"Impressiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more potent to bring temporal relief than the continual famine of the bread of life and of the increasing floods of heathen ungodliness. It is well, it is CHRIST-like, to minister temporal relief to suffering humanity, but shall the deep longings and thirstings of His soul, and the impressiveness of His last command ere He ascended on high, be less urgent? How many of the parents who refuse to let son or daughter go into the mission-field would refuse the Queen of England were she to confer the honour of a mission on their beloved children? Do we recognize the majesty of the King of Glory, ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... have been difficult, on a much closer acquaintance, to describe it in any more satisfactory terms than as a mixed expression of vulgar cunning and conceit. This gentleman wore a rather broad-brimmed hat for the greater wisdom of his appearance; and had his arms folded for the greater impressiveness of his attitude. He was somewhat shabbily dressed in a blue surtout reaching nearly to his ankles, short loose trousers of the same colour, and a faded buff waistcoat, through which a discoloured shirt-frill struggled to force ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... other to his left, with all the ceremony of which they were secretaries, and the three walked abreast the length of the Galeria de Iturbide, where they were joined by the Lesser Service of Honor. Thus, swelling by cumulative degrees of impressiveness, Trooper Driscoll came at last into the Sala de Audiencias, and gazed with admiration at its beautiful ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... upon insignificant and therefore presumably submissive men. Douglas was not of this type; he had high spirit, was ambitious, masterful, and self-confident; he was also an aggressive, brilliant, and tireless fighter in a political campaign, an orator combining something of the impressiveness of Webster with the readiness and roughness of the stump speaker. He had a thorough familiarity with all the politics, both the greater and the smaller, of the time; he was shrewd and adroit as a politician, and he had as good a right as any man then prominent in public life to the more ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... hate like a flower in my breast," she said, with a sort of stern impressiveness. "I have fostered it year after year, and now,—it has grown too strong for me! When Olaf Gueldmar was young he told me I was fair; once he kissed my cheek at parting! For those words,—for that kiss,—I loved him then—for the same things I hate him now! When I know he had married, I cursed ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... disadvantage of being, practically, a novel of modern life in verse. Criticised as a tale of modern life (and it was criticised in that character), it could not be very highly esteemed. But the essence of Maud, of course, lies in the poetical vehicle. Nobody can cavil at the impressiveness ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... a very lowly and a very flimsy flotation on the dark water, and her illuminated deck-house was no better than a toy. On the other hand, her two masts rose out of the deep high overhead and had a certain impressiveness, though not ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... my blood flows in the veins of any living creature," declared the judge with melancholy impressiveness. He continued with deepening feeling, "All I shall leave to ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... to Ayr presented nothing very remarkable; and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy day takes the varnish off the scenery, and causes a woful diminution in the beauty and impressiveness of everything we see. Much of our way lay along a flat, sandy level, in a southerly direction. We reached Ayr in the midst of hopeless rain, and drove to the King's Arms Hotel. In the intervals of showers I took peeps at the town, which appeared to have many modern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to subscribe their names, and if they failed to do so its adoption by the people would have been impossible. It was then that Doctor Franklin rendered one of the last and greatest services of his life. With ingratiating wit and with all the impressiveness that his distinguished career inspired, Franklin ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... of Aristophanes', says Landor, 'he can cast your name as a byword to a thousand cities of Asia for a thousand years. But all that the press can do by its disfavour is to keep your name obscure in a hundred cities of England for a hundred days. Signed articles are robbed of their vague impressiveness, and are known for what they are—the opinions of one man. I would also recommend that a photograph of the author be placed at the head of every article. I have been saved from many bad novels by the helpful pictorial advertisements of ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... that too indicating, as the first results, the very blessing I had been hoping and praying for, a deeper impressiveness to our Sabbath and other religious efforts. Shortly after, we found that hearts not sensibly touched before, were being deeply impressed, among them one of the worst cases perhaps in prison. It was taking a new start in the ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... overpowering majesty. Rising abruptly more than 13,000 feet above the surrounding high land, this double-peaked giant reaches an altitude of 19,000 feet above the sea, and bears upon its broad massive back a stretch of snow with which in impressiveness neither the glaciers of our European Alps nor, in a certain sense, those of the Andes and the Himalayas, can compare. For nowhere else upon our earth does nature present such a strong and sudden contrast between the most luxuriant and exuberant tropical vegetation ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few seconds. The short business of getting the gate open, and of closing it afterwards, gave it time to pass. So that now, as they set forwards towards the house, he was able to look her in the eye, and to observe, with impressiveness, that it was ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... much, sir," said a famous tragedian once to a "super," who had committed default in some important business of the scene. "Not more than you frightened me, sir," the "super" frankly said. He was forgiven his failure on account of the homage it conveyed to the tragedian's impressiveness. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... ocean travel the meeting of a ship at sea was an event long to be remembered. The faint speck on the horizon, discernible only through the captain's glass, was hours in taking on the form of a ship. If a full-rigged ship, no handiwork of man could equal her impressiveness as she bore down before the wind, sail mounting on sail of billowing whiteness, until for the small hull cleaving the waves so swiftly, to carry all seemed nothing sort of marvelous. Always there was a hail and an interchange of names and ports; sometimes both vessels rounded to and ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... journey, Uncle Oscar, laughing heartily and quite unbending from his formal and dry way of talking, said, "Well done, my little red-hot Abolitionist; you'll get through this world, I'll be bound." He bade the wanderers farewell and goodspeed with much impressiveness and sent messages ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... for your remarks on Shirley. Some of your strictures tally with some by Mr. Williams. You both complain of the want of distinctness and impressiveness in my heroes. Probably you are right. In delineating male character I labour under disadvantages: intuition and theory will not always adequately supply the place of observation and experience. When I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... interest. I broke up the camp only when the autumn was so far advanced that it was uncomfortable to live in the open air. It is difficult for one who has not had the experience to understand the fascination of this absolute solitude, or the impressiveness of the silence, unbroken sometimes through whole days. I had absolutely no desire for human society, and I broke camp with reluctance, to return to ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... are, perhaps, the worst paintings in the world, and the massive pine-board pillars are unscrupulously smoked to look like marble; but our tourists enjoyed it as if it had been St. Peter's; in fact it has something of the barnlike immensity and impressiveness of St. Peter's. They did not ask it to be beautiful or grand; they desired it only to recall the beloved ugliness, the fondly cherished hideousness and incongruity of the average Catholic churches of their remembrance, and it did this and more: it added an effect of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Brain[B] of the Public is the supreme judge of literature. But obviously he and Miss Corelli will not have the same Public in their mind. If for "the Great Brain of the Public" we substitute "the Great Brain of that Part of the Public which subscribes to Mudie's," we may lose something of impressiveness, but we shall at least know what we are ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... displace that given by Lucretius. He is a Stoic combating an Epicurean. A close study of Lucretius is evidenced by numerous passages, [82] and the earnestness of his moral conclusions imitates, though it does not approach in impressiveness, that of the great Epicurean. Occasionally he imitates Horace, [83] much more often Virgil, and, in the legends, Ovid. [84] His technical manipulation of the hexameter is good, though tinged with monotony. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... I think her extremely beautiful, Miss Garnett. (He takes the photograph up; looks at it; and adds, with even greater impressiveness) EXTREMELY beautiful. How fine ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... behavior in church should be taught rather by trying to inculcate the spirit of worship than by making rules to be followed. A child is very susceptible to impressiveness of any sort, and if the reason for it is made clear to him, he will be quicker to respond to it by a reverent attitude of spirit than does an older person. Even the obstreperous child is at least temporarily impressed, if he sees that ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... which the senator is made aware of their wishes; the crowd of practical and knowing men, who, by correspondence or conversation, are feeding him with evidence, anecdotes, and estimates, and it will bereave his fine attitudes and resistance of something of their impressiveness. As Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Webster vote, so Locke and Rousseau think, for thousands; and so there were fountains all around Homer, Manu, Saadi, or Milton, from which they drew; friends, lovers, books, traditions, proverbs,—all perished—which, if seen, would go to reduce the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... every possible qualification that is required to make the great orator. All those who heard him speak, when telling of it, begin by relating how he looked. He worked the dignity and impressiveness of his Jovelike presence to its furthest limit, and when once thoroughly awake was in ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... strain, attain the rumbling bass tones so favoured by many elocutionists. But I have been led to believe that a sonorousness of delivery and a nice use of gesticulation and modulation compensate in me for a lack of bulk, creating as it were an illusion of physical impressiveness, of brawn, of thew and sinew. I bowed to the chairman, and to the assemblage, cleared my ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... must have had its impressiveness for all minds that were not of the dullest order, even if they were inclined, as Macchiavelli was, to interpret the Frate's character by a key that presupposed no loftiness. To Romola, whose kindred ardour gave ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... aside for the moment all the surface charms of colour and effect, and concentrating our attention upon its lines of structures, we shall find that it owes a great part of its beauty to the harmonious relation of its leading lines, or to certain pleasant contrasts, or a certain impressiveness of form and mass, and at the same time we shall perceive that this linear expression is inseparable from the sentiment or emotion ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... other able commentators interpret this to mean the heavenly temple, and suppose that the future prophet was transported to some imaginary place which he called by this name. But this is quite a gratuitous suggestion, and it very much weakens the impressiveness of the whole scene, the very point of which lies in the fact that it took place on familiar ground. Isaiah was a Jerusalemite, and the temple was the most familiar of all haunts to him. He had witnessed there ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... punctually fulfilled. This time, Europe served as the main target of the celestial projectiles, and observers were numerous and forewarned. The display, although, according to Mr. Baxendell's memory,[1208] inferior to that of 1833, was of extraordinary impressiveness. Dense crowds of meteors, equal in lustre to the brightest stars, and some rivalling Venus at her best,[1209] darted from east to west across the sky with enormous apparent velocities, and with a certain determinateness of aim, as if let ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... the artist's superior imagination; and by a spectator familiar with the tropics, greater interest may be felt in the English landscape, because its images may more forcibly arrest his attentlon by their novelty. And were this not so, were the