"Inimitable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the progress of civilization, had gradually given way to other and more natural forms of composition. They still maintained their ground in Italy, whither they had passed later, and where they were consecrated by the hand of genius. But Italy was not the true soil of chivalry, and the inimitable fictions of Bojardo, Pulci, and Ariosto were composed with that lurking smile of half-supprest mirth which, far from a serious tone, could raise only a corresponding smile ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... living up to her contract, delivering the whole order in good condition; while the Slav was sometimes almost voiceless, sometimes inspired. She put you off with a hope, a promise, time after time. But she was quite as likely to put you off with a revelation,—with an interpretation that was inimitable, unrepeatable. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... coffee-pot, two cups, and a small jug of cream on a tray. He turned the handle of the coffee-pot towards Miss Cheyne, and conveyed in one inimitable gesture that he would take his coffee from no ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... canopy of the softest tints and colors, he made glowing appeals to the eternal and holy tranquillity of the state of being to which they were both fast hastening, and which had its type in the mysterious and imposing calm of that tranquil and inimitable void. He drew his moral in favor of a measured enjoyment of our advantages here, as well as of rendering love and justice to all who merited our esteem, and to the disadvantage of those iron prejudices which confine the best sentiments in the fetters of opinions ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... proportion to men in low stations and of uninformed minds. I will instance, in our own language, the Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe. Of all the prose works of fiction which we possess, these are, I will not say the best, but the most peculiar, the most unprecedented, the most inimitable. Had Bunyan and Defoe been educated gentlemen, they would probably have published translations and imitations of French romances "by a person of quality." I am not sure that we should have had Lear if Shakspeare had ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... new species, to our valuable friend the justly celebrated naturalist J.J. AUDUBON, as a small tribute of respect to his eminent talents, and the highly important services he has rendered science. The drawing which accompanies this paper, is from his inimitable pencil. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... spectacle to see so many bronze-like heads stuck as close together, tier above tier, as Hogarth's groupe, intended to display the difference between character and caricature, but it lacked the variety of countenance which this artist has, in an inimitable manner, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... oblivion: but history justifies the belief, that in the court of Nero, the extravagancies mentioned by Petronius were realized (395) to a degree which authenticates the representation given of them. The inimitable character of Trimalchio, which exhibits a person sunk in the most debauched effeminacy, was drawn for Nero; and we are assured, that there were formerly medals of that emperor, with these words, C. Nero August. Imp., and on the reverse, Trimalchio. The various characters ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the men are slow to take them. There is a man towards the end of the evening who wins one unmistakably with an inimitable burlesque of "Alice, where art thou?" The pianist fails to keep in touch with the astonishing vagaries of this performance, and the singer, unabashed, finishes without accompaniment. The audience yells with delight, and continues to yell till the singer comes forward again. ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... had made half of the weary row up the river, he ran into a little cove to rest and wipe the perspiration from his forehead. Then he informed Mr. Balfour that he was not alone in the camp, and, in his own inimitable way, having first enjoined the strictest secrecy, he told the story of Mr. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... It is useless and thankless to enlarge on such faults or such defects, as it would be useless and senseless to ignore. But how to enlarge, to expatiate, to insist on the charm of Herrick at his best—a charm so incomparable and so inimitable that even English poetry can boast of nothing quite like it or worthy to be named after it—the most appreciative reader will be the slowest to affirm or imagine that he can conjecture. This, however, he will hardly fail to remark: that Herrick, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... imitation. Why, in this very letter, in reference to the very parts of Christ's work, on which faith is wont to rest for salvation,—the death on the Cross to which we say that we trust, and which we are so accustomed to exalt as a unique and inimitable work that cannot be reproduced and needs no repetition, world without end—Peter has no hesitation in saying that Christ was our 'Pattern,' and that, even when He went to the Cross, He died 'leaving us an example ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... last scene in that inimitable tale? Where the Kaiser walks abroad with all the people shouting and hurrahing for the new clothes, and not daring to trust their own eyes, and suddenly a little child's voice is heard, 'But the Kaiser has ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... never makes a mistake, never makes anything," said Mr. PHELPS, the American Minister, in the course of a farewell after-dinner speech. Happening to be re-reading Mr. SURTEES' inimitable Soapy Sponge, we find that Mr. Bragg, when applying for the situation of Huntsman to Mr. Puffington, remarked, "He, Sir, who never makes an effort, Sir, never risks a failure," which is just the premiss to Mr. ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... the toppy balls of the winter, in one o' them big halls on the Strand? Two o' them Was dressed like the Royal family in satins that stuck out like a haystack and covered with diamonds that would hurt your eyes to look at 'em—" And then in his inimitable dialect—impossible to reproduce by any combination of vowels at my command, and punctured every few minutes by ringing laughs that can be heard half a mile away—follows a description of how one of his fares, Ikey by name, the son of the stoutest of the ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... no sleeping, by anybody, on that picket post. We sat on the ground in a little circle around him, and listened to his comical and side-splitting stories of army life, and incidents in camp and field generally. He was an inimitable story teller, and his peculiar tone and manner added immensely to the comicality of his anecdotes. And somehow he had the happy faculty of extracting something humorous, or absurd, from what the generality ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... affected me in a very uncommon manner. The pure passion, the noble resignation, and the fortitude of Frank Henley are unparalleled. Not to admire, not to esteem, not to love such virtues is impossible. His unshaken patience, his generosity, his forgiveness, his courage, his perseverance, are inimitable proofs of his superiority. Who can forbear wishing him success? Ought he not to command it; to say it is mine; truth and justice dare not deny ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... therefore a severer personal critic. Male peccadilloes are female crimes. A wet-blanket presence that she could not tolerate may refresh him. As less strong, less stably poised, than he, she is more tempted to have recourse to artifice; and when she does stoop to dissimulation, she uses it with inimitable dexterity, as shield, as foil, as poniard. It would be a difficult task for men to do what the spotless and loving Eugenie de Guerin was horrified at seeing two prominent Parisian ladies do, play the part ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... tried with one kind of grape after another. This is a failure; that is better; a third best. So, bit by bit, they grope about for their Clos Vougeot and Lafite. Those lodes and pockets of earth, more precious than the precious ores, that yield inimitable fragrance and soft fire; those virtuous Bonanzas, where the soil has sublimated under sun and stars to something finer, and the wine is bottled poetry: these still lie undiscovered; chaparral conceals, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and saw its magnificent cathedral—unfinished it has been left, and unfinished it will remain, of course,—the fashion of cathedrals being passed away. But even what exists is inimitable, the choir particularly, and the grand front. Beauvais is called the Pucelle, yet, so far as I can see, she wears no stays—I mean, has no fortifications. On we run, however. Vogue la galere; et voila nous a Paris, Hotel de Windsor [Rue Rivoli], ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... fortress, perched on a mountain top, is, perhaps, little changed in outward appearance since a soldier-poet, destined to revolutionise France with a song, was born there a hundred years ago. The immortal, inimitable Marseillaise, which electrified every French man, woman, or child then, and stirs the calmest with profound emotion now, is, indeed, the Revolution incorporated into poetry, and the words and music of the young soldier, Rouget de Lisle, have played a more important part ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... at night by the diamond light of a million stars, we are living art, not painting it. That our mountains are dumb and inarticulate, that our forests chant the litany of the pines untranslated to the winds of heaven, and that our cataracts thunder their diapasons inimitable to art—is no proof that though we are dumb and inarticulate, we are not lifted and transported and inspired by the wondrous beauties of the heritage God has given us. The Canadian may say this theoretically, but is he strengthened in ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... Vol. IV. (My Girls, etc.), published by Messrs. Roberts Brothers, Boston, is the fourth book in this deservedly popular series of short stories by Miss Louisa M. Alcott. The tales are full of freshness, humor, and wholesome thought, with inimitable touches of playful fancy and tenderness such as have established Miss Alcott's loving rule over the hearts of her readers. Boys as well as girls will find plenty to enjoy in these twelve delightful scraps from Aunt Jo's bag, and,—but readers ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... no imitation; originality; creativeness. invention, creation. Adj. unimitated[obs3], uncopied[obs3]; unmatched, unparalleled; inimitable &c. 13; unique, original; creative, inventive, untranslated; exceptional, rare, sui ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Pingouins" he returns, in a parable, to his epoch. For this book is the history of France "from the earliest time to the present day," seen in the mirror of the writer's ironical temperament. It is very good. It is inimitable. It is sheer genius. One cannot reasonably find fault with its amazing finesse. But then one is so damnably unreasonable! One had expected—one does not know what one had expected—but anyhow something with a more soaring flight, something ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... word 'desire.' Its repetition evidently shows that the Psalmist wishes to run a parallel between God's dealings in two regions. The same beneficence works in both. Here is the true extension of natural law to the spiritual world. It is the same teaching to which our Lord has given immortal and inimitable utterance, when He says, 'Your heavenly Father feedeth them.' And so we are entitled to look on all the wonders of creation, and to find in them buttresses which may support the edifice of our faith, and to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... afford singular gratification. His observations on human characters are acute and sagacious, and his descriptions are lively and just. Of rustic pleasantry he has a rich fund; and some of his softer scenes are touched with inimitable delicacy. He seems to be a boon companion, and often startles us with a dash of libertinism, which will keep some readers at a distance. Some of his subjects are serious, but those of the humorous kind ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... however, some compensation for our sisters' absence in their sprightly letters, which arrive while we are at the tea-table. Marguerite writes every day, and her letters are inimitable in their humor and esprit, for she writes exactly as she talks. She is visiting some friends whose acquaintance we made in Paris, and who have a beautiful country-seat upon Long Island. Her letters are filled with accounts of drives, fishing-parties, and excursions in yachts and row-boats, ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... an inimitable mimic. At that very moment it seemed to Miss Symes that she heard her own voice speaking—her own very gentle, cultivated, high-bred voice. Amongst the girls who listened and roared with laughter might have been seen Sarah Butt, Sibyl Ray, and several more who ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... had been rejected as unworthy, and Nehal Singh had ordered the erection of a miniature copy of his own palace, the ball-room being line for line a reproduction of the Great Hall, save that the decorations, which in the palace were inimitable, had been carried out with dignified simplicity, and that some necessary modernization had been added. Gold and white predominated, where in the original, precious stones glistened; the brackets for the torches were transformed into small artistic lamps which had been ordered from Madras; and from ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... approached to roughness. They did not deal in mechanical versification and conventional phrases. They wrote concerning things the thought of which set their hearts on fire; and thus what they wrote, even when it wanted every other grace, had that inimitable grace which sincerity and strong passion impart to the rudest and most homely compositions. Each of them sought for inspiration in a noble and affecting subject, fertile of images which had not ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to form a smile of such appealing and inimitable sweetness that Voltaire would have trusted him; a smile alto-gether rose-leaves. "Then I lose you," he said, "for my only chance to know you was in keeping it hidden from you. And now ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... in the city council of Boston on his plans for a new city hall, which were afterward adopted. The speeches in Irish brogue, Teutonic Jargon, and down-east Yankee dialect, with utterances interposed here and there by solemnly priggish members, were inimitable. His pet antipathy seemed to be the bishop of the diocese, Dr. Eastburn. Stories were told to the effect that Gilman, early in life, had desired to take orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church, but that the bishop refused to ordain him, on the ground that he lacked the requisite ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... jewelled hand, and while her Carl disappeared through a secret door on one side of the room, she glided forward with grace and elegance inimitable, to receive the high-born ladies who were just then passing the portals ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... so as that I may justly acknowledge those Triumphs and magnificent Trophies of Cookery that have adorned your Tables; nor can I but confess to the world, except I should be Guilty of the highest Ingratitude, that the only structure of this my Art and knowledge, I owed to your costs, generous and inimitable Epences; thus not only I have derived my experience, but your Country hath reapt the Plenty of ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... whether in the whole range of the literary or pictorial art of the period, the earlier portion of the Victorian era has been elsewhere so vigorously, so truthfully, as well as so humorously portrayed as in JOHN LEECH'S inimitable pictures. The series has an importance beyond the amusement of the moment—it serves both to commemorate the genius of the artist and the ...
— M. P.'s in Session - From Mr. Punch's Parliamentary Portrait Gallery • Harry Furniss
... called them; with his taste in weapons; his delight in any that 'he found to be a man of his hands'; his chivalrous point of honour, letting Giant Maul get up again when he was down, a thing fairly flying in the teeth of the moral; above all, with his language in the inimitable tale of Mr. Fearing: 'I thought I should have lost my man'—'chicken-hearted'—'at last he came in, and I will say that for my lord, he carried it wonderful lovingly to him.' This is no Independent minister; this is a stout, honest, big-busted ancient, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'Marmion,' which I return, because it occurred to me, there might be a resemblance between part of 'Parisina' and a similar scene in Canto 2d of 'Marmion.' I fear there is, though I never thought of it before, and could hardly wish to imitate that which is inimitable. I wish you would ask Mr. Gifford whether I ought to say any thing upon it;—I had completed the story on the passage from Gibbon, which indeed leads to a like scene naturally, without a thought of the kind: but it comes upon ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... important respects. They will supply me with oil to my lamps, grease to my wheels, and blacking to my shoes. They will furnish me with strings to my fiddle, lashes to my whip, lining to my breeches, and buttons to my coat. They will make charming spurs, excellent knee buckles, and inimitable watch-keys. In short, while they last I shall neither want breakfast, dinner, nor supper. I shall keep a couple of horses, and I shall sleep upon a bed of down. I shall be in France this year, and in Spain the next; with many other particulars too tedious to mention. ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... carved wood; not an inch of brass but it glistened. The glasses over the pastels obscured nothing of the work of Latour, Greuze, and Liotard (illustrious painter of The Chocolate Girl), miracles of an art, alas! so fugitive. The inimitable lustre of Florentine bronze took all the varying hues of the light; the painted glass glowed with color. Every line shone out brilliantly, every object threw in its phrase in a harmony of masterpieces arranged by two musicians—both of whom alike ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... fortunate than sailors, they could not escape. But did these adventurers complain of space? No, not since nature had given them the splendid sight of a cosmical meteor bursting from expansion, since this inimitable firework, which no Ruggieri could imitate, had lit up for some seconds the invisible glory of the moon. In that flash, continents, seas, and forests had become visible to them. Did an atmosphere, then, bring to this unknown ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... Thou knowest that her gentle heart is touched with love. See how it shows itself in the tender and inimitable strain of this epistle. Does not this sweet ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... it is my opinion that in painting and sculpture nature bestowed all her riches with a full hand upon Michelangelo. I do not fear reproach or contradiction when I repeat that his statues are, as it were, inimitable. Nor do I think that I have suffered myself to exceed the bounds of truth while making this assertion. In the first place, he is the only artist who has handled both brush and mallet with equal excellence. Then we have ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... 2: As Dionysius says (Div. Nom. ix) "the same things are both like and unlike God. They are like by reason of a variable imitation of the Inimitable"—that is, because, so far as they can, they imitate God Who cannot be imitated perfectly—"they are unlike because they are the effects of a Cause of Whom they fall short infinitely and immeasurably." Hence, if there be no fear in God (since ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... in its most terrible agitation, with a fidelity that intimidates the beholder. His pictures on these subjects have raised his reputation even higher than that of W. van de Velde; although the works of the later, which represent the sea at rest, or in light breezes, are much superior, and indeed inimitable. His pictures are distinguished for their admirable perspective, correct drawing, neatness and freedom of touch, and remarkable facility of execution. For the burgomasters of Amsterdam, he painted a large picture ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... road-book is not an infallible guide, for we first knew that we were passing through Chawton when the postoffice sign, on the main street of a straggling village, arrested our attention. We were thus reminded that in this quiet little place the inimitable Jane Austin had lived and produced her most notable novels, which are far more appreciated now than in the lifetime of the authoress. An old woman of whom we inquired pointed out the house—a large square building with tiled roof, now used as the home of a workingmen's club. Less ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... before popular Lyceums and Young Men's Associations, with several brief Essays on subjects of popular interest. The distinguished author presents his views on the various topics which come under discussion with inimitable frankness and good humor, and in the fresh, flowing, unaffected style, which gives such a charm to the productions of his pen, even with readers who most strongly dissent from his conclusions. Among the questions considered in this volume are The Emancipation of Labor, The Ideal and the Actual ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... sadly mutilated!' Oh, my dear rustic, you're quite in the wrong box. The Frenchman means this as the very highest compliment. Beautiful, however, she must have been; and a Cinderella, I hope, not a Cinderellula, considering that she had the inimitable walk and step of the Andalusians, which cannot be accomplished without something of a ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... them also to be "beastly," a suggestion which they very promptly resented by sending him to Coventry. That his metaphorical seclusion in that ancient city was not of the very strictest kind was entirely due to the fact that his partner, Rex Fortescue, and the inimitable Brook wore on board. Rex bore the childish irritability of his senior partner with unparalleled good-humour; his strongest protest being a mere, "Shut up, there's a good fellow, and let a man enjoy his book and his weed in peace for once in a while." Factotum ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... sentiment, gracefully written and deftly touched with a gentle humor. It is a dainty book—daintily illustrated."—New York Tribune. "A wholesome, bright, refreshing story, an ideal book to give a young girl."—Chicago Record-Herald. "An idyllic story, replete with pathos and inimitable humor. As story-telling it is perfection, and as portrait-painting it is true to the ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... are less and less read as time goes on, and that the brilliant virulence of Peter Plymley, the even greater brilliance, not marred by virulence at all, of the Letters to Archdeacon Singleton, the inimitable quips of his articles in the Edinburgh Review, are familiar, if they are familiar at all, only to the professed readers of the literature of the past, and perhaps to some intelligent newspaper men who find Sydney[8] to be what Fuseli pronounced Blake, "d——d good to steal from." But ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... center of the building, and the Egyptian Temple in its south-eastern portion. Countless incandescent lamps were glowing in all the colors of the rainbow. The luminary effect gave us the impression as if a fiery serpent was meandering along these iridescent glass-tubes with inimitable velocity. ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... in such poems that Browning is at his best, nor is he perhaps anywhere so inimitable. The second poem under the general heading of "France and Spain," The Confessional, in which a girl, half-maddened by remorse and impotent rage, tells how a false priest induced her to betray the political secrets of her lover, is, though vivid and effective, not nearly so powerful and ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... devoted, and most obedient humble servants. Candour, however, obliges us to confess, that though the deference on the part of the gentleman was the most unqualified and praiseworthy, the lady was superior in her inimitable air of frank cordiality. The volto sciolto was in her favour, the pensieri stretti in his. Any one but an ambassador would have been deceived by the husband; any one but a woman would have ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... looking at the other, who rode behind him, she caught at the tree with crooked hands and began to sink slowly to her knees. He was tall and slight, he rode with inimitable grace. As she stared, he took off his sombrero, rested his hand on the saddle-horn, and looked haggardly, eagerly, up the trail toward the house. His face was whiter, thinner, worn by protracted mental pain, but it was the beautiful, ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... they cannot bear, in order to remove a supposed contradiction: and all that would have been gained by the change would be, to have one instructive illustration the less of our Lord's peculiar manner of discourse, and one instance the less of the inimitable way in which his language, addressed directly to the circumstances before him, contains, at the same time, a general lesson, for the use of all his disciples ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... (as the phrase of that day was) and did not "smoke" the authorship of the story: indeed Esmond had tried to imitate as well as he could Mr. Steele's manner (as for the other author of the Spectator, his prose style I think is altogether inimitable); and Dick, who was the idlest and best-natured of men, would have let the piece pass into his journal and go to posterity as one of his own lucubrations, but that Esmond did not care to have a lady's name whom he loved sent forth to the world in a light so unfavourable. Beatrix pished and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... minutes afterwards a small, slender boy of fourteen, with only Eton's own inimitable self-confidence and delicious swagger printed upon his every line, drove up to the door, and, paying for the taxi in a lordly way, came into his mother's morning-room. There had been a gap in the family after Tristram's appearance, caused by the death, from ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... was going to say above all is that I don't care that poor Lorraine—since that's my wife's inimitable name, which I feel every time I write it I must apologize even to myself for!—should quite discover the moments at which, first and last, I've worked HER off. Yet I've made no secret of my cultivating ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... divinity that is within him. I am neither an affected imitator of Don Quixote, nor, as I trust in Heaven, visited by that spirit of lunacy so admirably displayed in the fictitious character exhibited by the inimitable Cervantes. I have not yet encountered a windmill for a giant, nor mistaken this public-house for a magnificent castle; neither do I believe this gentleman to be the constable; nor that worthy practitioner to be Master Elizabat, the surgeon recorded in Amadis ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... as he only could do; and when at last the unfortunate man came out with some observation about "false facts," O'Connell threw the whole court into a roar of laughter by directing attention to the bull, and by his inimitable imitation of his English accent. The jury could not agree, and the men were acquitted. Another trial came on next day, and it was then discovered that one of the approvers differed in most important matters from his statements on oath before the magistrates of Doneraile, and ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... receipt. They are the eyes of the man you would name in your will to care for your wife's and children's welfare. When their animation is friendly one would rather watch their merry twinkle as they keep time to their owner's inimitable stories and non-duplicatable anecdotes, trying to interpret the rapid and incessant telegraphy of their glances, than sit in a theatre or read an interesting book; but it is when they are active in war that the one privileged to observe them gets his real treat, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... I cannot tell you!" he declared, with one of those inimitable gestures common to Frenchmen, a gesture which may mean anything or nothing,—"But he speaks too well, and, surely, thinks too much for his years. Is there nothing further to tell of him save what you have already ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... to have neglected the opportunity of that great master's doing justice to this work; he having already added new life and spirit to some of the finest things in the English language, particularly that inimitable ode[5] of Dryden's which no ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... feeling of a reality; and the exquisite coloring of poetry and touches of natural feeling with which the whole is wrought up, till wonder, expectation, and intense pleasure, hold our pulse and breath suspended on the event,—are quite inimitable. ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... unanimated nature, and in many of his finest poems most beautifully he has enforced it. His thoughts are original and his style new and unborrowed: all that he has written is distinguished by a happy carelessness, a bounding elasticity of spirit, and a singular felicity of expression, simple yet inimitable; he is familiar yet dignified, careless, yet correct, and concise, yet clear and full. All this and much more is embodied in the language of humble life—a dialect reckoned barbarous by scholars, but which, coming from the lips of inspiration, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of the beauty of Safdar Jang's tomb will seem extravagant to most critics. In the editor's judgement the building is a very poor attempt to imitate the inimitable Taj. Fergusson (ed. 1910, vol. ii, p. 324, pl. xxxiv) gives it the qualified praise that 'it looks grand and imposing at a distance, but it will not bear close inspection'. See Fanshawe, p. 246 and plate. In the original edition ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... have been capable of. Any one who remembers the correspondence between Lovelace and Belford, and what passes in that infernal brothel, to which Clarissa was conducted, will at once perceive what I have in view. Equally admirable and just is this aphorism of our noble and inimitable poet. ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... different vein are "The Discipline of Christine" and "The Unequal Yoke," by Mrs. Barre Goldie and Mrs. H.H. Penrose respectively. In the former the ways and moods of childhood are depicted in original and inimitable fashion, which makes it safe to predict that the author will go far beyond her first effort as a novelist. In "The Unequal Yoke" Mrs. Penrose has taken for her theme the love story of a clergyman whose benefice is an Irish coast town, and in ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... and forth upon the gravel, repeating without mistake and with gestures and accents inimitable the lines which Phoebe had dictated. She watched him, listening attentively, conscious that what she saw and heard, though given in a moment, were to be carried with her forever; convinced as well that she was for something in this, and ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... and more especially, for costly robes, and turbans; in which last, many outshone the noblest-born nobles. Nevertheless, this answered not the end they had in view; some of the crowd only admiring what they wore, and not them; breaking out into laudation of the inimitable handiwork of ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... dog and choose my position,—stimulated by the ambition of all young Nimrods to bag some notable game. Long I waited, and patiently, till, chilled and benumbed, I was about to turn back, when, hearing a slight noise, I looked up and beheld a most superb fox, loping along with inimitable grace and ease, evidently disturbed, but not pursued by the hound, and so absorbed in his private meditations that he failed to see me, though I stood transfixed with amazement and admiration, not ten yards distant. I took his measure at a glance,—a large male, with dark legs, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... inimitable manner Gibbon describes the fierce struggle the Greek Catholic Church had to wage before she obtained a foothold in Russia, but he neglects to mention the fact that Judaism no less than paganism was among her formidable opponents. The ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... mood for laughter, and yet I could not repress a smile, as memory recalled the comical voice and inimitable gestures with which young H. M. related the story. He was beloved by us all, and when he left school we parted from him with real sorrow. As I walked around, and looked upon the worn and defaced desks, I observed the initials of many once familiar names ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... indeed, questionable whether there is much in these inimitable romances half so objectionable as many of the chapters in Rabelais and Boccaccio. Nor do the most archaic of the passages which Captain Burton declines to "veil in the decent obscurity of a learned language" leave much room for the admirers ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... handsome youth, after the fashion of Austrian officers, put his hand to his cap with inimitable grace, while a decided smile, a smile of happiness, played about the corners of his mouth, and his answer by no ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Was it genuine? Or was it a plant? He was no handwriting expert, but he had a feeling that it was a disguised script. There is an inimitable looseness of design in the chirography of an illiterate person. He did not find here the awkwardness of the inexpert; rather the elaborate imitation of an amateur ignoramus. Yet he was not sure. He could give no definite ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... strange country, and many people whom we have never known, or have never known so intimately. When this happens, when the manikin forgets itself and its education-clothes, and merely describes people or types of mind or social customs, the result is wholly admirable. There are inimitable passages, and the number is large, which one cannot forget. One will not soon forget the young men of the Harvard class of '58, who were "negative to a degree that in the end became positive and triumphant"; or the exquisitely drawn portrait ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... that they would everywhere pass for romances, if severed from the documents which attest their fidelity to facts. In the former class stand the admirable novels of De Foe; and, on a lower range, within the same category, the inimitable "Vicar of Wakefield;" upon which last novel, without at all designing it, I once became the author of the following instructive experiment. I had given a copy of this little novel to a beautiful girl of seventeen, the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... various texts in use, nothing will supercede the English script, and those inimitable styles of old English text; the most novel being those with dropped capitals, and the extremely neat, extra- shaded. Visiting cards, with the familiar words denoting the object of the call, will remain in use, to some extent, especially ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... M. Rodin, with an inimitable expression of simplicity; "it is quite a matter of course when one has a heart like M. d'Aigrigny's. But amongst all his good qualities, he has particularly that of never forgetting worthy people—people of integrity, honor, conscience—and therefore, my dear M. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... fierce summer heats, or when the snowy forehead of Soracte purpled in winter sunsets! Scattered through his odes and the occasional poems which he addresses to his city friends, you find these graceful and inimitable touches of rural beauty, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... me!" said Frederic, as she twitched her face away again at the laugh he could not suppress. "But sadness and you should not be thought of in the same week. Honestly, now! is not the inimitable fabric you sported for five minutes last night, at the bottom of what appears to you a fathomless abyss of woe? Have you tried the efficacy of rational consolation in the thought of how many more parties there will be this winter to which you can wear it? The Secretary of State is to give one ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... called Three Men in a Boat, by Mr. JEROME K. JEROME, some of whose observations, in a collection of papers entitled Stage-land, had caused him to laugh several times, and to smile frequently, for the subject has not been so well touched since GILBERT ABBOTT A BECKETT wrote his inimitable Quizziology of the Drama, which for genuine drollery has never been surpassed. Anticipating, then, some side-splitters from Three Men in a Boat, the Baron sent for the work. He opened it with a chuckle, which, instead of developing itself into a guffaw and then into a fit of uncontrollable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... Persian literature and history admirably equips him to enter into the life and spirit of the time of the romance, and the hosts of admirers of the inimitable quatrains of Omar Khayyam, made famous by Fitzgerald, will be deeply interested in a tale based on authentic facts in the career of the famous Persian poet. The three chief characters are Omar Khayyam, Nizam-ul-Mulk, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... pleasingly was spent, And every Hour admin'stred Content, Then would I range the Fields, and flow'ry Meads, Where Nature her exub'rant Bounty spreads, In whose delightful Products does appear Inimitable Beauty ev'ry where; Contemplate on each Plant, and useful Weed, And how its Form first lay involved in Seed, How they're preserv'd by Providential Care, For what design'd, and what their Virtues are. Thus to my Mind by dint of Reason prove, That all below is ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... Ascending by degrees magnificent Up to the wall of Heaven a structure high; At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared The work as of a kingly palace-gate, With frontispiece of diamond and gold Embellished; thick with sparkling orient gems The portal shone, inimitable on earth By model, or by shading pencil, drawn. These stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw Angels ascending and descending, bands Of guardians bright, when he from Esau fled To Padan-Aram, in the field of Luz Dreaming by night under the open ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... a mask; to conceal his thoughts and emotions, not only by the expression of his features but by direct misstatements of his tongue, and in all things to present to the obedient Flemings as elaborate a reproduction of his great prototype as copy can ever recall inimitable original. Old men in the Netherlands; who remembered in how short a time Philip had succeeded, by the baleful effect of his personal presence, in lighting up a hatred which not the previous twenty years of his father's burnings, hangings, and butcherings in those provinces ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... still leans against the next. It is only five minutes from town, and tramlines pass the door. Nay more, they stop abruptly at the door—such are the improvements effected by R.E. Inside the cellar are three bits of chairs, a table-top on boxes, and an inimitable ancestral smell that no deodorizer known to modern warfare can cope with. And all this is called "Trenches!" Our servants do their best to support the official illusion by neglecting to clean our boots and regarding with surprise and some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... picked them up wherever he found them, and clothed them with the peculiar drollery of his telling. He was a wag rather than a wit. All that lives in the second-hand repetitions of his stories is the mere core, the original appropriated thing from which the inimitable decoration has fallen off. That is why the collections of his stories are such dreary reading,—like Carey's Dante, or Bryant's Homer. And strange to say, there is no humor in his letters. This man who was famous as a wag writes to his friends ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... worth more. No one gives as much as he who gives hopes. It is not necessary for the man we choose to be of brilliant intellect. I would even prefer him to be of no great ability. Stupid people show an inimitable grace in roguery. Be guided by me, gentlemen, and overthrow the Republic by the agency of a Republican. Let us be prudent. But prudence does not exclude energy. If you need me you will find me at ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... man of sincere mind and without any system to support look round on all his Christian neighbours, and will he say or will they say that the origin of their well-doing was an attempt to imitate what they all believe to be inimitable, Christ's perfection in virtue, his absolute sinlessness? No—but yet perhaps some particular virtues; for instance, his patriotism in weeping over Jerusalem, his active benevolence in curing the sick and preaching ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... firm as the Tucopia. He was a silent, good-looking man of about sixty, and possessed of much caustic humour and a remarkable fund of smoking-room stories, which, on rare occasions, he would relate in an inimitable, drawling manner, as if he was tired. The chief mate was a deeply but not obtrusively religious Scotsman; the second officer, Allen, was a young man of thirty, an excellent seaman, but rough to the verge of brutality with the crew. ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... prodigy rather than a miracle,—a distinction more verbal than real; and we fancy we have explained it when we say that such arithmetical power was a peculiar endowment of his mental life. Now all of the inexplicable, inimitable reality that at any time has to be left by the baffled intellect as an unsolved wonder under the name of miracle is just that,—the natural product of an extraordinary endowment of life. More of its marvellous capability ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... was the life and soul of any party of friends. There were certain American student-songs which he was wont to sing with a quiet and inimitable drollery, very refreshing to hear, and which those who heard them are not likely readily to forget. His love of music was part of his nature. His reposeful, wooing touch on the piano or organ, either when he was extemporising or when he interpreted one of the masters, expressed ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... some old wardrobe where it lay folded in lavender, and a large dark bonnet, adorned with handsome black silk loops and bows. The extreme suggestiveness, and yet the taste and temperateness of this costume, seemed to me inimitable. The bonnet alone, with its handsome, decent, virtuous bows, was worth coming ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... inform his Majesty that a large company of the inhabitants in the costume of the country were assembled before the gate of the chateau. The Emperor immediately went to the window; and, at sight of him, seventeen persons (seven men and ten women) began with inimitable grace a dance called 'la pamperruque', in which the women kept time on tambourines, and the men with castanets, to an orchestra composed of flutes and guitars. I went out of the castle to view this scene more closely. The women wore short skirts of blue silk, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... uninterrupted and monotonous succession, he condescends to utter a single delightfully modulated strain. He often brings his tiresome extravaganzas to a magnificent climax of melody, and just as often concludes an inimitable chant with a most contemptible bathos. But the notes of the Robin are all melodious, all delightful,—loud without vociferation, mellow without monotony, fervent without ecstasy, and combining more of mellowness of tone, plaintiveness, cheerfulness, and propriety of execution, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... their best balanced art since 1905. In the French exhibit, the mode of the day prevails, color, luminosity, richness of texture. All that differentiates the art of France to-day from that of other countries is her own inimitable, delicate, inherent taste and touch. The subject matters little; the French perception and execution are there. Where other canvases offer—say a beautiful glow—the French picture "vibrates." If other works are ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... balance between the sexes is more evenly adjusted. It is almost a pity to assume that it will finally, in the nature of things, disappear, for it is charming; it is innocent with the innocence of very good, simple women; it is at the same time subtle with that inimitable subtlety which only such women can achieve. It is petty finance on such a moral height that even the sufferers by its code must look up to it. Before even woman, showing anything except a timid face of discovery at the sights of New York under male escort, invaded Wall Street, the ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... was in those happy days that I had first the pleasure of forming an acquaintance with the inimitable Ralph Rattlin." ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... was confident and assured; his step, for all those fifty afore-said years, was light and elastic, even in sauntering; he took the office stairs with the inimitable ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... when the idealism is greatest the essence is true. Her most fanciful conceptions, most improbable combinations, seem more natural than do every-day scenes and characters treated by inferior artists. This is only partly due to the inimitable little touches of nature that renew the impression of reality at every page. Her imagination modified her material, but only in order the more vividly to illustrate truths positive and everlasting. So did Shakespeare when he drew Prospero and Miranda, Caliban and Ariel. Art, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... down with triumph to his collateral posterity as trophies won from the depths of nescience; but his work, designed by his own genius, executed by his own hand, tracery and all, and every single stone signalized by his own private mark, indelible, characteristic, and inimitable—his work is the only record of his name. How deeply are its foundations rooted in space, and how lasting its ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... appearance than when I had seen it first and last, was both dominant and menacing in its immensity. It was a comfort to turn from this formidable countenance to that of Raffles, who had entered with his own serene unconscious confidence, and now introduced us with that inimitable air of light-hearted authority which stamped him in all shades ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... deadly white; and, although his lips trembled violently, not a word came from between them. But Mrs. Ginniss, raising hands and eyes to heaven, called down such a shower of blessings from so many and varied sources, in such an inimitable brogue, that the pen refuses to transcribe her rhapsody, as Mrs. Legrange failed to comprehend more than the ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... beguile the time, she had ridden, every day, long miles into the hills. Three times she had met Keith Cameron, also riding alone in the hills, and she had endeavored to amuse herself with him, after her own inimitable fashion, and with more or less success. The trouble was, that sometimes Keith seemed to be amusing himself with her, which was not pleasing to a girl like Beatrice. At any rate, he proved himself quite able to play the game of Give and Take, ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... great masters of the art are capable of divining, or think it worth while to enter into, the feelings of retrospective age. The two great poets whom we have so lately lost, Tennyson and Browning, have done this, each in his own inimitable way; the one in the Ulysses, from which I have borrowed; the other in that wonderful fragment "Childe Roland to the ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and shocking in its more than natural deformity—but bright quips and cracks fresh from the back-yard of the slum where the linen is drying, or the "pub" where the unfortunate wife has just received a black eye that will last her a week. That inimitable artist, Bessie Bellwood, whose native wit is so curiously accentuated that it is sublimated, that it is no longer repellent vulgarity but art, choice and rare—see, here she comes with "What cheer, Rea; Rea's on the job." The sketch is slight, but ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... An inimitable bit of comedy describing an interchange of personalities between a celebrated author and a bicycle salesman. It is the purest, keenest fun—and is American ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... With that inimitable tact for which President Lincoln was noted, he succeeded in soothing the ruffled feelings of the Commodore (soon afterward made an admiral), but the old gentleman was not quite satisfied, when he bade the President good-by, without having ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... nearly all the sheep shearing. Then at last Bodo comes back for his supper, and as soon as the sun goes down they go to bed; for their hand-made candle gives only a flicker of light, and they both have to be up early in the morning. De Quincey once pointed out, in his inimitable manner, how the ancients everywhere went to bed, 'like good boys, from seven to nine o'clock'. 'Man went to bed early in those ages simply because his worthy mother earth could not afford him candles. She, good old lady ... would certainly have shuddered ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... the Grand Duke (gran ciuco—great ass—as his irreverent Tuscans nicknamed him) was a good and kindly man, and under the circumstances, and to the extent of his abilities, not a bad ruler. The phrase, which Giusti applied to him, and which the inimitable talent of the satirist has made more durable than any other memorial of the poor gran ciuco is likely to be, "asciuga tasche e maremme"—he dries up pockets and marshes—is as unjust as such mots of satirists are wont to be. The draining of the great marshes of the Chiana, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... learning; he was a man, in fact, of uncommon abilities, both natural and acquired; and the two guests who chanced to be with him were, in this particular, little inferior to himself. Among the other books which we happened to take up, was Punch and Judy, illustrated by the inimitable pencil of George Cruikshank. While looking at these capital delineations of the characters in the famous popular opera of the fairs, no particular emotion, save one of a good deal of pleasure, passed through my mind. I looked at them as I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... humorous and inimitable way on The Authority of Women to Preach the Gospel of Christ in Public Places. Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery (Penn.) under the title What's in a Name? told of the efforts that were being made by the conservative women of Philadelphia to reform ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... says the inimitable Abercrummie, {3} 'stands upon an ascending ground from east to west, and lyes open to the south. It hath one principals street, with houses upon both sides, built of freestone; and it is beautifyed with the situation of two castles, one at each end of this ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... English poetry with great propriety, and speaks the language nearly with the same facility as he does his mother language. He is married to an amiable Englishwoman. I wish him all possible happiness. And now let me tell you something of the so often imitated, but perhaps inimitable ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... proceeded to apply these intelligent conclusions appeared to the little circle of spectators who have figured in our narrative but the supreme exhibition of a character to which the experience of life had imparted an inimitable pliancy. It had a distinct effect upon Robert Acton, who, for the two days preceding her departure, was a very restless and irritated mortal. She passed her last evening at her uncle's, where she had never been more charming; and in parting with ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... After that inimitable, unforgettable "Jamais, jamais, jamais!" there was nothing to do but make our bow and retire, discomfiture being amply atoned by the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... humble farmer, am as nothing. What, indeed,—if product is to be compared with product,—are my cheeses and my beans in the presence of his "Iliad"? But, if Homer wishes to take from me all that I possess, and make me his slave in return for his inimitable poem, I will give up the pleasure of his lays, and dismiss him. I can do without his "Iliad," and wait, if necessary, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... of time in which the stage was less polluted, owing to the inimitable Garrick, than the present: notwithstanding there ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... this day the true Spaniard nourishes the lofty and romantic qualities which, combined with a tone of sentiment and gravity and nobility of conversation, embellishes the legitimate grandee. Sismondi de Sismondi says the style of "Don Quixote" is inimitable. Montesquieu says: "It is written to prove all others useless." To some it is an allegory, to some a tragedy, to some a parable, and to others a satire. As a satirist we think him unrivalled, and this spirit found a choice opportunity for vent when the troops of ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... who have made Athens the beacon of Hellas"; and there is one witness better than all the rest. Along the "Street of Tombs," by the gate of the city, runs the long row of stele (funeral monuments), inimitable and chaste memorials to the beloved dead; and here we meet, many times over, the portrayal of a sorrow too deep for common lament, the sorrow for the lovely and gracious figures who have passed into the great Mystery. Along the Street of the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... to my miserable berth, and vainly tried to sleep, the discomfort and mismanagement which prevailed leading my thoughts by force of contrast to the order, cleanliness, and regularity of the inimitable line of steamers on the West Highland coast. Wherever the means of locomotion are concerned, these colonies are very far behind either the "old country" or their enterprising neighbours in Canada; and at present they do not appear conscious of the deficiencies which are sternly ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Benedetta, by behaving amiably towards her protege. Idle as he was, too, it seemed to him a pleasant occupation to initiate that young priest, who was said to be so intelligent, into what he deemed the inimitable side, the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and the roots represented as springing from the head in so natural a manner, that the deception cannot be discerned even on the closest inspection; the extreme delicacy of the work in these fronts and toupies is really inimitable, a person may put one on the back of their hand, and the division appears so transparent that the skin is seen under it as clear as if not a single hair crossed it, and yet by some invisible means the parts are held together, which can only be by light ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... Billy was saying, in his own inimitable manner, and awake to the realisation of having a "good one" to tell; "a few days ago the lady of my house took wings for New York—a little spree of her own, you understand. And, for Billy Fernmore, I kept out of mischief, for a time, fairly well. After waiting days, lamb-like, for her ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... and the botanist Auguste-Pyrame de Candolle, kept the country abreast of European thought and speculation, while the mixed nationality of the place—the blending in it of French keenness with Protestant enthusiasms and Protestant solidity—was beginning to find inimitable and characteristic expression in the stories of Toepffer. The country was governed by an aristocracy, which was not so much an aristocracy of birth as one of merit and intellect, and the moderate constitutional ideas which represented ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to men of activity, energy to men of contemplation. He was furious, whatever humanity did, whether it slept or waked. His message is the message of the booming gale, and the swollen cataract. Yet in his diaries and letters, what splendid perception, what inimitable humour, what rugged emotion! I declare that Carlyle's thumbnail portraits of people and scenes are some of the most admirable things ever set down on paper. I love and admire the old furious, disconsolate, selfish fellow ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fittingly enforces the gesture of benediction. The left hand is turned outward in a movement so peculiar to happy, vigorous babyhood that it is a marvel of observation and nature. The little foot is admirably foreshortened, and the wrinkled sole a bit of inimitable painting. But perhaps most wonderful of all is the art with which, amid so many splendid details, the Child is the centre of interest as well as of the picture. How it is so, ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... countenance deeply indented with the small-pox, and in every hole there was visibly ensconced a little imp of audaciousness. His eyes were such intrepid and quenchless lights of impudence, that they could look even Irish sang froid out of countenance. And then that inimitable wooden leg! It was a perfect grace. As he managed it, it was irresistible. He did not progress with a miserable, vulgar, dot-and-go-one kind of gait; he neither hopped, nor halted, nor limped; and though ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Undine, Julnar the Sea-born (vol. vii. 264-308) which, like Abdullah of the Land and Abdullah of the Sea (vol. ix. Night cmxl.), describes the vie intime of mermen and merwomen. Somewhat resembling Swift's inimitable creations, the Houyhnhnms for instance, they prove, amongst other things, that those who dwell in a denser element can justly blame and severely criticise the contradictory and unreasonable prejudices and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Antonius Stradiuarius and Joseph Guarnerius were occupied with the noble instruments which have immortalized their names, Canaletto was painting his Venetian squares and canals, Giorgio was superintending the manufacture of his inimitable maiolica, and the Venetians were blowing glass of marvelous beauty and form. In the musical world, Corelli was writing his gigues and sarabandes, Geminiani composing his first instruction book for the violin, and Tartini dreaming ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I frankly confess absurd in the highest degree." (Italics ours). After admitting ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... saying, the State's Attorney proceeded to read, one after the other, all those forged letters which had been executed with inimitable skill by Mary Grey herself and mailed from Wendover by her ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... interesting a publication. It has already passed the ordeal of the press, and has been received, both in Europe and in America, as one of the most entertaining productions that has appeared for many years, not excepting "Charles O'Malley," and the other mirth-inspiring volumesof the inimitable Lever. ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... what many people feel about Christianity. 'Dombey and Son' was the outlet for that curious psychology of Dickens which could get the best out of a pathetic incident by approaching it from a grotesque angle. It came, as Chesterton points out in his own inimitable way, 'into the inner chamber by coming down the chimney.' Which demonstrates the ever nearness of pathos to humour, of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... of Plutarch's freedom, a life more amazing than any which that author has left us; an inimitable character whose radiance covers faults which it would be vain to dissemble; an illustrious personality whose vices and virtues are inextricably interwoven, and seem as rare in their perfect harmony as they are brilliant in their contrast. In war, in love, at the gaming-table, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... his interview with Cardinal Mazarin (excepting the character of Monsieur de Senantes, and Matta, who was well known to Hamilton), the relation of the siege of Lerida, the description of Gregorio Brice, and the inimitable discovery of his own magnificent suit of clothes on the ridiculous bridegroom at Abbeville; all such particulars must have been again and again repeated to Hamilton by Grammont, and may therefore be fairly grounded on the count's authority. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... wrote you some time ago - he was deserted by a great number of his Auditory in the midst of his reading. Thus every Art is practisd & every Tool employd to make it appear as if this people were easy in their Chains, & that this great revolution is brought about by the inimitable Address of Mr Hutchinson. There is one part of the proclamation which I think deserves Notice on your side the Water, & that relates to the Accommodation with the Spaniards in the Affair of Faulkland Island. This must have been referrd to under the Terms of the preservation ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... the other it meant the "Seventy-fives"—the "Admirable Seventy-five"—the seventy-five millimetre field pieces that stopped the Germans' Paris drive at the Marne—the same that gave Little Willie a headache at Verdun,—the inimitable, rapid firing, target hugging, hell raising, shell spitting engine of destruction whose secret of recoil remained a secret after almost twenty years and whose dependability was ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... extreme, and very fond of dress; his boots were so well varnished that the polish now in use could not surpass Kelly's blacking in brilliancy; his pantaloons were made of the finest leather, and his coats were inimitable; in short, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... 'Modern Types,' &c., and E.G. REED, the Artist, are the very latest additions thereto. That Table has, within the last two years, sustained yet two other losses: PERCIVAL LEIGH, last survivor of the 'Old Guard,' dying on 24th October, 1889, whilst, early in the present year, the inimitable CHARLES KEENE, universally acknowledged to be the greatest master of 'Black-and-White' technique who ever put pencil to wood-block, was taken away ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... Sermons; the beloved professor at Cambridge, the busy canon at Chester, the powerful preacher in Westminster Abbey. One thought of him by the Berkshire chalk-streams and on the Devonshire coast, watching the beauty and wisdom of Nature, reading her solemn lessons, chuckling too over her inimitable fun. One saw him in town-alleys, preaching the Gospel of godliness and cleanliness, while smoking his pipe with soldiers and navvies. One heard him in drawing- rooms, listened to with patient silence, till one of his vigorous or quaint speeches bounded forth, never to be forgotten. How children delighted ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... handsomest species of this family. In grace and elegance of manner he has no equal. Such a gentle, high-bred air, and such inimitable ease and composure in his flight and movement! He is a poet in very word and deed. His carriage is music to the eye. His performance of the commonest act, as catching a beetle, or picking a worm from the mud, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... dramatic instinct than by a delicate and pathetic grace which endeared his music to the hearts of his contemporaries. He had little originality, and his facility often descends to commonplace, but much of the music in 'Joconde' and 'Cendrillon' lives by grace of its inimitable tenderness and charm. Nicolo is the Greuze of music. Boieldieu (1775-1834) stands upon a very different plane. Although he worked within restricted limits, his originality and resource place him among the great masters of French music. His earlier works are, for the most, light ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... equitably and properly for their preservation and due increase. Here, as we all see, have immense sums been already spent by this Government in excavating, preserving, and in some cases partially restoring such decayed but inimitable structures as the Coliseum, the Capitol, the various Triumphal Arches, the Baths of Titus, Caracalla, &c., all of which labors and expenditures we who visit Rome share the benefit, and it is but the simplest justice that we should contribute to defray the cost, especially when ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... and distinct, and particularly, when the objects grouped in the picture have previously been familiar. Pictures are indeed a pretty close imitation of Nature in this part of her work; and they are defective chiefly on account of their want of motion and continuity. These last are two great and inimitable characteristics in all the groupings painted upon ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... discoverers, what do we ask of them? Is it to write in a particular style, in a given lucid style, a given figurative style, or a given dignified style? Nay, it is only very mediocre writers who could obey such precepts. Every supreme writer has his own style, inalienable and inimitable, which is as much a part of him as his own soul, the look in his eyes, or his tones of voice. Bethink yourselves of Carlyle, how his abrupt, crabbed, but withal sinewy and picturesque, prose compares ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... After that they adjourned to the small dormitory and spread out a repast of sweets and cakes, to which such of the younger masters as were brave enough to risk detection slipped away up the school staircase at intervals, to be more than rewarded by Lorraine's inimitable mimicry. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... beauty and regularity; the pillars are as distinct as if they had been reared by the hand of art; but it has not the extent or sublimity of the Scuir of Eigg. The one may be compared with the greatest exertions of human power; the other is characteristic of the wildest and most inimitable works of nature." "The height of this extraordinary object is considerable," says M'Culloch, dashing off his sketch with a still bolder hand; "yet its powerful effect arises rather from its peculiar form, and the commanding elevation which it occupies, than ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Palfrey, a very able and influential leader of the Free Soilers. Mr. Palfrey agreed that the Constitution ought to be defeated, if possible. Judge Hoar and he sat down together and prepared a pamphlet, the Judge furnishing all the legal argument and Mr. Palfrey the rest, clothing it all in his inimitable style. It was published under Dr. Palfrey's name. Judge Hoar, being then upon the bench, did not think it becoming to take any more public action in the matter, although he made his opinion known to all persons who cared to know it. Charles Francis Adams and Marcus Morton also made powerful ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... thought so highly of this great work, its author was bowed down by poverty and infirmities, and nothing was done for him by the king or his courtiers. The last glimpse of the life of Cervantes I have space for, is from his own inimitable pen, and is taken from the preface to the "Labors of Persiles and Sigismunda," which was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... interest was directed from them, silently disappeared from a scene where their rank in life seemed so little regarded. If, reader, you should be anxious to learn from what part of the world the transitory visitants appeared, know that they were spirits sent by that inimitable magician, Long Ned, partly to report how matters fared in the court; for Mr. Pepper, in pursuance of that old policy which teaches that the nearer the fox is to the hunters, the more chance he has ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an inimitable talent for giving utterance to strong feelings in colorless words; a woman's eloquence lies in tone and gesture, manner and glance. Lord Grenville hid his face in his hands, for his tears filled his eyes. This was Julie's first word of ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac |
