"Loveliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... convent, but her image remained indelibly impressed upon my heart. It dwelt on my imagination; it became my pervading idea of beauty. It had an effect even upon my pencil; I became noted for my felicity in depicting female loveliness; it was but because I multiplied the image of Bianca. I soothed, and yet fed my fancy, by introducing her in all the productions of my master. I have stood with delight in one of the chapels of the Annunciata, and heard the crowd extol the seraphic beauty of a saint which I had painted; I have ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... transgressed the plain command (1 Sam 15:20-22). But this the apostle saw was dangerous, and therefore censureth such, as in a state of condemnation (Rom 3:8). Thus he served Adam; he put the desirableness of sight, and a plain transgression of God's law together, that by the loveliness of the one, they might the easier be brought to do the other. O poor Eve! Do we wonder at thy folly! Doubtless we had done as bad with half the argument of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... imaginatively of science, he in fact demonstrated in "Maelzel's Chess Player" that a pretended automaton was operated by a man. "Hop Frog" and "The Cask of Amontillado" are old-world stories of revenge. "The Island of the Fay" and "The Domain of Arnheim" are landscape studies, the one of calm loveliness, the other of Oriental profusion and coloring. "Shadow" and "Silence" are commonly classed as "prose poems," the former being one of Poe's most effective productions. "Eleonora," besides having a story to tell, is both a prose poem and a landscape ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... enemy was these fair girls. The warrior stood committed to universal destruction. Neither sex nor age, neither the smiles of unoffending infancy nor the gray hairs of the venerable patriarch, neither the sanctity of the matron nor the loveliness of the youthful bride, would confer any privilege with the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... affected me most. I felt like a person in a dream as we walked over the house—the same and yet changed out of all recognition. We had tea, and then in the soft sunset we went down to the waterfall, no longer a fairy dell of loveliness but improved with a dam, cement flooring, and a row of neat bathrooms. In the evening we sat on the upper veranda looking out over the moonlit tree-tops; the scene was very beautiful, with the view of the sea and Vaea mountain so green and so close. 'Here we wrote St. ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... other interest in his wanderings than that which pleasant sights and sounds and a consciousness of returning strength gave him. It was happiness enough to lie down in some quiet valley, with only his beloved book as his companion, or, seated on some hill-side, to gaze on a landscape whose loveliness has been the theme of many ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... Nature's harmony, nature's loveliness, nature's expansive greatness and grandeur teaches of God, and godliness. The inanimate and unthinking are consistently harmonious and beautiful; man only mars the harmony, and makes a hell for man in time. Then, is time ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... band of pious pilgrims passes, on the way to Rome. They are going to ask the Pope to forgive their sins. The sight of them brings a new thought to the knight. It is the thought of his own sin. Now that he sees again the sweet loveliness of the world, he feels at last fully how wicked it was for him to leave it and all his own duties and his friends in it. He is in despair when he thinks that he is no longer worthy of the princess, if indeed he ever were. He dares ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... are now on the way to her room. As they entered the door her back was to them, as she was gazing out of the window. Belton's eyes surveyed her graceful form and he was so impressed with its loveliness that he was sorry when she began to turn around. But when she was turned full around Belton forgot all about her form, and his eyes did not know which to contemplate longest, that rich complexion, those charming eyes, or those seductive lips. On the other hand, Miss ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... There was his clear complexion indicating the continued health resulting from a well-spent life. His almost angelic features were beautiful rather in the amiability of their expression than in their loveliness of form. Anyone looking at him for the first time must exclaim, "Dear me, what ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... vow, when, tugging hard at his heart, came the vision of Esclairmonde's loveliness, and he felt it beyond his strength to resign her voluntarily; besides, how Madame of Hainault and Monseigneur de Therouenne would deride his uncertainties; and how intolerable it would be to leave Esclairmonde to fall into the hands of ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fifteen years ago on the last occasion when she performed the ceremony. She was dressed in a French grey gown with bonnet to match, and the neatest little bouquet in the world, for which the major had ransacked Covent Garden. Behind her came bonny Kate, a very vision of loveliness in her fairy-like lace and beautiful ivory satin. Her dark lashes drooped over her violet eyes and a slight flush tinged her cheeks, but she glided steadily into her place and did her share in the responses when the earnest little clergyman appeared ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... time and beautiful beyond words. Something in the peaceful loveliness stirred Patricia—she wished that the day were dark and grim. It seemed incongruous to take to the down path—Patricia was not blinded by her lure—while the whole world was ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... upon a sculptor's shop, oddly crowded in among Cockney carters and decaying vegetables. Faces of Greece and Rome gazed at him suddenly from a broad window, and for a few moments he forsook the motley beauty of modern London for the ordered loveliness of antiquity. ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... lass, Was the youngest and the pet; Friends all thought naught could surpass That sweet child in loveliness Which they in their ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... my sister, thou wilt hear what happened to those nine blind men, who were at first nine most beautiful and amorous youths, who being so inspired by the loveliness of your face, and having no hope of receiving the reward of their love, and fearing that such despair would reduce them to final ruin, went away from the happy Campanian country, and of one accord, those who at first were rivals for ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... the most quiet Capital City I had ever visited, resting in its placid loveliness apparently undisturbed by the usual ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... the soundless air A cloudy pillar, robed in burning light, Appears:—concenter'd as one mighty heart, A million lie, in mutest slumber bound. Or, panting like the ocean, when a dream Of storm awakes her:—Heaven and Earth are still; In radiant loveliness the stars pursue Their pilgrimage, while moonlight's wizard hand Throws beauty, like a spectre light, on all. At Judah's tent the lion-banner stands Unfolded, and the pacing sentinels,— What awe pervades them, when the dusky groves, The rocks Titanian, by the moonshine ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... her place tomorrow; she is travelling rapidly, and on my behalf! I think, Signor Carlo, you would do well by going to the maestro when you leave me, and telling him that Irma has been caught into the skies. Say, "Jealous that earth should possess such overpowering loveliness," or "Attracted in spite of themselves by that combination of genius and beauty which is found united nowhere but in Irma, the spirits of heaven determined to rob earth of her Lazzeruola." Only tell it to him seriously, for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... indispensable consideration. She was fairly well-born, was a lady, and was beautiful. In doing Lord Fawn justice, we must allow that, in all his attempted matrimonial speculations, some amount of feminine loveliness had been combined with feminine wealth. He had for two years been a suitor of Violet Effingham, who was the acknowledged beauty of the day,—of Violet Effingham who, at the present time, was the wife of Lord Chiltern; and he had offered himself thrice to Madame Max Goesler, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... because woods were never favorite places with me to walk in. The sort of pastoral happiness which poets often represent when they sing of life in the woods never, to my mind, has half the charm of life on the mountain or in the plain. When I am in a wood, I miss the boundless loveliness of the sky, and the delicious softness that distance gives to the earthly view beneath. I feel oppressively the change which the free air suffers when it gets imprisoned among leaves, and I am always awed, rather than pleased, by that mysterious still light which shines with such a strange ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... fields of waving wheat And leagues of golden corn The fragrance of the wild-rose bloom And elder-flower is borne; But earth's appealing loveliness We do but half surmise, For oh, the blur of battle-fields Is ever in ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... extraordinary self-devotion, but requiring extraordinary tact. What anxiety must have pressed the soul of that Jewish woman in the task she undertook! What a responsibility on her unaided shoulders? But she dissembles her grief, her fear, her anxiety, and appears before the king radiant in beauty and loveliness. The golden sceptre is extended to her by her weak and cruel husband, though arrayed in the pomp and power of an Oriental monarch, before whom all bent the knee, and to whom, even in his folly, he appears as demigod. She does not venture ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... conditions. Let one give all and ask for nothing,—let him yield himself wholly to the overpowering enthusiasm; let him not look backward from his vision of the Morning Star and the Promised Land, and thus shall the New Year fulfil itself in ever widening glory and that enchanting loveliness which invests the higher fulfilments ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... road, plunges headlong down a steep crescent-shaped slope, and hides its foamy whiteness in the dark-foliaged ravine below. It is a wonder of graceful motion, of iridescent lights and delicious shadows; a shape of loveliness that seems instinct with a conscious life. Its beauty, like that of all natural marvels on our continent, is on a generous scale; and now the spectators, after viewing it from the mill, passed for a different prospect ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... greeted Diocles And him that seem'd his guest, the twain were led To the dim polish'd baths, where, for their ease, Cool water o'er their lustrous limbs was shed; With oil anointed was each goodly head By Asteris and Phylo fair of face; Next, like two gods for loveliness, they sped To Menelaus in ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... drive when I was convalescent, and then we steamed away to Hong Kong. I shall say nothing about Hong Kong, for all the world knows what a beautiful place it is in winter—how bright and sparkling the blue sea, how clean and trim the streets, and how stately the buildings; also what a dream of loveliness is the one drive out of the town to the Happy Valley, where many an Englishman lies buried in the cemetery. I had a second bout of fever at Hong Kong. Happily for us, we found kind relatives both at Manilla and Hong Kong, who nursed me, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... sublime softness and gentleness. To water in agitation, use had so long accustomed us, perhaps, as in some slight degree to lessen the feeling of awe that is apt to come over the novice in such scenes; but we at once felt ourselves attracted by the surpassing loveliness of Niagara. The gulf below was more imposing than we had expected to see it, but it was Italian in hue and softness, amid its wildness and grandeur. Not a drop of the water that fell down that precipice inspired terror; for everything ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems, And in herself complete, so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best; All higher knowledge in her presence falls Degraded; wisdom in discourse with her Loses discountenanc'd, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... much of Simla Society and Simla Scandals, and so little of Simla Beauty and Loveliness!—in Nature, I ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... lovely to many; to me she is fair, tall, and shapely. Each of these qualities I grant. But that all these make loveliness I deny: for nothing of beauty nor scintilla of sprightliness is in her body so massive. Lesbia is lovely, for whilst the whole of her is most beautiful, she has stolen for herself every love-charm ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... you spoke," snapped Mamise in all the bitterness of the ancient feud between loveliness ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the stage, and Glyndon accosted her with impassioned gallantry. The actress was surprisingly beautiful; of fair complexion and golden hair, her countenance was relieved from the tame and gentle loveliness which the Italians suppose to be the characteristics of English beauty, by the contrast of dark eyes and lashes, by a forehead of great height, to which the dark outline of the eyebrows gave some thing of majesty and command. In spite ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of a Gaelic song in these pages that brought a sorrow on me. That very sweet language will be gone soon, if not gone already, and no book learning will revive the suppleness of idiom, that haunting misty loveliness.... It is a very pathetic thing to see a literature and a ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... There was not the slightest swell; all was calm, tranquil, and serene. Then, when the sun sunk behind Morea's hills, and shed a flood of gorgeous light over the whole landscape, it produced a picture, the loveliness of which will for ever ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... It determined in her loveliness almost a sudden glare. "Glad to swear they never had anything to do with such a creature? Then I'd be glad to ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... mercy. No exertion on her side was wanting to become to her husband and household as she had been before the death of her beloved son; she felt the beauteous flower was transplanted above; the hand of the reaper had laid it low, though the eye of faith beheld it in perfect undying loveliness, and though the mother's heart yet sorrowed, 'twas a sorrow now in which no pain ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... saw it, as one seems still to see the object in the after-darkness. Every line of the features lived in his eyes, even an almost indistinguishable scar there was on the girl's right cheek near the temple. It was not a flaw, that faint scar; it seemed somehow to heighten her loveliness, as an accent over a word sometimes gives it one ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... fall of lace, and round her slender throat a chain of seed pearl. Mrs Bellamy knew her business. 'Twas simple, but simplicity becomes a goddess, and frills and flounces can but distract the eye from loveliness that seems native to heaven. Her mother surveyed her in a kind of amaze and then turned ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... self-delusion rather than intent, he was engaged in an effort to deceive by giving sentimental doctrines a basis of apparent actuality. But the world has forgotten or forgiven his pious fraud in its gratitude for the loveliness of his art. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Me Shineth the gathered glory of the suns Which lighten all the world: from Me the moons Draw silvery beams, and fire fierce loveliness. I penetrate the clay, and lend all shapes Their living force; I glide into the plant— Root, leaf, and bloom—to make the woodlands green With springing sap. Becoming vital warmth, I glow in glad, respiring frames, and pass, With outward and with inward breath, to ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... in their life. But life is not logical outside of Altruria; we are the only people in the world, my dear Cyril, who are privileged to live reasonably; and again I say we must put by our own criterions if we wish to understand the Americans, or to recognize that measure of loveliness which their warped and stunted and perverted lives certainly show, in spite of theory and in spite of conscience, even. I can make this clear to you, I think, by a single instance, say that of the American who sees a case of distress, and longs to ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... filial sensibilities,—and the great care they take of all who are aged, infirm, and blind, among them. Were these highly interesting qualities sanctified by pure religion, they would exhibit much of the beauty and loveliness of the christian character. I am aware that an opinion is general, that they are cruel to their children; but it may be questioned if ebullitions of passion are more frequent among them, in reference to their children, ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... on whose slope it stood, and by the extent of its surrounding woods. And there in the water lay mirrored a reflection of house and trees and hillside. Baptist rested on his oars, and, turning round on his seat, drank in the loveliness of England and the Fal. His oars remained motionless for a long time, till ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... singing sounds more sincere than your admiration of her loveliness. I am not musician enough to judge. All I know is that her singing is good ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... they were looking at her from the window as she descended the steps, but feeling she could not bear to see Basil Ransom's face. As she walked, averting her own, towards the Fifth Avenue, on the sunny side, she was barely conscious of the loveliness of the day, the perfect weather, all suffused and tinted with spring, which sometimes descends upon New York when the winds of March have been stilled; she was given up only to the remembrance of that moment when she herself had stood at a window (the second time he came to see her in ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... all because thy loveliness is like a flower and like the comely spring, That years roll swiftly by ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... "impressing" Maurice's friends, not from vanity, but because she wanted to please him. As she dressed that evening, all her self-distrust vanished, and she smiled at herself in the mirror for sheer delight, for his sake, in her dark, shining eyes, and the red loveliness of her full lip. In this wholly new experience of feeling, not only happy, but important,—she forgot Mrs. Newbolt, sailing angrily for Europe that very day, and was not even anxious about the Houghtons! After all, what difference did it make what ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Christ represents our persons to the Father; and we represent the person of Christ to him. The loveliness of Christ is transferred to us. On the other hand, all that is hateful in our nature is put upon Christ, who was forsaken by the father for a time. See 2 Cor. 5:21, 'He was made sin for us, who knew no sin; that ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... usefulness with the same abiding faith that I would commit the acorn to the earth, the tree to the soil, or transmit the light on the shore to far off ships on the waves beyond, knowing certainly that loveliness, comfort, and great contentment shall come to humanity everywhere because of its thoughtful and practical observance by all the civilized peoples ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... muttering down the path, And his shadow fell like a broad, black swath, And covered Clotilde and the angry snake. He bit her, but what difference did that make! The Virgin should dress In his loveliness. ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... for her journey, and suffered from the change, but did not show it. Her beauty was not of the florid or melting order. Mrs. Thorne regarded her inconsolably, noting with distinct and separate pangs each item of her loveliness, as she moved serene and pale against the dark, resonant green of the pines. They followed a foot-path back among the trees to a small gate or door in the high boundary fence. Mrs. Thorne tried it to see ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... of youthful loveliness as they began to descend the stairs—Evelyn, in her snowy white, looking for all the world like a plump and mischievous little cherub, and Jessie in the palest pink, which set off and enhanced her fairness. But it was to Lucile that all eyes instinctively clung. The soft curls framing the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... spires glistened with unnatural brilliancy in the clear winter's daylight. It is hard to say whether Stamboul is more beautiful at any one season of the year than during the other three, for every season brings with it some especial loveliness, some new phase of color. You may reach Serai point on a winter's morning in a driving snow-storm, so that everything is hidden in the gray veil of the falling flakes; suddenly the clouds will part and the sunlight will fall full upon the city, so that it seems as if every mosque and spire ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... to be very dull and thankless and slow of heart not to feel that by being allowed to live, for however short a time, we have been allowed to take part in a very beautiful and wonderful thing. The loveliness of earth, its colours, its lights, its scents, its savours, the pleasures of activity and health, the sharp joys of love and friendship, these are surely very great and marvellous experiences, and the Mind which planned them must ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... heavens, how changed she was! her complexion faded, her hair gray. And yet at the sight of her my heart did not feel one moment's indecision; my whole soul went out to its idol as though she were still in her dazzling loveliness. Balzac, nay, Shakespeare himself, the great painter of the passions, never dreamt of such a thing." [For that reason the novelty-mad Berlioz tried it. He wrote to her:] "I have loved you. I still love you. I shall always love you. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... if only we may have more to give. The pebble takes in all the rays of light that fall on it, but the diamond flashes them out again: every little facet is a means, not simply of drinking more in, but of giving more out. The unearthly loveliness of the opal arises from the same process, carried on within the stone: the microscope shows it to be shattered through and through with numberless fissures that catch and refract and radiate every ray that ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter
... amazement at seeing a girl of surpassing loveliness lying in it! She lay as though sleeping, and her long, fair hair seemed to wrap her round like some costly mantle. Her eyes were closed, but the bright colour in her face, and the movement of a ribbon, ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... whether it would do to kiss this vision of loveliness. He wished to do so, but was afraid. However, the question was settled by the girl, who, instead of taking the hand, flung her arms about his neck and saluted him fervently, that is as well as she ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... night for the pleasure of his guests. Where, Claudia, my love, is thy maiden whose limbs are like the milky marble Greece boasts and whose feet fly like the wings of a chased butterfly? Summon thou the slave. Yet stay—not seven veils shall hide her marble loveliness. Here," and snatching a wreath of flowers from a pedestal he flung them to Claudia, "bid her robe her beauteous nakedness in this. Here's to the dancer whose virgin charms unhidden by such dense and senseless draperies as veils, shall set our blood racing as blood ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... To give her leave to rise: away she ran; After went Mercury, who us'd such cunning, As she, to hear his tale, left off her running; (Maids are not won by brutish force and might But speeches full of pleasure, and delight;) And, knowing Hermes courted her, was glad That she such loveliness and beauty had As could provoke his liking; yet was mute, And neither would deny nor grant his suit. Still vow'd he love: she, wanting no excuse To feed him with delays, as women use, Or thirsting after immortality, (All women are ambitious naturally,) Impos'd ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... as sisters, sweethearts and daughters, ornaments to any society, tasteful in dress, graceful in deportment, and elegant in carriage. In fact, visitors from old Spain have frequently remarked their resemblance to the doncellas of Cadiz, who are world-renowned for their grace and loveliness." ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... river to the dried-up bed, but in the autumn it recovers its flood. You would be delighted if you could obtain a view of the district from the mountain height, for you would think you were looking not so much at earth and fields as at a beautiful landscape picture of wonderful loveliness. Such is the variety, such the arrangement of the scene, that wherever the eyes fall they ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... nor regretted her death, nor planted a single flower upon her grave. Happy are the little girls of America, who are brought up quietly and tenderly, at the domestic hearth, and thus become gentle and delicate women! May none of them ever lose the loveliness of their sex, by receiving such an education as that ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... first acts after arranging the preliminary business of office, was to make a flying tour through Ulster. I was astonished at its beauty. Even after being familiar with the loveliness of the English landscape, I was in a state of continued surprise at the variety, richness, and singularity of nature in the northern counties. Mountain, lake, magnificent bay, and broad river, followed each other in noble and unceasing succession. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... down upon the margin of the green sea, rolling on before the door, and filling all the streets, I came upon a place of such surpassing beauty, and such grandeur, that all the rest was poor and faded, in comparison with its absorbing loveliness. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... pleasure in the same degree; no other town is so thoroughly typical of the district over which it presides. One can no more imagine the Pyrenees without Luchon than Luchon without the Pyrenees; neither of them is conceivable without the other; together, they form a picture and its frame. A region of loveliness, amusement and hot water needed a metropolis possessing the same three features in the highest degree; in Luchon they are concentrated with a completeness of which no example is to be found elsewhere. No valley is so delicious; nowhere is there such an accumulation ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... Something in the stillness moved me to imitation, and I went very lightly across the court and up the marble staircase. My foot was on the topmost round, when a door opened, and I found myself face to face with Olalla. Surprise transfixed me; her loveliness struck to my heart; she glowed in the deep shadow of the gallery, a gem of colour; her eyes took hold upon mine and clung there, and bound us together like the joining of hands; and the moments we thus stood face to face, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... white. The primrose, the daffodil, the flame, the gold, the black, the emerald, the ruby of her youth gave way to grey and silver, pale jade and faint turquoise, shell pink and dim lavender. Her loveliness had shifted. The hours of the day conspired to set her. The hard coat and skirt, the high collar, the small hat, the neat veil of morning, the caressing charmeuse that followed, the trailing chiffon mysteries ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... now a tree. The naturalists tell us that these winter companies of chaffinches are usually composed of birds of one sex only, the males consorting together for the time as in a boys' school. The chaffinch, I think, is the commonest bird in this part of the country. It is so common that its loveliness has hardly been appreciated as it ought to be. It is a little world of colour, like a small jay, and nothing could be more beautiful than its flushed breast as it sits on the top of a tall tree in the sunset. As for the jay, it hurries away like a thief before one has time to see its coat ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... backward toss of her head, scattered her loose locks about her. As they spread and sparkled under Mrs. Heeny's touch, Mrs. Spragg leaned back, drinking in through half-closed lids her daughter's loveliness. Some new quality seemed added to Undine's beauty: it had a milder bloom, a kind of melting grace, which might have been lent to it by the moisture in ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... steps and shaking their long locks in the wind, as Bacchantes wave their wands in the wild revels of the Wine-god. At their head, oh! chaste and beauteous goddess, daughter of Latona, Artemis, do thou lead the song and dance. A fillet binding thy waving tresses, appear in thy loveliness; leap like a fawn; strike thy divine hands together to animate the dance, and aid us to renown the valiant goddess of battles, great Athen of the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... city of Rome. The Angel with great joy received his guests, And gave them presents of embroidered vests, And velvet mantles with rich ermine lined, And rings and jewels of the rarest kind. Then he departed with them o'er the sea Into the lovely land of Italy, Whose loveliness was more resplendent made By the mere passing of that cavalcade, With plumes, and cloaks, and housings, and the stir Of jewelled bridle and of golden spur. And lo! among the menials, in mock state, Upon a piebald steed, with shambling gait, His cloak of fox-tails flapping in the wind, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... their idols, from snow-white marble, into the most exquisite proportions of the human form. Many they invested with all the charms of loveliness, and endowed them with the most amiable attributes. The voluptuous Venus and the laurel-crowned Bacchus were their gods. But the Sclavonians, regarding their deities only as possessors of power and objects ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... representation of physical charm. Not being able to offer a satisfactory illustration of the whole statue, I have chosen for reproduction a copy of the head alone (Fig. 151). It will help the reader to divine the simple loveliness of the original. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Others were comforting her in a very kind manner, bidding her look to Jesus. Mr. Burns went to the desk, and told them of Kilsyth. Still they would not go away. Spoke a few words more to those around me, telling them of the loveliness of Christ, and the hardness of their hearts, that they could be so unmoved when one was so deeply wounded. The sobbing soon spread, till many heads were bent down, and the church was filled with sobbing. Many whom ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... which I have put at your disposal; but I foresee that at the end of many years a youth will find his way to this your palace. And though my magic arts have been able to build this paradise for your habitation, though they have endowed you with perpetual youth and loveliness, and, greatest deed of all, have banished hence the dark shadow of Death, yet have they not the power to make four maidens live in happiness and unity with but one man! Therefore, I have given unto each of you certain gifts, and of you four the youth shall choose one to be his love; and ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... courage and chivalry than any amount of money. He shudders at the thought of causing suffering to an innocent woman or child. He would sacrifice his life for the girl whom he regards as the personification of loveliness and purity. If we will but deal with him fairly and honestly, he will see in birth an ever-recurring miracle; he will regard his body as a sacred temple; he will see in sex power a source of richer and fuller life; he will respect ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... a convinced pro-Ally out of Germany, she might get some more shell-wracked jetsams like this one, that would step in without regard for the rules of civilized warfare and make the life of a certain beef-cattle raiser just one long dream of loveliness with pink rose leaves dreening down ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... stars; The vast, blue night Was murmurous with peris' plumes And the leathern wings of genies; words of power Were whispering; and old fishermen, Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore Dead loveliness: or a prodigy in scales Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold: Or copper vessels, stopped with lead, Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed, In durance under potent charactry Graven by the seal of Solomon the ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... remarkable. Teeming with much that is ancient, she appears the embodiment of youth and beauty. Exquisite in line, sparkling with light and colour, she seems ever bright and young, while her sons fall into decay and perish. "Alma Mater!" they cry, and love her for her loveliness, till their dim eyes can look on ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... stately shrine,—a shrine whose immense carven pillars, grotesque idols, bronze and gold ornaments, jewelled lamps and dazzling embroideries, only served as a sort of neutral-tinted background to intensify with a more lustrous charm the statuesque loveliness revealed! O Lysia, UNvirgined Priestess of the Sun and Nagaya, how gloriously art thou arrayed in sin! ... O singular Sweetness whose end must needs be destruction, was ever woman fairer than thou! ... O love, love, lost in the dead Long-Ago, and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... would be, of course, that one which I was to behold most frequently throughout the aeons without end—even the face of that radiant being who had gone before, to await me in the angelhood; where, beaming seraphic upon me forever, it was to be to me the embodiment of all ideals of loveliness, grace, refinement, love. In its every lineament I was to read and decipher an endless series of ever fresh and most celestial arcana—was continually to find new proof of love and wisdom, and of the divine ability to adapt human to human. Since the love ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the exquisite, elusive perfume which, like a breath of musk, spoke of the Orient; and, as always, it played havoc with my reason, seeming to intoxicate me as though it were the very essence of her loveliness. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Beechwood Forest would be vacant within the next few days. Summer was closing with the soft loveliness that makes one forgive and ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... something hauntingly, almost tragically serious in his austere young face, but his smiles when they came were flashes of the very divinity of youth and were a strange incarnation of the essence of Rose Mary's cousinly loveliness. "He was crying because he was by hisself and I bringed him along to wait till his mother came home. He belongs some to us, 'cause he's named for Uncle Tuck, and I oughter pester with him same as Tobe have to. It's fair to do ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... retire till two. A solitary bachelor like myself still wanders, or still lounges on a bench in the warm moonlight. The last guitar dies away, the cathedral clock wakes up your reverie, you too seek your couch, and amid a gentle, sweet flow of loveliness, and light, and music, and fresh air, thus dies a day in Spain. Adieu, my dearest mother. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... you cannot be allowed to grow old or withdraw. Was I not once promised a visit? This house entreats you earnestly and lovingly to come and dwell in it. My wife and Ellen and Edward E. are thoroughly acquainted with your greatness and your loveliness. And it is but ten days of healthy ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... you love me? I'm so ugly. Oh, I feel it here, I feel it horribly in the midst of—of all this loveliness, with you." ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies;" H. Coleridge's "She is not fair to outward view, As many maidens be; Her loveliness I never knew Until she smiled on me. O then I saw her eye was bright, A well of love, a spring of light. "But now her looks are coy and cold, To mine they ne'er reply, And yet I cease not to behold The love-light in her eye: Her very frowns are fairer far Than smiles of other maidens ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... stand at the close of the day and gaze at the sunlight playing over mountain and fjord, until I wept, as though I had done something wrong; and where I, descending on my snow-shoes into some valley, would pause as though bewitched by a loveliness, by a longing, which I had not the power to explain, but which was so great that above the highest ecstasy of joy I would feel the deepest apprehension and distress—here in the parsonage of Naesset were ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... heart grows warm, With feelings undefined, Throwing their deep diffusive charm O'er all the realms of mind. The loveliness of truth Flings out its brightest rays, Clothed in the songs of early youth, Or joys of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... asked of it; what artificialities in colour she had used upon her face were only bits of emphasis that made her prettiness the more distinct; and the dress, not rumpled by her mother's careful hours of work, was a white cloud of loveliness. Finally there were two triumphant bouquets of violets, each with the stems wrapped in tin-foil shrouded by a bow of purple chiffon; and one bouquet she wore at her waist and the other she carried in ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... I remember her; a willowy, shadowy creature, with a sort of ethereal loveliness which appealed very strongly to my imagination when I was ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... one last despairing effort. With a strangely unnatural laugh, he drew a chair to her side and began to talk rapidly, never once letting his eyes rest upon her loveliness, striving to keep his thoughts fixed upon his subject, but all the time acutely conscious of her presence. He talked of many things with a restless energy which more than once caused her to look up at him in wonderment. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... physiognomy, which had, if we may venture so to speak, neither age nor sex. It was not the bold and masculine air of a descendant of a race of magnates, who know nothing but drinking, hunting, and making war; neither was it the effeminate loveliness of a cherub couleur de rose. It was more like the ideal creations with which the poetry of the Middle Ages adorned the Christian temples: a beautiful angel, with a form pure and slight as a young god of Olympus, with a face like that of a majestic woman filled with a divine sorrow, and as the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sway Austria, from the very brink of ruin, was elevated to a degree of splendor and power it had never attained before. These conflicts and victories inspired Maria with a haughty and imperious spirit, and the loveliness of the female character was lost amid the pomp of martial achievements. The proud sovereign ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... by the noble speech of Chatannna, but I soon recovered from its effects. The little Oesedah came to my aid by saying: "Wait until Ohiyesa tells of the loveliness of the beautiful Oriole's home!" This timely remark gave me courage ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... observed them, and one said to the other, "Do you notice those beautiful women in the balcony? The mother is beautiful, but the daughter is far more beautiful." The step-mother had always been jealous of the daughter's loveliness, but now her jealousy was fanned into a burning flame. The wise image-maker was no longer there to tell her ...
— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells
... had before noted so keenly; but now in a flash I saw all—the east crimson with sunrise through the white window on my right hand; the richly-carved stalls and gilded screen work, the pictures on the walls, the loveliness of the faultless colour of the mosaic window lights, the altar and the red light over it looking strange in the daylight, and the biers with the hidden dead men upon them that lay before the high altar. A great pain filled my heart at the sight of all that beauty, and withal ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris |
