"Inimitably" Quotes from Famous Books
... voices. We heard one engine thundering round a corner, and another rattling from a distance over the pavements. The bells of three steeples clanged out at once, spreading the alarm to many a neighboring town, and expressing hurry, confusion, and terror, so inimitably that I could almost distinguish in their peal the burden of the universal ... — The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... still very high up, but looking somewhat more eastward than before, and the plain went on inimitably towards some low vague hills; nor in that direction could any snow be seen in the sky. Then at last I came to the slopes which make a little bank under the mountains, and there, finding a highroad, and oppressed somewhat suddenly by the afternoon heat of those low places, I ... — The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... like opening the flood-gates of a dam. If Meacham had been as good a farmer as a yarn-spinner there would have been no question as to his success, for he had some story to tell about every yearling on the place, and they were inimitably told. It was with great reluctance that Hamilton found himself obliged to head off the man's eloquence and make him stick to hard facts. An inquiry as to the number of eggs sold was somewhat of a puzzle, but the farmer's wife knew the amount of the "trade" she ... — The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... of a party; and, as he wished to show his importance before his friends, he walked up boldly and commanded our whole cavalcade to stop, and to bring forth fire and tobacco, while he coolly sat down and smoked his pipe. It was such an inimitably natural way of showing off, that we all stopped to admire the acting, and, though he had left us previously in the lurch, we all liked Shobo, a fine specimen of ... — Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... and withdrew, we catch the Servant's silent Grief; our Words are choaked, and our Sensations grow too strong for Utterance. The awful Respect paid to Clarissa's Memory by those Persons, who generally both rejoice and mourn in Noise and Clamour, is inimitably beautiful. But even in this solemn Scene the Author has not forgot the Characters of the principal Actors in it: For the barbarous Wretches who could drive Clarissa from her native Home, and by their Cruelty hurl her to Destruction, could not shed Tears for her Loss, without ... — Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... anything is observable except a study, full of merriment and sarcasm, of the sly, lazy and parasitical class of peasant rogue. This type was not of Ibsen's invention; he found it in those rustic tales, inimitably resumed by Asbjoernson and Moe, in which he shows us that his memory was steeped. Here, too, he found the Boeig, a monster of Norse superstition, vast and cold, slippery and invisible, capable of infinite ... — Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... brought her the kazabaika, set with ermine, which lay on the bed, and Wanda slipped into it with two inimitably graceful movements. ... — Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... says very wittily in every critique, "of that anon." There certainly was some fun and humour displayed by a few of the characters on the particular evening I mention; the two best performers were a reverend gentleman as one of Russell's waggoners, inimitably portrayed, and Captain B. A——-e, not the author of "To Day," but his brother, as an Indian prince. The dress, appearance, and ... — The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the best character in Joseph Andrews— though of an entirely different type—is Lady Booby's "Waiting- Gentlewoman," the excellent Mrs. Slipslop. Her sensitive dignity, her easy changes from servility to insolence, her sensuality, her inimitably distorted vocabulary, which Sheridan borrowed for Mrs. Malaprop, and Dickens modified for Mrs. Gamp, are all peculiarities which make up a personification of the richest humour and the most life-like reality. Mr. Peter Pounce, too, with his "scoundrel maxims," as disclosed in that ... — Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... suddenly, at one point of his reading, he had to introduce the passing character of a nameless individual in a London crowd, a choleric old gentleman who has only one short sentence to fire off. This he gave so spontaneously, so inimitably, that the puppet became an absolute reality in a second. I saw him, crowd, street, man, temper, and all. For I am, I may say, what is called a very good audience. I like what I like, and I hate what I hate; and on one occasion growled at the theater so audibly at what I thought ... — Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... I subscribed to a clipping bureau so you could see how far your dog piece traveled, and it's being quoted all over creation. Some paper calls it inimitably droll, which I think rather nice. You'll find a bunch of clippings in my second drawer there. Be sure and show them to your father, and don't fail to keep him in touch with your work: he can help you once he's aroused to what you can do. By the way, you must boil ... — Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... do the gravelly soil to shew in bald patches of gray shingle through the straggling branches—these contemptible-looking shrubs, like paralysed and withered raspberries, it is which produce the most priceless, and the most inimitably flavoured wines.' The grapes are such mean and pitiful grapes as you would look at with contempt in Covent-Garden Market; and the very value of the soil contributes to its appearance of destitution—a rudely-carved stake marking the division of properties where a hedge or ditch would ... — Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... broke into baroque ejaculations, "Well, wouldn't that get you! Wouldn't that absolutely freeze you to a pillar of salt! Well, of all the darndest idiots, I've been the——" With Miss Midland's eyes fixed on him, he broke into peal after peal of his new-world laughter, his fresh, crude, raw, inimitably vital laughter, "I'm thinking of the time I loaned you the franc and a half for your lunch, and hated to take it back because I thought you needed it—and you rich enough to buy ten libraries to Andy's[137-1] one! Say, how did you keep your ... — Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... Scutari are even, they are neither so badly paved nor quite so narrow as those at Pera. The great barracks, on a height in the foreground, present a splendid appearance, and also afford a delicious view towards the Sea of Marmora and the inimitably beautiful Bosphorus. The barracks are said to contain accommodation for ... — A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... loss of my little pet, which I had at one time looked forward to bringing up to years of maturity, and taking home to England. For several months it had afforded me daily amusement by its curious ways and the inimitably ludicrous expression of its little countenance. Its weight was three pounds nine ounces, its height fourteen inches, and the spread of its arms twenty-three inches. I preserved its skin and skeleton, and in doing so found that when it fell from the tree it ... — The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... longing for the enjoyment of domestic joys, so often interrupted by the absence of the husbands, is to be the means of putting an end to the calamitous war by which Greece had so long been torn in pieces. In particular, the honest bluntness of the Lacedaemonians is inimitably portrayed. ... — Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... his argument, which was a tissue of the clearest, most powerful, and triumphant reasoning. He turned every position of his opponent, and took and dismantled every fortification. But his peroration was inimitably fine. As he went on to depict the horrors consequent upon a muzzled press, there was not a dry eye in the court-house. It was the most perfect triumph of eloquence over the passions of ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... passage is inimitably just and beautiful. We see Ajax slowly retreating between two armies, and even with a look repulse the one and protect the other. Every line resembles Ajax. The character of a stubborn and undaunted warrior is perfectly ... — The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... only notice Haydn took of their scurrility and abuse was to publish lessons written in imitation of the several styles of his enemies, in which their peculiarities were so closely copied and their extraneous passages (particularly those of Bach of Hamburg) so inimitably burlesqued, that they all felt the poignancy of his musical wit, confessed its truth, and were silent." Further on we read that the sonatas of Ops. 13 and 14 were "expressly composed in order to ridicule Bach of Hamburg." All this is manifestly a pure invention. Many of the ... — Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... unfortunate. The commercial success of his life was secured with Our Boys, which was played at the Vaudeville from January 1875 till April 1879—a then unprecedented "run." The Upper Crust, another of his successes, gave a congenial opportunity to Mr J.L. Toole for one of his [v.04 p.0906] inimitably broad character-sketches. During the last few years of his life Byron was in frail health; he died in Clapham on the 11th of April 1884. H.J. Byron was the author of some of the most popular stage pieces of his day. Yet his extravaganzas have no wit but that of ... — Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... memory has thus preserved? He that has read the best accounts of those battles will be surprised to see the particulars of the story so preserved, so nicely and so agreeably described, and will confess what we allege, that the story is inimitably told; and even the great actions of the glorious King GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS receive a lustre from this man's relations which the world was never made sensible of before, and which the present age has much wanted of late, in order to give their affections a turn in favour ... — Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... fine phrases wished us a happy day to-morrow, and most deftly worked upon my mother and Georgette by looking round and speaking with a quaint sort of raillery—half pensive, it was—of the peace of this home-life of ours; and indeed, he did it so inimitably that I was not sure how much was false and how much true. I tried to avoid him to-day, but my mother as constantly made private speech between us easy. At last he had his way, and then I was not sorry; for Georgette was listening to him with more colour than she is ... — The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... were tattooed; probably in the common house, or in the bush, for a woman was a creature of small account. I must guard the reader against supposing Taheia was at all disfigured; the art of the Marquesan tattooer is extreme; and she would appear to be clothed in a web of lace, inimitably delicate, exquisite in pattern, and of a bluish hue that at once contrasts and harmonises with the warm pigment of the native skin. It would be hard to find a woman more becomingly ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the arrival of two visitors in a gig. They were farmers of the neighbourhood, I suppose—big, burly fellows in great-coats and top-boots, mightily flushed with liquor when they arrived, and, before they left, inimitably drunk. They stayed long in the kitchen with Burchell, drinking, shouting, singing, and keeping it up; and the sound of their merry minstrelsy kept me a kind of company. The night fell, and the shine of the fire brightened and blinked on the panelled wall. ... — St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... masterpiece of Thackeray's art amongst the characters, the scene of her husband's encounter with her paramour is the masterpiece of all the scenes in Vanity Fair, and has no superior, hardly any equal, in modern fiction. Becky, Rawdon Crawley, and Lord Steyne—all are inimitably true, all are powerful, all are fearful in their agony and rage. The uprising of the poor rake almost into dignity and heroism, and his wife's outburst of admiration at his vengeance, are strokes ... — Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... and accurate, be he never so amply endowed with the divine qualifications of the poet, it is still questionable if he can ever succeed in saying satisfactorily with new words that which has once been inimitably said—said for all time—with the old words. "Psychologically, there is perhaps nothing more complex than an elaborate poem. The sources of its effect upon our minds may be likened to a system of forces which is in the highest degree unstable; and the slightest displacement ... — The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... vacillation between light and darkness, may have struck out many unexpected and surprising beauties, which common attendants were utterly incapable of appreciating. The flushes of the mind under the unnatural impulses of malady are sometimes inimitably splendid. His reason, at times, was sound, for his reason was fervid to the last. But it is said that his shrieks sometimes resounded through the cathedral cloisters of Chichester till the horror of those who ... — The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... Kings," and "Fire Kings," have been crowned by this poetical magician, to rule with despotism in the realms of Fancy. A lively satirist, endowed with the gifts of Genius, easy in versification, pleasant in his humour, and inimitably successful in parody, has, in some of his "Tales of Terror" undertaken to mock the doleful tones of Mr. Lewis's muse, or shall we rather say the hoarse caw of the German raven. The midnight hour has been beguiled, by transcribing the following sarcasm, founded on a well-known nursery ... — Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... of Rome was at hand. Its empire had extended almost inimitably to the east and west, had crossed the sea and deeply penetrated the desert to the south, but had failed in its advances to the north. The Rhine and the Danube here formed its boundaries. The great forest region which lay beyond these, with its hosts of blue-eyed and fair-skinned ... — Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... being, like the women of Tahiti, born in a tropical clime where vice is as unknown as shame, and where entire ingenuousness is a guarantee against all indecency. One cannot but be astonished at this mixture of "Japanism," savagism and eighteenth century taste, which constitutes inimitably the nude ... — The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... hisses its way from some iron-cold comment, and stabs the monarch whom it crowns. His fertility of imagination is not weakened by contact with the details of government. The same pen that draws in such inimitably graceful lines the sugar-plums of starving Genoa, lingering about flower-wreathed baskets of bonbons sold in the public squares to famishing men and women, sketches in a style as nervous and appropriate the complex ... — Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... had luckily hit some of them; for they found not only that the arrows, which came thick among them before, ceased, but they heard the Indians halloo, after their way, to one another, and make a strange noise, more uncouth and inimitably strange than any they had ever heard, more like the howling and barking of wild creatures in the woods than like the voice of men, only that sometimes ... — The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... revolution—quite thereby on the circumference—was the great Company of Four in their sequestered corner; objects of regularly recurrent pious pilgrimage, if for no other purpose than to see whether each would each time again so inimitably carry itself as one of a group of wonderfully-worked old ivories. Their charm of relation to each other and to everything else that concerns them, that of the quartette of monuments, is more or less inexpressible all round; but not the least of it, ever, is in their beautiful ... — Italian Hours • Henry James
... see nothing impossible in that supposition: and I see things wonderfully contrived sometimes to make us happy. Where could they find such objects as in America, for the exercise of their enchanting art; especially the lady, who paints landscapes so inimitably? She wants only subjects worthy of immortality, to render her pencil immortal. The Falling Spring, the Cascade of Niagara, the Passage of the Potomac through the Blue Mountains, the Natural Bridge; it is worth a voyage across the Atlantic to see these ... — Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... sentimentalized realism and a naive, diffuse expression; and as a critic he pointed in the direction of Shenstone and Allan Ramsay by emphasizing the tender, admitting the use of earthy realism in the manner of Gay, and recommending for pastoral such "inimitably pretty and delightful" tales as The Two Children in the Wood. Had his contemporaries read the treatise, how they would have been amused to contemplate the serious literary treatment of chapbook narratives, despite ... — A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... the magnificent Elizabethan English tongue—a store inexhaustibly rich, and all the richer for being free from huge piles of needless rubbish, called vocabulary, which modern times have heaped into the long-suffering dictionary. The speech of the English Bible, which rightly seems to us so inimitably noble in its simplicity, was but the contemporary speech of educated England. Fine expressive words had not yet been soiled with all ignoble use. They had not been debauched by slang or vulgarized by affectation. The Elizabethan language possessed the noble solid grandeur ... — Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... Swede, Fredrika Bremer, will live as long as the language in which she writes shall be spoken or read; while Mary Howitt, her translator, is, through these beautiful translations, and her own inimitably chaste and home-like stones, endeared to ... — Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... that Florence began to find his field in the delineation of Irish and Yankee characters, his wife appearing with him, and together they won a wide popularity. Florence wrote some plays and a number of sprightly songs, which his wife sang inimitably. He himself improved steadily in his acting, and, especially in the gentle humor and melting pathos with which he clothed his characters, stood quite alone. A tour through England added to his fame, and his songs were soon being sung ... — American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... and the Marchese stood together by the fireplace at the other end of the long room Mamie joined them. "You sang that devil's nocturne inimitably," observed her stepfather, drily. "I am quite sorry to have to ask you not to do ... — Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... Rembrandt, in some qualities of delineation unrivalled even by him." "The Two Elves," says Hamerton, "especially the nearer one, who is putting on his breeches, are drawn with a point at once so precise and vivacious, so full of keen fun and inimitably happy invention, that I have not found their equal in comic etching anywhere ... the picturesque details of the room are etched with the same felicitous intelligence; but the marvel of the work is ... — English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... uncertain and mysterious, even in the light, and you might at first imagine some permission of escape had been here given you from the terrible law of delineation. But the slightest attempts to copy them will show you that the terminal lines are inimitably subtle, unaccusably true, and filled by gradations of shade so determined and measured that the addition of a grain of the lead or chalk as large as the filament of a moth's wing, would make ... — Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... removed a leathern wallet," she said sedately, "containing a large sum of money from the coat pocket of a member of the detective force." The elegance of utterance was inimitably done. But in the next instant, the ordinary vulgarity of enunciation was in full play again. "Oh, Gee!" she cried gaily. "He says Inspector Burke's got a gold watch that weighs a ton, an' all set with diamon's!—which was give to 'im ... — Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... did it for myself then,' said Hazel; and "for herself' was the way she liked best to sing. But if he wished it So without more ado the song came. Not one of her gay little carols this time, but a wild Border lament; inimitably sweet, tender, and true. As effortless in the giving, as forgetful of auditors, as if she had been a veritable bird among the branches; for Wych Hazel always ... — The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... is not so much his lack of "decorum" as the monotonous singsong of his eternal elegiacs. The lightest of light things, the poet of society, should possess more varied strains; like Horace, Martial, Thackeray, not like Ovid and (here is a heresy) Praed. Inimitably well as Praed does his trick of antithesis, I still feel that it is a trick, and that most rhymers could follow him in a mere mechanic art. But here the judgment of Mr. Locker would be opposed to this modest opinion, and there would be opposition again ... — Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... would deny Cinna the Applause of an agreeable and facetious Wit; or could possibly pretend that there is not something inimitably unforced and diverting in his Manner of delivering all his Sentiments in Conversation, if he were able to conceal the strong Desire of Applause which he betrays in every Syllable he utters. But they who converse with him, ... — The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... adventure—"voyage of discovery"—of Master Hore, in 1536, which was undertaken "by the King's favour," is inimitably told by Hakluyt. His co-adventurers are described as "many gentlemen of the Inns of Court and of the Chancerie"; there were also a number of east-country merchants. After missing their proper course, and almost starving, they were succoured by a French vessel ... — The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... Winters, a newspaper fellow with an Alaskan and Siberian reputation. Met him at the Bibelot once, and he was telling us how he attempted to make a fire with a couple of sticks. It was most amusing. He told it inimitably, but it was the story of a failure. I remember his conclusion, his black eyes flashing as he said, 'Gentlemen, the South Sea Islander may do it, the Malay may do it, but take my word it's ... — The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... tear themselves from Helena. He saw her bathed in light, from top to toe, now gold, now scarlet, a fire-goddess, inimitably beautiful. They danced hand in hand, intoxicated by the music, and by the movement of their young swaying bodies. He felt Helena unconsciously leaning on him, her soft breath on his cheek. Her eyes were his now, and her smiling lips, just parted over her white teeth, ... — Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as the manly brain." Yet tenderness is not exclusively a womanly excellence; indeed, since tenderness can really coexist only with strength, it is in its highest manifestation quite as truly a manly as a womanly quality. Jesus was inimitably tender. Tenderness in him was never softness or weakness. It was more like true motherliness than almost any other human affection; it was infolding, protecting, ... — Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... cartridge belt, swung an automatic revolver in its holster. This was the outfit so admired by his chums from the East, trim in their light-weight summer suits of the latest cut and wearing low tan shoes more adapted for city streets than for the sands stretching inimitably on every hand. ... — The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... a Stroke of Nature in Horatio's breaking off, from the Description of the King, and falling into the Exclamation. 'Tis Strange! which is inimitably Beautiful. ... — Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... acquiesced where possible, looked around him. He could detect no parishioners except the pine-trees, rising up steeply on all sides, and gesturing to each other against the blue. How glorious it was! The world of motor-cars and rural Deans receded inimitably. Water, sky, evergreens, a wind—these things not even the seasons can touch, and surely they lie beyond the ... — A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... manner in which it reveals the essentially racy humor of the American countryside with the utmost economy of means. The characterization is achieved almost entirely through dialogue, and the portraiture of the characters is rendered inimitably in a phrase or two. In this story, as well as in "The Band," Miss Babcock has earned the right to a place beside Francis Buzzell as a regional story writer, fairly comparable to ... — The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... coat, dashed here and there with lighter touches, like a stormy sea moonlit. Upon his chest an escutcheon of purest white, and the dome of his head showered, as it were, with a sprinkling of snow. Perfectly compact, utterly lithe, inimitably graceful with his airy-fairy action; a gentleman every inch, you could not help but stare at him—Owd ... — Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Hermione admits but of few general reflections, one little speech, inimitably beautiful and characteristic, has become almost proverbial from its ... — Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... the morning. We met at this ball Mr. Greenough, and Mr. Angerstein, Sneyd's friend, very agreeable, and Mrs. Hibbert, of the beautiful cottage, and Lady Rothes. Mr. Smith excessively entertaining; he sings humorous songs of his own composition inimitably. ... — The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... artists; genial, jovial Jim Pegram; Harry Stanton, Kentucky's soldier poet—and a score of others who won fame, even if some of them lost life—on far different fields. There rare "Ran" Tucker—later famed in Congress and law school—told inimitably the story of "The time the stars fell," or sang the unprecedented ballad of "The Noble Skewball," in ... — Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... mad or both, but who was assuredly most miserable,—the unhappy Caroline of Brunswick. George Cruikshank's sketch of the outraged husband, the finest and stoutest gentleman in Europe, being lowered by means of a crane into a pair of white kid pantaloons suspended between the posts of his bed, was inimitably droll, and clearly disloyal. But disloyalty was fashionable in ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... are the less disfigured by pain, as from the quick repetition of the shocks, she appears, as in the fable, to have become insensible and motionless. Before this figure, twice transformed into stone, and yet so inimitably animated—before this line of demarkation of all human suffering, the most callous beholder is dissolved ... — Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... disadvantages of person—for he was tall and awkward in his figure, and his features were plain—he was nevertheless forcible and impressive; for he felt warmly, had excellent judgment, and was an enthusiast in his profession. His recitative was inimitably fine, so that even those who did not understand the language could not fail to comprehend from his countenance, voice, and action every ... — Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... a wonderful way that evening; he sang a song, the burthen of which was 'Good Night,' inimitably good, and which might have been written down. I heard two good things at dinner yesterday, one of Spankie's. In his canvass he met with a refusal from some tradesman, who told him he should vote for Duncombe and Wakley. Spankie said, 'Well, my friend, I am sorry you won't vote for me, ... — The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... namely, murder by poison, after the manner in which the player king is disposed of in Hamlet. Thackeray had found a small vial on the mantel-shelf, and out of that he proceeded to pour the imaginary "juice of cursed hebenon" into the imaginary porches of somebody's ears. The whole thing was inimitably done, and I hoped nobody saw it but myself; but years afterwards, a ponderous, fat-witted young man put the question squarely to me: "What was the matter with Mr. Thackeray, that night the club met at ... — Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... yards square, with a coal "shed" under the table on which she was supposed to cook, and to sleep in a cupboard, screened in merciful darkness, since, when the electric light was turned on, the vista seen through the grimy panes was so inimitably depressing that one's only longing was to turn ... — The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... weel at ae time." No Englishwoman would have given such an answer. The same class of character is very strongly marked in a story which was told by Mr. Thomas Constable, who has a keen appreciation of a good Scottish story, and tells it inimitably. He used to visit an old lady who was much attenuated by long illness, and on going up stairs one tremendously hot afternoon, the daughter was driving away the flies, which were very troublesome, and was saying, "Thae flies will eat up a' that remains o' my puir mither." The ... — Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... constantly that he was over fifty-two, while she was only seventeen. Why should this lure of youth continue to possess him? She wore a white concoction of lace and silk which showed a pair of smooth young shoulders and a slender, queenly, inimitably modeled neck. He could tell by the sleek lines of her arms ... — The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... drew many pictures upon the canvas, and sang, and smoked, and scuffled across the floor to survey his work from a little distance—and studied its progress through his open fist—or as he lay sprawling upon his lounge in a cotton velvet Italian coat, inimitably befogged and bebuttoned—and puffed profusely, following the intervolving smoke with his eye—his meditations were always the same. He was always thinking of Hope Wayne, and befooling himself with the mask of art, actually hiding himself from himself: and not perceiving that when a man's ... — Trumps • George William Curtis
... cried Gianapolis, eagerly, placing his hand upon her arm, "it is precisely of your work that I wish to speak to you! Your work is familiar to me—I never miss a line of it; and knowing how you delight in the outre and how inimitably you can describe scenes of Bohemian life, I had hoped, since it was my privilege to meet you, that you would accept my services as cicerone to some of the lesser-known resorts of Bohemian London. Your article, 'Dinner in Soho,' was a delightful piece ... — The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... make one push more at the gaming-table. He is exhibited, in the sixth print, venting curses on his folly for having lost his last stake.—This is, upon the whole, perhaps, the best print of the set. The horrid scene it describes, was never more inimitably drawn. The composition is artful, and natural. If the shape of the whole be not quite pleasing, the figures are so well grouped, and with so much ease and variety, that ... — The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the companions, letting him see, without reserve, that she wished to hear everything about it, and making Charlotte in particular, Charlotte's judgment of Matcham, Charlotte's aspect, her success there, her effect traceably produced, her clothes inimitably worn, her cleverness gracefully displayed, her social utility, in fine, brilliantly exemplified, the subject of endless inquiry. Maggie's inquiry was most empathetic, moreover, for the whole happy thought of the cathedral-hunt, which she was ... — The Golden Bowl • Henry James |