inalienable impressiveness of tropical scenery always to give the poet who described it a superiority in effect, this would not prove the superiority of his imagination. For either he has been familiar with such scenes, and imagines them just as the other poet imagines his English landscape—-by an effort of mental vision, ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... understand such directions as those; I am not at all sure that I understand them myself. At the same time there is hint enough to put me on the right track. And now, O'Gorman," continued I, throwing all the impressiveness I could muster into my manner, "I want you to listen to me, and mark well what I say, for I am in downright earnest, and no mistake. I gather, from the whole drift of this adventure, that your object in coming here ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... near Chantilly on the Little River turnpike, in which they sustained a heavy loss in the death of General Philip Kearney, one of their best and bravest commanders. Inasmuch as the action took place during a thunderstorm its awful impressiveness was increased, and it was difficult to distinguish between the reverberations of the heavens and the detonations of the mimicking artillery, sometimes alternating ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... than any work of modern times: nor with less reluctance, that I find myself at variance with Mr. Skelton, who speaks of the drama as "one of the most perfectly conceived and perfectly executed tragedies in the language." In the instance of Luria, that second Othello, suicide has all the impressiveness of a plenary act of absolution: the death of Anael seems as inevitable as the flash of lightning after the concussion of thunder-clouds. But Thorold's suicide is mere weakness, scarce a perverted courage; and Mildred's ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The impressiveness of this occasion is greatly enhanced by reason of an atmosphere of prophecy's fulfillment which surrounds it. The thought is in our minds that we are amid awe-inspiring surroundings, where we may see and feel things foretold a century ago. We are here in recognition ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... spirit, and the sermons of Barrow (d. 1677) combine comprehensiveness, sagacity, and clearness. Other divines, such as Stillingfleet, Pearson, Burnet, Bull, hold a more prominent place in the history of the church than in that of letters. But all the writers of this age are wanting in that impressiveness and force of undisciplined eloquence which distinguished the first half of the seventeenth century. Among the nonconformist clergy, Howe (d. 1715) wrote the "Living Temple," which is ranked among the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... hands. Bernenstein and I, amazed at this strange tale, scarcely understanding whether it were jest or earnest, stood staring stupidly at Sapt. Then I, overcome by the strange thing, turned half-foolish by the bizarre mingling of comedy and impressiveness in Sapt's rendering of it, plucked him by the sleeve, and asked, with something between a laugh and ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... for impressiveness in the perfect manifestation of the grotesque and caricature in art with Hood's "Song of the Shirt" in poetry. "The reception of the last-named wood-cut," says he, "was in several respects a curious test of modern feeling.... There are some points to ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Spurgeon's nature works on a low level of influence. Deficient in imagination, and with a mind coarse and unspiritualized, though religiously impressed, he animalizes his creed in attempting to give it sensuous reality and impressiveness. If it be said that by this process he feels his way into hearts which could not be affected by more spiritual means, the answer is, that the multitude who listened to the Sermon on the Mount were not of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... as a preacher that he will be best remembered by the public. The printed page, though far inferior to the fervid eloquence of the same words when spoken, will corroborate by its beauty, its pathos, and its logical force, the traditions that still linger [132] of his deep impressiveness in the pulpit. In making the following selections from his letters, I have been influenced by the desire to let them show him in his daily and familiar life, with the easy gayety and love of humor which was as natural to him as the deep and solemn meditations which absorbed the ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... narratives several changes become clear in the position and circumstances of the Prophet, and in his temper and outlook. Signally vindicated as his words have been, we are not surprised that to his contemporaries he has grown to be a personage of greater impressiveness and authority than before. He has still his enemies but these are not found in exactly the same quarters as under Jehoiakim. Instead of an implacable king, and princes more or less respectful and friendly, in the king he has now a friend, though a timid and ineffective one, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... that vulgar minds can conceive as wanting to be done; the spirit of well-principled housemaids everywhere, exerting itself for perpetual propriety and renovation, so that nothing is old, but only "old-fashioned," and contemporary, as it were, in date and impressiveness only with last year's bonnets. Abroad, a building of the eighth or tenth century stands ruinous in the open street; the children play round it, the peasants heap their corn in it, the buildings of yesterday nestle about it, and fit their new stones into its rents, and tremble in sympathy ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... same is true of Sumner, who would have had decidedly the advantage of Burke so far as personal impressiveness is concerned. His Phi Beta Kappa address of 1845 is so rich in material that it is even more interesting to read now than when it was first delivered, and his remarks on Allston in that oration might be considered to advantage by every ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... was protesting further, when his master rose, and addressing Jeff as the challenger, began to read. He had prepared a formal cartel, and all the subsequent and consequential documents which appear necessary to a well-conducted and duly bloodthirsty meeting under the duello, and he read them with an impressiveness which was only equalled by the portentious dignity of George Washington. As he stood balancing himself, and took in the solemn significance of the matter, his whole air changed; he raised his head, struck a new ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... P. M. the next day. The House assembled at 2 o'clock. Following the roll-call the usual order was the presentation of petitions. At this time a member in the rear, at a sufficient distance from the Speaker's desk to give impressiveness to what would follow, rose and presented "A petition from the people of Chippewa County in favor of the Municipal Woman Suffrage Bill." A page sprang forward and taking the document, which was prepared upon paper of an extra size and ornamented with long streamers of red and green ribbons, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... poetry is not yet written, but which you shall presently make as enviable and renowned as any. In our estimates let us take a lesson from kings. The parts of hospitality, the connection of families, the impressiveness of death, and a thousand other things, royalty makes its own estimate of, and a royal mind will. To make habitually ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... pressed closely to the window. Touched, as they had been, by the account of that far-away funeral among the mountains, they were in just the mood to be impressed by the scene which was passing before them. And, in truth, any one who stood looking on, that day, must have felt the impressiveness of the long line as it slowly filed down the broad street under the graceful arches of the tall old elms, in the cold light of the cloudy afternoon. First came the drum corps, with wailing fife and muffled drum; next appeared the gray uniforms of the company who marched two by two, with bowed ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... send for the policeman or the actual appearance of the policeman has an almost magical effect in calming a disturbance. The Japanese policeman believes very much in reproving or reprimanding evil doers and in reasoning with folk whose "carelessness" has attracted attention. Sometimes for greater impressiveness the admonitions or exhortations are delivered at the police station[45]. In more than one village I heard a tribute paid to the good influence exerted on a community by a ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... is that there is a point in the intenser actuality of things at which all human language fails to do justice to it. Yet—as simply told as possible—there are many incidents of this great tragedy which nothing has ever surpassed or ever can surpass in impressiveness. It is a consolation, too, that human nature at such times does betray here and there a gleam of that side of it which gives forth a reflection of the ideal manhood or womanhood. Bits of heroism and of tender devotedness scattered throughout this dark, dismal ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... old Roman heroes inspire respect rather than love; and something of their stern impressiveness lingers in the atmosphere of this Roman play. Here and there it has very touching scenes, such as that between Brutus and his page (IV, iii); but in the main it is great, not through its power to elicit sympathetic tears, but through its dignity ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... manner that detained him. Her tone had been light and chatty before; and, though she spoke with proper gravity, it was sprightly rather than earnest. I did not notice any striking change; and yet it seemed suddenly to assume the gentle impressiveness one sometimes fancies we ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... brightening; the ever-increasing exactness of definition, and the separation of the nucleus from the two wings. All that he had seen was as pitilessly inexorable as the figures which contained the prophecy of the world's approaching doom. He rose from his seat and said quietly, yet with a strange impressiveness: ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... me. I really tremble to see a person so formed by nature borne down by such a weight," says my fellow-traveller, with great impressiveness. "It isn't to ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... touches enough of nature and truth to make the fortune of a dozen ordinary dramatists; and withal you feel as you read that he is writing, as Augier says of him, to amuse himself merely, and that he could an if he would be solemn and didactic with all the impressiveness that a perfect acquaintance with men and things and an admirable dramatic aptitude can bestow. The fact that he is always in a good temper has done him some wrong in that it has led him to be to all appearances amusing only, where he might well have posed as a severe and serious artist. But he ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... that lowly Redeemer be ever bending over us. His example may well speak in silent impressiveness, bringing us down from our pedestal of pride. There surely can be no labor of love too humiliating when He stooped so low. Let us be content to take the humblest place; not envious of the success or exaltation of another; not, ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... of life, nevertheless, is death, and it must have a purpose to serve and a lesson to teach. It seems to lose something of its impressiveness, because it is universal. The very inevitableness of it seems to kill thought, rather than induce it. It is only when the blow strikes home, that we are pulled up and forced to face the fact. Theoretically there is a wonderful unanimity among ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... took out of his note-books and memory the whole visible world of his romance, precisely as he had formerly utilized the New England village life and the Brook Farm experience. He has drunk in the charm of Italy and absorbed the picturesque and artistic atmosphere of Rome and its religious impressiveness; he has taken most delicately and harmoniously into his sensitive temperament the loveliness and the power of both the world of the past and the world of art, and he renders them back in description ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... man west of the Alleghany Mountains." The breathless excitement of the good Deacon changed gradually as he realized that his hearers were not in sympathy with him, and his speech became almost solemn in its impressiveness as he continued. "See here! This ain't a thing to waste. Ten thousand dollars a year to start with, an' the best church in Chicago, you can't expect to do better than that. Though you're young still, when the chance comes, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... close parallel in the well-known German ballad, 'Das Schloss in Oesterreich'; and a ballad found both in Spain and Italy has resemblances to each. But in these two ballads, especially in The Wife of Usher's Well, the interest lies rather in the impressiveness of the verses than in ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Fetherel's butler, now made an entry that may best be described as not inadequate to the expectations the announcement raised. The Bishop always entered a room well; but, when unannounced, or preceded by a Low Church butler who gave him his surname, his appearance lacked the impressiveness conferred on it by the due specification of his diocesan dignity. The Bishop was very fond of his niece Mrs. Fetherel, and one of the traits he most valued in her was the possession of a butler who knew how to announce ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... little grubby glaciers slowly oozing away. The prospect is not enlivening; nor do the low brick houses, given up to nondescript longshore traffic, and freely punctuated with gilt-lettered saloons, add to its impressiveness. Squalid it is without doubt, this particular aspect of New York; but what is the squalor of West-street to that of Limehouse or Poplar? Are our own dock thoroughfares always paved to perfection? And if we had a blizzard like that of three weeks ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... humanity to relieve itself from pain. The sculptor's chisel and the painter's brush have often been called upon to represent scenes of death in all its various forms and manifestations. Yet have they never attained the simplicity, the impressiveness, the vivid naturalness of the story told by the figure ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... execution one hour earlier than had been announced to Tacon-a piece of villany that had nearly cut off the young soldier from the clemency that the governor had resolved to extend to him at the very last moment, when the impressiveness of the scene should have had ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... individual man a strange impressiveness and power. It gives a new significance to the fact that I am. I am something different from what has been, or ever shall be. In the great whirling myriads, I am distinguished and apart. I am an appreciable factor in universal development ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... Chalmers. The years 1843-1844 he spent at Berlin studying German philosophy and theology. He was licensed as preacher on the 3rd of February 1845, and on the 6th of August ordained as minister of Golden Square Church, Berwick-on-Tweed. There his preaching was distinguished by its impressiveness and by a broad and unaffected humanity. He had many "calls" to other churches, but chose to remain at Berwick. In 1857 he was one of the representatives at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in Berlin, and in 1858 Edinburgh University conferred on him an honorary D.D. In the following year he ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... that he should come out of this fight with as few marks as possible. To begin with, he represented, in a sense, the Majesty of the Law. He was tackling Walton more by way of an object-lesson to the Kayite mutineers than for his own personal satisfaction. The object-lesson would lose in impressiveness if he were compelled to go about for a week or so with a pair of black eyes, or other adornments of a similar kind. Again—and this was even more important—if he was badly marked the affair must come to the knowledge of the ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... the most interesting body of water in America. We grow a bit boastful about the lakes that cluster around our cities. Nowhere better than from sea level, or from the lakes raised but little above it, does one realize the bulk, the dominance, and yet the grace, of this noble peak. Its impressiveness, indeed, arises in part from the fact that it is one of the few great volcanic mountains whose entire height may be seen from tide level. Many of us can recall views of it from Lake Washington at Seattle, or from American or Spanaway Lake at Tacoma, or ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... man replied hastily. He seemed to speak by rote. His manner was too eager to suit the impressiveness of his words. "The sheep are without a shepherd," he said. "The young men marry among the Gorgios, or they are lost in the cities and return no more to the tents and the fields and the road. There is disorder in all the world among the Romanys. The ancient ways are forgotten. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... which must have seemed to Mademoiselle Noemie quite in harmony with the impressiveness of his title, but the graceful brevity of her own response made no concession to underbred surprise. She turned to Newman, putting up her hands to her hair and smoothing its delicately-felt roughness. Then, rapidly, she turned the canvas that was on her easel over upon its face. "You ...
— The American • Henry James
... part of the soil of England was owned by the monks. They now possessed considerable buildings, with stone churches of some pretensions, in which service was conducted with pomp and impressiveness. The tiny chapel of St. Lawrence, at Bradford-on-Avon, forms the best example of this primitive Romanesque architecture now surviving in England. Around the monasteries stretched their well-tilled lands, mostly reclaimed from fen or forest, and probably more scientifically cultivated than those ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... wood have destroyed the architectural value and real beauty of the Cathedral's interior. Yet in the dim light, which is the light of its every-day life, the great height of the church and its sombre massiveness are not without impressiveness. ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... Catholic times the lamps were continually burning before the richly decorated shrines of saints. In the audacity of my ignorance, as I humbly acknowledge it to have been, I criticized this great interior as too much broken into compartments, and shorn of half its rightful impressiveness by the interposition of a screen betwixt the nave and chancel. It did not spread itself in breadth, but ascended to the roof in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... was imparted, with great impressiveness. Aldith's eldest sister was engaged, engaged to be married! Oh! wasn't it heavenly? Wasn't it romantic?—and to the gentleman with the long fair moustache who had been so much at ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... with a new note of impressiveness in her voice, "if you'll pardon my saying it, you haven't got the spunk of a mouse. If you're going to lay down, and let everybody trample over you just as they please, you're right! You MIGHT as well go home. But now here, this is what I wanted ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... magnificent. I have put it elsewhere with Wandering Willie's Tale, which it more specially resembles in the way in which the ordinary turns into the extraordinary. It falls short of Scott in vividness, character, manners, and impressiveness, but surpasses him in beauty[90] of style and imagery. In particular, Nodier has here, in a manner which I hardly remember elsewhere, achieved the blending of two kinds of "terror"—the ordinary kind which, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... human form of strangely mingled materials, of giant size no doubt, and of majestic aspect. Barbarous enough it would have looked beside the marble lovelinesses of Greece, but it was quite like the coarser art which sought for impressiveness through size and costliness. Other people than Babylonian sculptors think that bigness is greatness, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... "And my wife," he added, with an impressiveness that was intended to show he had at last arrived at the important part of his message, "says you are to stay ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... already possessed, gave us the grand but simple induction based on his own experiments that vaccinia prevents from variola. It was too simple and too new to be appreciated in all its bearings either by the medical men or the laity of his own day. Its impressiveness is not inherent in it, as it is in the mathematical demonstration of universal gravitation, as it is in the atomic theory or in that of the survival of the fittest through natural selection. The English country doctor merely said in essence—"let me give you cowpox and ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... indeed, from those of the coarse and mercenary creatures it had been my fortune to encounter elsewhere! It was impossible to overlook the contrast. What wonder, then, that the softness with which they were modulated, when conversing with me, should fall with grateful impressiveness on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the fiery storm of the French Revolution, the first faint promise and dawn of that new world which our own time is but now more fully bringing to light,—all these are to be felt, almost to be touched, there. To me, indeed, it will always seem that the impressiveness of this production can hardly be rated ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... staring, and the Doctor enjoyed the point he had made. It came to Catherine with the force—or rather with the vague impressiveness—of a logical axiom which it was not in her province to controvert; and yet, though it was a scientific truth, she felt wholly unable ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... The front of my house faces, beyond the discouraged little park, a strata of streets which unfold from lessening degrees of dreariness and dinginess to ever-increasing expensiveness and unashamed architectural extravaganzas, to the summit of residential striving, called, for impressiveness, the Avenue, but behind it is a section of the city of which I am as ignorant as if it were in the depths of the sea or the wilds of primeval forest. I have traveled much, but I do not know the city wherein I live. I know but a part of it, the ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... and if we honestly and conscientiously observe that standard we shall get light as we journey. In this exhortation of the Apostle's there are many exhortations wrapped up; and in trying to draw them out I venture to adhere to the form of exhortation for the sake of impressiveness and point. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... say a word." There was an impressiveness in her manner that startled the nervous, timid girl; but there were also in it a strength and a self-reliance that reassured her. She dropped her work and regarded her mistress with wonder. "Look in the second drawer of the bureau. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... moved, and he did a very unusual thing: calling for a basin of water, he washed his hands before them all and said, "I am innocent from the blood of this just Person; see ye to it." This was an impressive act; yet its impressiveness was too theatrical. He washed his hands when he ought to have exerted them. And blood does not come off so easily. He could not abnegate his responsibility and cast it upon others. Public men frequently think they can do so: they say ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... public worship? I do not like those week-day baptisms. Where they have the communion lecture in the afternoon of a week-day, there may be reasons of convenience for bringing the children for baptism then, rather than on the Sabbath; but there is a great loss of enjoyment, and also of impressiveness, in the ordinance, in doing so, I think. I was at a place, several years ago, when fourteen children were baptized on a Wednesday afternoon, in the church. I went to see it, but it was not solemn at all. I could not help thinking what an impressive ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... men's souls, and were driving them to conspiracy, to prison, to scaffold, to barricades, to bloody fields. There is also a deliberation in the delivery—a sonorousness in the phraseology—that has something of a bygone day. But all this adds to the impressiveness of the address. The fervour is all there, the unalterable conviction, the lofty purpose. There is reason for the warm note of welcome which comes from the Irish benches; for this man—perhaps disappointed—perchance not too well ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... distance from the edge of the planet, and is thus seen up to the moment of the eclipse. In an occultation the satellite in passing behind the planet is, at the time of disappearance, close to the planet's bright edge, and the extinction of the light from the small body cannot be observed with the same impressiveness as the occurrence ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... to add to its impressiveness by the slaughter of some immediate victims—not of the king and queen, for they believed them to be destined to public execution; but they were eager to massacre the faithful Body-guards, who had been brought back, bound, on the box of the carriage; and they would undoubtedly ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Macklin's breakfast to my cabin, you," he shouted to them. "And, Mr. Owen," he continued, addressing the Purser, with great impressiveness, "this is Captain Macklin, himself. He's going with ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... are to be specially noted, first of all, the degree of impressiveness of the original experience, that is to say, the amount of interest it awakened and of attention it excited. The more impressive any experience, the greater the chances of its subsequent revival. Moreover, the absence of impressiveness ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... sympathizes, widened so as to include all persons, by the human capacity of enlarged sympathy, and the human conception of intelligent self-interest. From the latter elements, the feeling derives its morality; from the former, its peculiar impressiveness, and energy of self-assertion. ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... extracts which follow from this manuscript. The whole essay, indeed, remains with me intact, but it is too long—and it would be immaterial—to reproduce it all in this narrative. I cannot hope either to reproduce the weird impressiveness of the lecturer's personality, his hold over his audience, or my own emotions in listening to this man—whom I had proved, not only from his own confession, but by the strongest collateral evidence, to be a callous and relentless murderer—to hear ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... The dramatic impressiveness of the minister's death won him undisputed favour, yet it failed to establish unity in his society. Supply after supply filled his pulpit, but the people found them all unsatisfactory when they remembered his preaching, and could not make up their minds to any one of them. They were more ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... will possess, not only because it is true, but because it is also true to life. And it is to be remembered that because of the unusual setting in a romantic tale the truth it presents stands out very clearly with much impressiveness. Red Riding Hood is a more impressive ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... listened to him in the chapel of the Seminary. I have seen few more striking figures in my life than his, as I remember it. Tall, lean, with strong, bold features, a keen, scholarly, accipitrine nose, thin, expressive lips, great solemnity and impressiveness of voice and manner, he was my early model of a classic orator. His air was Roman, his neck long and bare like Cicero's, and his toga,—that is his broadcloth cloak,—was carried on his arm, whatever might have been the weather, with such a statue-like ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Mr. Mix's voice had taken on, some months ago, a permanent quality of langour; and never, since the day that he was laughed out of politics, had he regained his former dignity and impressiveness. ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... many respects, a much more imposing figure—clothed in purple, wielding political power, possessing medical skill, and even working miraculous cures, such as are apparently easy to men of personal impressiveness, sympathy, and "magnetism." But he does not appear to have so nearly anticipated modern Pantheism as did his humbler predecessor. For though the fragments of Empedocles, much larger in volume than those ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... give me a chance to escape. I saw in his eyes something of that gathering wrath which was manifest when he hurled that fair woman from him. He explained to me that posts were few and uncertain, and that my writing now would ensure ease of mind to my friends. And he assured me with so much impressiveness that he would countermand the later letters, which would be held over at Bistritz until due time in case chance would admit of my prolonging my stay, that to oppose him would have been to create new suspicion. I therefore pretended to fall in with his views, and asked ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... though perhaps he swung it unduly in walking. His complexion was fresh, his eyes small, bright, and twinkling. He was seen to great advantage in a hat and greatcoat—garments frequently fatal to the impressiveness of shorter figures; but when he was uncovered in the drawing-room, it was impossible not to observe that his head shelved off too rapidly from the eyebrows towards the crown, and that his length of limb seemed to have used up his mind so as ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... enduring affliction, and appealing to his flock to remember his bonds. The arm of the parson still in the sling, and the knowledge the people had of the reports circulated about him, added much to the intense impressiveness of the scene. For about fifteen minutes he spoke in a clear, steady voice. Then his right hand clutched the top of the pulpit, while his voice sank and faltered. "Brethren," he said, straightening himself up with an effort, "St. Paul had his bonds, which were hard for him ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... art—imaginative realisation of the scenes, an attempt to seize the attention and fill it with the subject. This is by no means the case: for Angelico, although a saint, was a man of the fifteenth century, and, despite all his obvious efforts, he was not a real follower of Giotto. What impressiveness of actual artistic arrangement these frescoes really possess, is due, I think, to no imaginative effort of the artist, but to the exigencies of the place; as any similar impressiveness is due in Signorelli's Annunciation to the quality of his form, and in Botticelli's ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... black oak furniture, and, best of all, with its huge log fire. Mrs. Moyat greeted me with her usual negative courtesy. I do not think that I was a favourite of hers, but whatever her welcome lacked in impressiveness Blanche's made up for. She kept looking at me as though anxious that I should remember our common secret. More than once I was almost sorry that I had not ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fastened her black lace veil with a flying swallow in diamonds, flung her feather boa over her shoulders, and taking up her gold chain bag, studded with rubies, marched out of the establishment with all the pomp and impressiveness ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... by Mr. Lane, of Indiana, who addressed the Senate in a speech of two hours' duration. Mr. Lane seldom occupied the time of the Senate by speech-making, but when he felt it his duty to speak, none upon the floor attracted more marked attention, both from the importance of his matter and the impressiveness of ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... process, after something of its nature has been realised, finds necessities laid upon it on all hands. Once we have stepped into the very centre of spiritual norms and ideals they begin to reveal with a wonderful rapidity and impressiveness their own intrinsic content and value. "Universal" religion has enabled us to realise that we are dealing with "grounds" which are a demand of the deepest nature, and with convictions which seem, without a doubt, "to ring true." The ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... majesty and an impressiveness of mien like that of the Hebrew prophet who hushed the tempest. Captain Dawson, without moving body or limb, turned and glared at the intruder; Ruggles kept his position; Nellie Dawson, with arms still clasping the neck of her betrothed, looked over her shoulder at her old friend; Lieutenant ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... the Bill (December 1, 1783) in one of the speeches which rank only below his greatest, and it contains two or three passages of unsurpassed energy and impressiveness. Everybody knows the fine page about Fox as the descendant of Henry IV. of France, and the happy quotation from Silius Italicus. Every book of British eloquence contains the magnificent description of the young magistrates who undertake the ...
— Burke • John Morley
... his bosom with anguish as he thinks of it. He gazes ruefully into his children's eyes; pretty innocents, they know naught of the impending blow. It is a Shadow, as Thackeray would have solemnly said, with Bulwerian impressiveness, which Pursues Him at Mid Day. It Awakens Him at Mid Night, and Says to Him, Sleep No More! What is it, do you ask? inquires Mr. Tibs, in his most startling manner. Brethren, 'tis the fell hand of improvement. That is it. It is that which harrows the suburban soul and destroys ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... Herodotus the matter is admirable, but some of the words admitted are beneath the dignity of the subject; such, perhaps, as "the seas having seethed" because the ill-sounding phrase "having seethed" detracts much from its impressiveness: or when he says "the wind wore away," and "those who clung round the wreck met with an unwelcome end."[1] "Wore away" is ignoble and vulgar, and "unwelcome" inadequate to the ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... heart, demand, as a necessity of harmony and picturesque effect, a corresponding and conspiring environment and stage—just as, in music, the air in the treble is supported and reverberated by the bass accompaniment. The immediate, contemporary act or predicament loses more than half its meaning and impressiveness if it be re-echoed from no sounding-board in the past—its notes, however sweetly and truly touched, fall flatly on the ear. The deeper we attempt to pitch the key of an American story, therefore, the more difficulty shall we find in providing a congruous ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... sat down and wondered what was coming. It was some moments before Helen spoke; she believed that delay would enhance the impressiveness of ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... gloom, thickening to a darkness of death, are they enwrapt who follow not the Light. That is the grim, tragical side of this saying, too sad, too awful for our lips to speak much of, and best left in the solemn impressiveness of that one word. But the hopeful, blessed side of it is, that the feeblest beginnings of trust in Jesus Christ, and the first tottering steps that try to tread in His, bring us into the light. It does not need that we have reached ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... for all which is of vital importance. The rest must, and no doubt perfectly will, arrange itself.—Oh! I'll obey you within reasonable limits, McCabe. I have no craving to hurry the inevitable conclusion. These last hours possess considerable significance and charm—an impressiveness even, which it would be folly ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... consciousness; we cannot account for it any more than the savage could account for his fetich,—why this bunch of rags and feathers should be more venerable to him than other rags and feathers. But to deny that the impressiveness it adds to matter comes from a deeper sense of the truth would be as unwise as for him to deny his fetich. The fetich is false, not as compared with other rags and feathers, but as compared with a higher conception of God. The falsity is not that he sees God in this rubbish, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... helpless apprehension, while Mr. and Mrs. McIlheny bear down upon him from the door. Mr. McIlheny, a small and wiry Irishman, is a little more vivid for the refreshment he has taken. He is in his best black suit, and the silk hat which he wears at a threatening slant gives dignified impressiveness to his figure and carriage. With some dumb-show of inquiry and assurance between himself and his wife, he plants himself in front of Roberts, in an attitude equally favorable ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... market-place where her merchant-princes daily met, her admonition to uphold them in righteous dealing. One might decipher it wrought into the wall of the apse under the stones of the frieze, in quaint lettering that tempted to the perusal and endowed the mastered motto with the impressiveness of a rite—for the legend assumed a quality of mystery, ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... without beginning and without end, disjecta membra, regardless of all rules of art, full of repetitions, and yet full of lofty precepts and noble truths of morality evidently borrowed from the Jewish Scriptures,—in which his great ideas stand out with singular eloquence and impressiveness: the unity of God, His divine sovereignty, the necessity of prayer, the soul's immortality, future rewards and punishments. His own private life had been blameless. It was plain and simple. For a whole month he did not light a fire to cook his food. He swept his chamber himself and mended his own ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... sensibility feels it to be new, with all the fervor which the most absolute novelty could rouse. This is the deepest and the true originality, to possess such intensity of feeling that the oldest truth, when approached by our own methods, shall be full of a primitive impressiveness. ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... church is of the barrack-room stamp, dim and enormous, grey with years and seamed with work. Its impressiveness (for with Orvieto and a fleet of churches at Ravenna it stands above all Italy in that) consists mainly, I believe, in its being built of exactly the moral bones of the religion it was intended to embody. An Italian religion, namely; perfectly ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... of the pictures even today holds the interest spellbound as in those early days when nothing but this technical skill could claim the attention. We are still startled by every original effect, even if the mere showing of movement has today lost its impressiveness. Moreover we are captivated by the undeniable beauty of many settings. The melodrama may be cheap; yet it does not disturb the cultured mind as grossly as a similar tragic vulgarity would on the real stage, because it may have the snowfields of Alaska or the palm trees of Florida as radiant ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... heavenward aspiration of a religious enthusiast. The vocalist, on the other hand, can clearly tell us the object of that longing by using definite words. And by thus arousing reminiscences in the hearer's mind, and adding the charm of poetry to that of music, he doubles the power and impressiveness ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... examples,—and On the confining the students' attention to a few types of what is insuperably good. More progress in power of judgment may be made in a limited time by the examination of one work, than by the review of many; and a certain degree of vitality is given to the impressiveness of every characteristic, by its being exhibited in clear contrast, ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... be owing to a cause similar to that which fires the Swiss soldier on foreign service when he hears the chant of his own mountain "Rans des vaches." Something may doubtless be laid to the account of early association; but, we think, more is justly due to the great impressiveness and power of his native tongue. The poems, original and translated, contained in the first part of the ensuing collection, may convey to the English reader some idea of this class of ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins |
