordinary swiftness and brightness of his eyes. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... generally is covered with very long silky hairs of a dark colour; some of which are seventeen inches long; on the middle of the back (which is broad and flat), the hair is lighter and not so long. Beneath the long hairs, in all parts, there is a thick coat of cinereous wool of exquisite fineness. M. Jeramie brought some to France, of which stockings were made ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... fancies, and with a soul as fervent and imperious as his own. As is usual in such cases, she was the apple of his eye, and was loved by him above all humanity. Among his courtiers was a young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens. This royal maiden was well satisfied with her lover, for he was handsome and brave to a degree unsurpassed in all this kingdom; and she loved him with an ardor that had ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... with Mr. Brann I found him a person of almost feminine fineness. It was amusing to meet him after some particularly atrocious issue of the ICONOCLAST, either personally or by letter, and have him "roar as gently as a sucking dove." In such moods he revealed a character that was really sweet—though ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... dexterous literary workmanship is to be found in the leading articles. In spite of such admirable qualities, there is an element of frivolity, a lack of seriousness (I speak of the typical Boulevard sheet) that is at first rather shocking to a British reader. He finds grave subjects treated with a fineness of touch and a lucidity of reasoning at once charming and full of edification: but, lo! a pun trails accidentally off the journalist's pen, or an odd collocation of ideas jostle each other in his brain: the writer at once stops his instructive ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... When we try to write human interest stories we are no longer interested in facts, as much as in words. Our readers are not following us to be informed, but to be entertained. And we can please them only by our style and the fineness of our perception. Although we have been told to write news stories in the common every-day words of conversation, we are not so limited in the human interest story. The elegance of our style depends ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... laboratories at Pittsburg; extended tests have been made as to the explosibility of various mixtures of gas and air; as to the explosibility of dust from various typical coals; as to the chemical composition and physical characteristics of this dust; the degree of fineness necessary to the most explosive conditions; and the methods of dampening the dust by water, by humidifying, by steam, or of deadening its explosibility by the addition of calcium chloride, stone dust, etc. A bulletin outlining the results thus ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... make up anything like that one there?—but no, because how would he get your measure?—and surely no modest woman could give him hers even if she did take it herself—anyway, you'd be insulted by all the street rowdies as you rode by, to say nothing of being ogled by men without a particle of fineness in their natures—but there's always something to be said on both sides, and it's time woman came into her own, anyway, if she is ever to be anything but man's toy for his idle moments—still it would never do to go to extremes in a narrow little town like this with every ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... malt before removal from the malt-house shall be ground and thoroughly mixed with one-tenth part at least of its weight of ground linseed-cake or linseed-meal, and ground to such a degree of fineness and in such manner as the commissioners shall approve, and mixed together in a quantity not less than forty bushels at a time in the presence ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... persevere in it; for my own leaf and branch studies express conditions of shade which even these most exquisite botanical plates ignore; and exemplify uses of the pen and pencil which cannot be learned from the inimitable fineness of line engraving. The frontispiece to this number, for instance, (a seeding head of the commonest field-thistle of our London suburbs,) copied with a steel pen on smooth grey paper, and the drawing softly touched with white ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... very antithesis of his sister—tall and somewhat ascetic-looking, with a face to which one was almost tempted to apply the word beautiful, it was so well-proportioned and cut with the sure fineness of a cameo. His dark hair was sprinkled with grey at the temples, and beneath a broad, tranquil brow looked out a pair of kindly, luminous eyes that were neither all brown nor all grey. Later, when she knew him better, Ann was wont to inform him that his ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... thought: "If only I willed to move away, I could move away. But, no! I shall not will it. I like remaining just here, in this fear, this shame, and this agitation." She had a clear, dazzling perception of the splendour and the fineness of sin; but she did not know what sin! And all the time the muscles of her arm were tense in the combat between the weakening desire to keep her arms still and the growing desire to let her hand seize the hand of George Cannon. And all the time the heavy footstep ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... eschewed by an artist, for the simple reason that his temptation will be to expend his force in entering into closer relations with the casual, and possibly unintelligent, person than the necessities of the situation warrant. The artist is so impatient of dulness, so greedy of fineness, in all his relations, that he is apt to subject himself to a wasteful strain in talking to unperceptive and unappreciative persons. It is not that he desires to appear brilliant; it is that he is so intolerant of tedium that he sacrifices ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... given in an English or German word; whereas in Latin we must too often be contented with a mere general and inclusive term. How indeed can it be otherwise, when we attempt to render the most copious language of the world, the most admirable for the fineness of its distinctions, into one of the poorest and most vague languages? Especially when we reflect on the comparative number of the works, still extant, written while the Greek and Latin were living languages. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... what could the French Cook do for such a man? He ate with rapidity, almost with indiscriminate violence: his object not quality but quantity. He drank too, but did not get drunk: at the Doctor's order he could abstain; and had in later years abstained. Pollnitz praises his fineness of complexion, the originally eminent whiteness of his skin, which he had tanned and bronzed by hard riding and hunting, and otherwise worse discolored by his manner of feeding and digesting: alas, at last his waistcoat came to measure, I am afraid to say how many Prussian ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... was made, and in due time there was collected and tabulated a list of places from whence these effects were seen, together with the dates of such occurrences. Eventually it was concluded that such optical phenomena had a common cause, and that it must be the dust of ultra-microscopic fineness at an enormous altitude. All the facts indicated that such a cloud started from the Sunda straits, and that the prodigious force of the Krakatoa eruption could at that time alone account for the presence of impalpable matter at such ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... this road, however, is this, that each one keeps lock-step with a certain One who leads the way. This One is remarkable in appearance. His face combines all the strength and resolution of the strongest man's with all the fineness and gentleness of the finest woman's. But He bears peculiar marks as though He had been through some terrible experience. His face has a number of small scars as though it had been torn by thorns and cut by thongs. His hands and feet look as though huge spikes had been forced through them. But ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... money, he wanted also some of the good things which ought to accompany it. A superior intellect,—an intellect slightly superior to his own, of which he did not think meanly, a power of conversation which he might imitate, and that fineness of thought which, he flattered himself, he might be able to achieve while living with the daughter of a gentleman,—these were the treasures which Mr. Barry hoped to gain by his marriage with Dorothy Grey. And there had been ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the public eye the invincible obscurity of his origins clung to him like a shadowy garment. He had handled millions without ever enjoying anything of what is counted as precious in the community of men, because he had neither the brutality of temperament nor the fineness of mind to make him desire them with the will power of a masterful adventurer ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... that this is not so, for these monoliths are in reality artificially made, having been fashioned by clever workers from the Coromandel country, who brought with them here supplies of a certain hard white stone, which they first roasted to a great heat, and then ground to the fineness of flour, finally compounding this material with other things, and constructing therefrom the columns of marble you ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... executed in beautiful tints of brown, red, yellow, black, and white, the design being sometimes in dark on a light ground, and sometimes in light upon dark. The extraordinary thinness of the walls of these polychrome vessels, and the fineness of the clay from which they are fabricated, show to what a pitch the potter's craft had reached at the early period to which they belong. Of the later pottery of Knossos, which substituted naturalistic motives, executed in ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... wool or cotton when worked[275] are increased by ten palas; if the thread be of middling fineness, the increase is five palas; if very ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... eyes, and hair black as pitch; her large white teeth gleamed between full red lips. She had on a white dress; a blue shawl, pinned close round her throat with a gold brooch, half hid her slender, beautiful arms, in which one could see the fineness of her race. She took two steps with the bashful awkwardness of some wild creature, stood still, and ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... vain had he been Scott Brenton's senior warden, all these months; not in vain Kathryn's medical adviser and unwilling confidant, during the recent weeks of her approach to motherhood. He had learned to know the fineness of the man, the reverent housing he gave to his ideals, the care he lavished on their betterment; and just so surely he also knew the sordid selfishness of the woman, her lack of any ideals beyond the petty ones concerning food and raiment and ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Aldus. From 1494, the date of his first productions, until 1501 he printed his books in folio and quarto. But in the first year of the new century he began to use his famous cursive type, now called italic. The fineness of the new type, as has been suggested, called for a smaller size of book, which was also favored by considerations of economy and convenience; and so Aldus made up his sheets in a form which the fold compels us to call octavo, but which to-day would be called sixteenmo. Says Horatio F. Brown, in ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... Pliny) for the elegancy and fineness of the wood, is next to the very cedar it self. There are several kinds of it, especially the white, which is wonderfully beautiful; this is call'd the French-maple, and grows in that part of Italy, that is on the other side of Po beyond the Alpes: ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... turning into water, and the gold lying whole in the very form it was put in, mixed of gold and silver, which is a miracle; and to see no silver at all but turned into water, which they can bring again into itself out of the water. And here I was made thoroughly to understand the business of the fineness and coarseness of metals, and have put down my lessons with my other observations therein. At table among other discourse they told us of two cheats, the best I ever heard. One, of a labourer discovered to convey away the bits of silver ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... when ideas were crowding fast for expression, the border gave just the outlet necessary for the superfluous designs of the artist. He was wont to plot it off into squares with such architectonic fineness as Mina da Fiesole might have used, and to make of each of these a picture or a figure so perfect that in itself it would have sufficient composition for an entire tapestry. All honour to such artists, but let us never once forget that without the skill and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... time he came home on short leave—a changed Roy; his skin browner; his sensitive lips more closely set under the shadow line of his moustache; the fibre of body and spirit hardened, without loss of fineness or flexibility. Livelier on the surface, he was graver, more reticent, underneath—even with her. By the look in his eyes she knew he had seen things that could never be put into words. Some of them she too had seen, through his mind; ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... liked to have Gudrun about, as a fellow-mind—but that was all. And she had no real feeling for him. He was a scientist, he had to have a woman to back him. But he was really impersonal, he had the fineness of an elegant piece of machinery. He was too cold, too destructive to care really for women, too great an egoist. He was polarised by the men. Individually he detested and despised them. In the mass they fascinated him, as machinery fascinated him. They were a new sort of machinery ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... area, brushed past the gorgeous state table, and gave her my arm. She laughed, and said it had all been very magnificent and amusing, but that some one had stolen her shawl! A few years before, I had purchased for her a merino shawl, of singular fineness, simplicity, and beauty. It was now old, and she had worn it on this occasion, because she distrusted the dirt of a palace; and laying it carelessly by her side, in the course of the evening she had found in its place a very common thing ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of tests, which, objectively speaking, run in a geometric series, and subjectively in an arithmetic one, may be applied to touch, by the use of wire-work of various degrees of fineness; to taste, by stock bottles of solutions of salt, etc., of various strengths; to smell, by bottles of attar of rose, etc., ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... was a dispiriting one despite the fineness of the day. T. X. had an uncomfortable sense that something distressing had happened. The run across the moor in the fresh spring air revived ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... 13th we observed something very like smoke rising from about Cape Welsford, which, being confined to one spot, was thought likely to be occasioned by the fires of natives. Nothing could exceed the fineness of the weather about this time; the climate was, indeed, altogether so different from that to which we had before been accustomed in the icy seas, as to be a matter of constant remark. The days were temperate ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... perhaps, the gist of the whole matter. To hitch one's wagon to a star was to be, primarily, a plain person, to go in for truth, patriotism, fineness of soul, long hours of labor, little exercise and no vacations, pies and doughnuts, ugliness of physical surroundings, and squeaky feminine voices. Public opinion justified making all the money one could, provided it was not spent in ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... catholicity of taste that it displays. Mr. Noel has a passion for panegyric. His eulogy on Keats is closely followed by a eulogy on Whitman, and his praise of Lord Tennyson is equalled only by his praise of Mr. Robert Buchanan. Sometimes, we admit, we would like a little more fineness of discrimination, a little more delicacy of perception. Sincerity of utterance is valuable in a critic, but sanity of judgment is more valuable still, and Mr. Noel's judgments are not always distinguished by their sobriety. Many of the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... true son of the mountain-desert. He wore his old slouch hat even in the house, and his skin was that olive brown which comes from many years of exposure to the wind and sun. At the same time there was a peculiar fineness about the boy. His feet were astonishingly small and the hands thin and slender for all their supple strength. And his neck was not bony, as it is in most youths at this gawky ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... artificial; such as a house or other building, a village, a planted field, a thicket or place surrounded by trees, &c. The place of residence of the Sachem, which (says Roger Williams) was "far different from other houses [wigwams], both in capacity, and in the fineness and quality of their mats," was called sachima-komuk, or, as Edward Winslow wrote it, 'sachimo comaco,'—the Sachem-house. Werowocomoco, Weramocomoco, &c. in Virginia, was the 'Werowance's house,' and the name appears on Smith's map, at a place "upon the river Pamauncke [now York River], ...
— The Composition of Indian Geographical Names - Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages • J. Hammond Trumbull
... interference with his rights as a parent, but he seemed entirely oblivious of the fact that Sheila had changed her shabby studio black for the most cobwebby of muslins and linens, frocks that by virtue of their exquisite fineness cost Nancy ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... sphere not unlike that of Voltaire in a later century. There is another portrait of Erasmus by Holbein, often repeated, so that two great artists have contributed to his renown. That by Duerer is admired. The general fineness of touch, with the accessories of books and flowers, shows the care in its execution; but it wants expression, and the hands ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... exhausted every possible expression of feeling. Their scales were in true intervals; they had really major and minor tones; we have neither, but a confusion of both. They had both sharps and flats: we have neither, but a mere set of semitones, which serve for both. In their enharmonic scale the fineness of their ear perceived distinctions which are lost on the ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the Rueful Countenance was still very anxious to find out who the owner of the valise could be, conjecturing from the sonnet and letter, from the money in gold, and from the fineness of the shirts, that he must be some lover of distinction whom the scorn and cruelty of his lady had driven to some desperate course; but as in that uninhabited and rugged spot there was no one to be seen of whom he could inquire, he saw nothing else for it but ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "Here the insight into character, the delicacy and fineness of touch, the keenness of analysis, and the firmness of the literary method, remind one of Mr. Henry James, but ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... is still negative, still keeps the Bridge up. One of the hundred does go, by way of foretaste: this lighted 'near the Ober Kirche, in the chimney of the Town Musikus;' brought the chimney crashing down on him [fancy a man with some fineness of ear]; tore the house a good deal to pieces, but again did not set it on fire. 'Your obstinate Town can be bombarded, then,—cannot it?' observed the Russian Messenger.—'Give us Free Withdrawal!' proposes Amim. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... established standard be raised in value? The famous Locke engaged in this dispute against Mr. Lowndes, who proposed that the standard should be raised; the arguments of Mr. Locke were so convincing, that the committee resolved the established standard should be preserved with respect to weight and fineness. They likewise resolved, that the loss accruing to the revenue from clipped money, should be borne by the public. In order to prevent a total stagnation, they further resolved, that after an appointed day ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... anxious that outward marks of such distinction should go with them. This is undoubtedly one of the grounds for tatuing the body. Among the Kayans a man's hands are only fully tatued when he has taken a head; while the social status of a woman is marked by the degree of fineness of the tatuing.[124] It follows that death is neither greatly feared nor desired; but an old man will sometimes affirm that he is quite ready or even desirous to die, although he may seem cheerful ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... day of the dinner at the Hall, Mrs. Wilson, with all her nieces and her nephew, availed herself of the fineness of the weather to walk to the rectory, where they were all in the habit of making informal and friendly visits. They had just got out of the little village of B——, which lay in their route, when a rather handsome travelling ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... tame. In winter she goes off in dog-cariole, traps cross-foxes off her own bat, shoots moose, and smokes the hide according to the ancient accepted mode. Coming home, she takes the smoked hide and works upon it silk embroidery of a fineness which would be the envy of any young ladies' seminary in Europe or America. She weaves fantastic belts of beads and sets the fashion for the whole North in chef d'oeuvres of the quills of the porcupine. She is a most observant "old ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... to him of the fineness of a farmer's life, but he would not agree with them. A farmer's life was too hard and too dull. He was set on joining ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... way to talk?" demanded the Rev. T.E. Brown of this last passage, when he talked about Sidney, the other day, in Mr. Henley's New Review. "No one can fail," said Mr. Brown, amiably assuming the fineness of his own ear to be common to all mankind—"no one can fail to observe the sweetness and the strength, the outspokenness, the downrightness, and, at the same time, the nervous delicacy of pausation, the rhythm ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as a disciple of Izaak Walton would play with his game. You are gradually led from one piece of goods to another; your gauge as to price is adroitly discovered; and finally, with consummate judgment, a certain article, characterized by fineness, beauty, and quality, is placed before you. The moment your eyes rest upon it you are charmed. The shrewd old merchant has mentally taken your measure for this myriad-threaded beauty, and you are captivated. The price is named. "Too much," say you. But you are told that this establishment is ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... into the ground, and no nail drives a silver point into the plank," it is also true that, under the stimulus of the larger expenditure which the added supplies of gold make possible, the duller metal has taken a fineness, a brightness and hardness, with a tensile ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... the Governor, pausing dramatically in the door and eyeing the newly arrived guests as though their presence filled him with astonishment. He bowed to them and remarked upon the fineness ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... immediately preceded it, there appeared, both in France and Italy, some judicious historians, whose style possesses considerable vivacity, and who gave animated pictures of their times; some subtle philosophers, who astonished their contemporaries, rather by the fineness of their speculations than by the justness of their reasoning; some learned theologians, and some poets. The names of Paul Warnefrid, of Alcuin, of Luitprand, and Eginhard, are even yet universally respected. ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... magnificent sea-otter, an enhydrus, the only exclusively marine quadruped. This otter was five feet long, and must have been very valuable. Its skin, chestnut-brown above and silvery underneath, would have made one of those beautiful furs so sought after in the Russian and Chinese markets: the fineness and the lustre of its coat would certainly fetch L80. I admired this curious mammal, with its rounded head ornamented with short ears, its round eyes, and white whiskers like those of a cat, with webbed feet and ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... seemed to have been put on him once for all, like the bark of a tree, a long time ago. The observant stranger was sure to be puzzled by the contrast of this realistic and uncouth exterior with the internal fineness, amounting to refinement and culture, that shone through it all. What communion had supplied the place of our artificial breeding to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to conceal it, "that Lady of Quality, as you are inclined to think her, a very few years since, was nothing more than a pot-girl to a publican in Marj'-le-bone; but an old debauchee (upon the look out for defenceless beauty) admiring the fineness of her form, the brilliancy of her eye, and the symmetry of her features, became the possessor of her person, and took her into keeping, as one of the indispensable appendages of fashionable life, after a month's ablution at Margate, where he gave her masters ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... life, could set up. The plastic character of Middleton was perhaps a variety of American nature only presenting itself under an individual form; he could throw off the man of our day, and put on a ruder nature, but then it was with a certain fineness, that made this only [a] distinction between it and the central truth. He found less variety of form in the English character than he had been accustomed to see at home; but perhaps this was in consequence ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... banished himself from society? Did he know a single person whose existence would approximate his in seclusion and contemplation? Did he know a man capable of appreciating the fineness of a phrase, the subtlety of a painting, the quintessence of an idea,—a man whose soul was delicate and exquisite enough to understand Mallarme and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... had never been before. His woman, too (as we say in those parts, Melody; wife is the more genteel expression, but I never heard Ham use it. My father, on the other hand, never said anything else; a difference in the fineness of ear, my dear, I have always supposed),—his woman, I say, or wife, had not "turned up her toes," but recovered, and as he was a faithful and affectionate man, his heart was enlarged by this also. However it was, he talked more in those weeks, I suppose, than in the rest of his life put together. ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... denunciative of mammon-worship—mammon-love—mammon-influence—and so on; and this for two quite sufficient reasons—one, that I have myself, I blushingly confess, a very strong partiality for notes of the governor and company of the Bank of England and sovereigns of full weight and fineness; the other, that the very best and fiercest discourse I ever heard fulminated against the debasing love of gold, especially characteristic, it is said, of these degenerate days, was delivered by a gentleman who, having lived some seventy useful and eloquent years at the rate of about ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... the subject in its different bearings, it soon became evident to all, that the matter of supreme importance would be the making of the rope. Could this be manufactured of sufficient fineness not to overburden the bearcoot, and yet be strong enough to sustain the weight of a man, the first difficulty would be got over. The rope therefore should be made with the greatest care. Every fibre ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... itself as a species of treason. The reason of which arises thus. As money is the universal standard or measure of the value of any commodity, so the value of money is always regulated, in respect of its weight, fineness, etc., by the public authority of the State. To counterfeit, therefore, is in some degree to assume the supreme authority, inasmuch as it is giving a currency to another less valuable piece of metal ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... several contemporaries and fellow-students who exercised and excited this virtue in themselves and others, thereby becoming so deservedly in favour with this age, and so good a proof of its nice discernment. His judgment, naturally good, soon ripened into an exquisite fineness and distinguishing sagacity, which as it was active and busy, so it was vigorous and manly, keeping even paces with a rich and strong imagination, always upon the wing, and never tired with aspiring. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... early in May that Martha first began to notice the white lisle socks marked E.G. She picked them from among the great heap at her work table because of the exquisite fineness of the darning that adorned them. It wasn't merely darning. It was embroidery. It was weaving. It was cobweb tapestry. It blended in with the original fabric so intimately that it required an expert eye to mark where darning finished and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... very true that this unnatural grease is very delicious, and that this damnable skill gives them the fineness and succulence which are the delight of our ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... a boy in looks, with smooth face and white skin healthily flushed in places like a baby's. His face, too, was hard and set in sternness like a mask, as if life had used him badly; but behind it was a fineness of feature and spirit that could not be utterly hidden. They called him the Kid, and thought it was his youth that made him different from them all, for he was only twenty-four, and not one of the rest was under forty. They were doing their best to help him get over that innate fineness that ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... measured indulgence fit for a sick and wayward child. In all the terrible troubles of their life her courage had been higher than his. The metal of which she was made had been tempered to a steel which was very rare and fine, but the rareness and fineness of which he had failed to appreciate. He had often told her that she was without pride, because she was stooped to receive from others on his behalf and on behalf of their children, things which were needful, but which she could ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... enough for human beauty to possess symmetry of structure, within and without: there must be a beautiful coloring also, wealth of complexion, fineness of texture. So the next element of literary art lies in the choice of words. Style must have richness and felicity. Words in a master's hands seem more than words; he can double or quadruple their power by skill ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... apothecary's son, a regular shop-drudge," he raged inwardly, watching the youth of the Faubourg Saint-Germain pass under his eyes; graceful, spruce, fashionably dressed, with a certain uniformity of air, a sameness due to a fineness of contour, and a certain dignity of carriage and expression; though, at the same time, each one differed from the rest in the setting by which he had chosen to bring his personal characteristics into prominence. Each one made the most of his personal ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... three years younger than Madeline, and a slender, pretty girl. She did not resemble her sister, except in whiteness and fineness of skin, being more of a brown-eyed, brown-haired type. Having recovered her breath soon after Madeline took her to her room, ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... fingering it carelessly; "it is in reality a sort of air-gun, with a wonderful compression, and a most ingenious silencer; quite as deadly, they say, as any firearm ever invented. It ejects a cylindrically-shaped bullet, tapered down almost to the fineness of a needle. Now," he added, with a faint smile and a rapid glance round the room, "if only one dared—" he turned in his chair, and I saw the thing steal out below his cuff, "one could free the child ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all his cabinet colleagues disapproved his high-handed acts and stood ready to disavow them with reparation. On this occasion Jackson owed much to one whom he subsequently hated and denounced, viz., Quincy Adams, by whose bold and acute defence of his doubtful doings, managed with a fineness of argument and diplomacy which no then American but Adams could command, he was formally vindicated before both his own Government and the Governments of England ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... want of depth and fineness of intonation in a period, is all gross excess of colour, because excess of colour is connected with graver faults in the region of the intellectual conscience. Macaulay is a constant sinner in this respect. The wine of truth is ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... put in the pastiles, and closing it up, the vapour issues beautifully through the nostrils, eyes, ears, and mouth, all at once. Here, sir," turning to Douglas, "if you are curious in new workmanship, I would have you examine this. I defy any jeweller in London to come up to the fineness of these hinges, and delicacy ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... letters for a background. What she saw was a tall man, slender, and about him there was to Linda a strong appeal. As she looked into his eyes, she could feel the double hurt that Fate had dealt him. She thought she could fathom the fineness in his nature that had led him to made home-building his chosen occupation. Instantly she liked him. With only one look deep into his eyes she was on his side. She stretched out both her ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... be too clever; yet only three weeks after his first encounter with Mrs. Ryves he sat at his delightful davenport (well aware that he had duties more pressing), trying to string together rhymes idiotic enough to make his neighbour's fortune. He was satisfied of the fineness of her musical gift—it had the touching note. The touching note was in her ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... Jews of good stature and commanding presence had their dignity hopelessly spoilt by the big blue spotted handkerchief worn over the head and tied under the chin; Jewesses in rich apparel seemed quite content with the fineness within their houses, and indifferent to the mire ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... monument, but a suspended wheel of which he is himself the hub; and so delicately fashioned are the silver spokes thereof, radiating from his round and gem-like body, and the rings, concentric tire within tire, that its exceeding fineness, like swift revolving motion, renders it almost invisible. Caterpillars, too, in great plenty—miniature porcupines with fretful quills on end, and some naked even as they came into the world. This one, called the earth-measurer, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... tears of the sufferer were falling on the cheeks of her lost treasure, now interfered. But the mother had still a last request to make. A few downy curls were perceptible on the temples—in colour and fineness resembling her own. She wished to rescue from the grave this slight remembrance of her poor nameless offspring; and her wish having been complied with, she suffered the babe to be taken from her relaxed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... the hair of the ancient Peruvians, as found upon their mummies, as "a lightish brown, and of a fineness of texture which equals that of the Anglo-Saxon race." "The ancient Peruvians," says Short ("North Americans of Antiquity," p. 187), "appear, from numerous examples of hair found in their tombs, to have been an auburn-haired race." Garcilasso, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... be found for such cunning palates. They would drink their fill from brown, smoky Indians, or from old white folk flavored with tobacco and whiskey, when no better could be had. But the surpassing fineness of their taste was best manifested by their enthusiastic appreciation of boys full of lively red blood, and of girls in full bloom fresh from cool Scotland or England. On these it was pleasant to witness their enjoyment as they feasted. Indians, we were ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... detestation for such living; it wasn't moral in any sense with which she was familiar; in fact it appeared to have a vague connection with her own revolt from the destruction of death. She wanted Vigne as well to escape that catastrophe, to hold inviolate the beauty of her youth, her fineness and courage. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... nature seems to halt in expectation of the coming of something unusual. The decreasing portion of sun becomes more and more narrow, until at length it is reduced to a crescent-shaped strip of exceeding fineness. Strange, ill-defined, flickering shadows (known as "Shadow Bands") may at this moment be seen chasing each other across any white expanse such as a wall, a building, or a sheet stretched upon the ground. The western side of the sky has ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... and partaking somewhat of the character and appearance of a powerful Danish dog. This agrees with the account given of it by some writers, especially in "The Sportsman's Cabinet," a work more remarkable for the truth and fineness of its engravings, than for the matter contained in it. Buffon also forms much the same opinion. That great strength must be necessary to enable a dog to compete with a wolf, cannot be doubted, and perhaps there is no breed of the ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... agricultural operations. Sheep-raising is the most profitable of their pursuits. The climate appears to be more congenial to the growth of wool than of cereal productions. The Faroese sheep are noted for the fineness and luxuriance of their fleece, and it always commands a high price in market. A considerable portion of it is manufactured by the inhabitants, who are quite skillful in weaving and knitting. They make a kind of thick woolen shirt, something like that known as the Guernsey, which ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... assembled" had power to treat with foreign countries, to send and receive ambassadors, to determine peace and war. Congress was the last resort on appeal in all disputes between the states; could fix the standard of weights and measures, and of the fineness of coin; could establish and regulate postoffices; could ascertain and appropriate "the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United States;" could borrow money "on the credit of the United ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... such a serious thing in that untroubled way. As she served the table, there being griddle-cakes of cornmeal that morning to flank the one egg and fragments of rusty bacon each, she studied the boy's face carefully. She noted the high, clear forehead, the large nose, the fineness of the heavy, black hair which lay shaggy upon his temples. She studied the long hands, the grave line of his mouth, and caught a quick glimpse now and then of his large, serious ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... to make her an object of their merriment. In general, indeed almost universally, the limbs of these people were small; of most of them the arms, legs, and thighs were thin. This, no doubt, is owing to the poorness of their living, which is chiefly on fish; otherwise the fineness of the climate, co-operating with the exercise which they take, might have rendered them more muscular. Those who live on the sea-coast depend entirely on fish for their sustenance; while the few who dwell in the woods subsist on such animals as they can catch. The ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... the fineness and goodness of the Ore, by which the Mine is wont to be estimated? And what are the marks and {339} characters, that distinguish ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... the proprietor, and in admirable keeping with its exterior. The rooms are fitted up with light Gothic tracery on the walls, very chaste and elegant; and the colors are so delicate and subdued, that you are not offended with that feeling of over-fineness ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... because it's true that it's fine. It has no other beauty, mind! And it's not because it's fine that it will come. Fineness is not in vogue, any more than love is. It's because it's true that it has ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... were two Persians, who unfolded before our eyes some of those marvellous shawls, where you forget the barbaric pattern in the exquisite fineness of the material and the triumphant harmony of the colors. Scarlet with palm-leaf border,—blue clasped by golden bronze, picked out with red,—browns, greens, and crimsons struggling for the mastery in a war of tints,—how should we choose between them? Alas! we were not able ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... and scarcely visible even under lens. Color pale dull brown or grayish brown. Wood light, soft, not strong, straight-grained, fairly easy to work. Cottonwood can be separated from other light and soft woods by the fineness of its rays, which is equaled only by willow, which it rather closely resembles. The wood is largely used for boxes, general ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... could not have been heard; for the peddler, burying his body in the pack, brought forth a quantity of lace of exquisite fineness, and, holding it up to view, he required the admiration of the young lady. Miss Peyton dropped the cup she was engaged in washing, from her hand; and Frances exhibited the whole of that lovely face, which had hitherto only suffered one of its joyous eyes to ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... complain finely that I do not appreciate their fineness. I shall not tell them whether I do or not. As if they expected a vote of thanks for every fine thing which they uttered or did. Who knows but it was finely appreciated. It may be that your silence was the finest thing of the two. There are some things which a man never speaks ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... piazza, with its pretty characteristic varieties of pleasant stone-built houses, solid Georgian fronts interspersed with mullioned gables. But the church! That is a marvellous place; its massive lantern-tower, with solid, softly-moulded outlines—for the sandy oolite admits little fineness of detail—all weathered to a beautiful orange-grey tint, has a mild dignity of its own. Inside it is a treasure of mediaevalism. The screens, the woodwork, the monuments, all rich, dignified, and spacious. And the glass! Next to King's College Chapel, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... designed that gas is generated without producing sufficient heat to cause yellow discoloration of residuum (which will occur at about 500 deg. F.) or abnormal pressure at any stage of the process when using carbide of any degree of fineness. ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... on a tiny sofa in the corner, a curiously impregnable intrenchment, as I noted—for my impulse was to carry her by storm. I was astonished at my own audacity; I was wondering where my fear of her had gone, my awe of her superior fineness and breeding. "Mama will be down in a ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... rocks of the sea), but if his mother has loved into his life, the rare flower of fastidiousness, he will come back, with innocence aglow beneath the weathered countenance. It is the sons of strong women who have that fineness which makes them choice, even in their affairs of an hour. A beautiful spirit of race guardianship is behind this fastidiousness.... Miraculously, it seems to appear many times in the sons of women who have failed to find their own knight-errants. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort |
