"Pleasing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life, but at the same time seem to breathe the adventurous spirit that lives in the clear air of the wide plains, and lofty mountain ranges of the Wild West. These tales are written in a vein calculated to delight the heart of every lad who loves to read of pleasing adventure in the open; yet at the same time the most careful parent need not hesitate to place them in the hands of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... starting was fraught with danger. In the event of his coming out of it alive, he charged Megabyzus to restore to him the deposit; but should any evil happen to him, then he was to cause to be made and to dedicate on his behalf to Artemis, whatsoever thing he thought would be pleasing ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... and studded with islands, sometimes stretching away to distant slopes of green turf, and sometimes reflecting masses of precipitous rock, crowned with the spiry tops of spruces and firs. Indeed, all the country around, both meadow and upland, was very pleasing to the sight. A low range of hills skirted the northern part of what seemed to be a spacious, natural amphitheatre, while on the south side a diversity of highlands and water added to the whole the charm ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... woods, it is seeing my men-folk make a nice bit of land-a nice bit of land that was all trees and stumps and roots, which one beholds in a fortnight as bare as the back of your hand, ready for the plough; surely nothing in the world can be more pleasing or better worth doing." The rest gave assent with nods, and were silent for a while, admiring the picture. Soon however Chapdelaine awoke, refreshed by his sleep and ready for work; then all ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... this pleasing error by the form of their provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are popular in an high degree; some are merely popular; in all, the popular representative is the most weighty; and this share of the people ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... Vivian's favorite one. And placing a single flowret in my hair, I crossed the hall to Helen's chamber, where I found her with her fair locks all let down, Brushing the kinks out, with a pretty frown. 'T was like a picture, or a pleasing play, To watch her make her toilet. She would stand, And turn her head first this and then that way, Trying effect of ribbon, bow or band. Then she would pick up something else, and curve Her lovely neck, with cunning, bird-like grace, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... commanding officer," I replied; "and I thank you greatly for the pleasing intelligence you have so promptly afforded us. How many of us can ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... the summer was in full tide of song and scents and pleasing vistas, I was bringing important despatches to Governor Dunmore. The long-looked-for Indian war was upon us. From the back-country to the seaboard Virginians knew this year of 1774 was to figure prominently ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... little town is pleasing to me; I love its streets of dark shops, the worn thresholds, and the gardens. In the fine season they seem to float against a background of blue mist which is a confusion of hollyhocks, glycins, trellises; or again they seem patchy as the ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... was descended from one of the oldest among the patrician families of Rome. He attached himself to the popular party, and his good taste, great tact, and pleasing manners contributed, together with his talents, to insure his popularity. He became a soldier in the nineteenth year of his age, and hence his works display all the best qualities which are fostered by a military education—frankness, simplicity, and brevity. His earliest ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... looked into it. Is it a crime to be acquainted with one's own likeness and to carry it with one wherever one goes ready to hand within the compass of a small mirror, instead of keeping it hidden away in some one place? Are you ignorant of the fact that there is nothing more pleasing for a man to look upon than his own image? At any rate I know that fathers love those sons most who most resemble themselves, and that public statues are decreed as a reward for merit that the original may gladden his heart by looking on them. What else is the significance ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... cry! You are brindle and brown, I know. And with wild, glad hues Of reds and blues, You never will gleam and glow. But though not pleasing to the eye, There, little Cow, don't ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... my sorrow, that they had fallen into hands which were not entitled to them. Suffice it to say that few, if any of them, could be found. After perfect quiet had been restored, and we were thus robbed of these significant trophies of our triumph at which we felt quite a keen disappointment, it is pleasing to me to say that I think that every man of our regiment who was present acted his part nobly in the performance of the hazardous duty assigned us on that memorable occasion. You gave me the order to make the final charge ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... ease, and at the same time, O Spirit," answered the new king, "for these red stones were found by our people on the beach and in the soil of the cliffs at the spot where they came upon the wrecked white men and women. A few were found, in the first place, on the beach, and, being of a pleasing colour and shooting forth a ruddy light, were offered to M'Bongwele, who so greatly admired them that he sent the finders back to look for more, with orders to bring him enough to make ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... took me into Somersett House; and there carried me into the Queen-Mother's presence-chamber, where she was with our own Queen sitting on her left hand (whom I did never see before); and though she be not very charming, yet she hath a good, modest, and innocent look, which is pleasing. Here I also saw Madam Castlemaine, and, which pleased me most, Mr. Crofts, the King's bastard, a most pretty spark of about 15 years old, who, I perceive, do hang much upon my Lady Castlemaine, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... out on deck, they were busied again in heaving taut the rope, and, until they had made an end, Mistress Madison and I filled the time with such chatter as is wholesome between a man and maid who have not long met, yet find one another pleasing company. Then, when at last the rope was taut, I went up to the mizzen staging, and climbed into the chair, after which some of the men lashed me in very securely. Yet when they gave the signal to haul me to the island, there came for ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... a fat husband? Does Baby want a fat father? You wouldn't like, at your next garden party, to have everybody asking you in a whisper, 'Who is the enormously stout gentleman?' If Nature made me thin—or, to be more accurate, slender and of a pleasing litheness—let us ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... pleasing some people. This craving for perpetual change is the curse of the country. Friday's a very ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... contact with old world nobility, I know not. But instantly, Colonel Adderly's reference to Lord Selkirk and the Beaver Club called up the picture of a banquet in Montreal, when I was a lad of seven, or thereabouts. I had been tricked out in some Highland costume especially pleasing to the Earl—cap, kilts, dirk and all—and was taken by my Uncle Jack MacKenzie to the Beaver Club. Here, in a room, that glittered with lights, was a table steaming with things, which caught and held my boyish eyes; and all ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the Queen must have been lovely in her youth; for though she grew rather stout in after life, yet her features, as shown in her portrait, are certainly PLEASING. If she was fond of flattery, scandal, cards, and fine clothes, let us deal gently with her infirmities, which, after all, may be no greater than our own. She was kind to her nephew; and if she had any scruples of conscience about her husband's taking the young Prince's crown, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... decayed flight of steps, into a valley where is a small convent called El Erbayn, or the forty; it is in good repair, and is at present inhabited by a family of Djebalye, who take care of the garden annexed to it, which affords a pleasing place of rest to those who descend from the barren mountains above. In its neighbourhood are extensive olive plantations, but I was told that for the last five summers the locusts had devoured both the fruit and foliage of these trees, upon which they ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... course; until, finally, becalmed close to a pleasant-appearing island, the anchor was dropped. There grew upon this island beautiful flowers and luscious fruits in "great profusion"; tall trees lent a pleasing, cooling shade to the place, which appeared to the ship's passengers most desirable and inviting. They divided themselves into five parties; the first party determined not to leave the ship, for said they, "A fair wind may arise, the anchor may be raised, and the ship sail on, leaving us ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... place for her in attendance on her ladyship of the great Hosokawa House. O'Iwa's absence made no difference in his household. The train of servants was maintained, to be disciplined for her return, to be ready on this return. Perhaps it was a pleasing fiction to the fond mind of the aging man that she would return, soon, to-morrow. O'Naka acquiesced in the useless expense and change in her habits. She always acquiesced; yet her own idea would ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... sky serene. He decided to wear white flannel trousers—white flannel trousers and a black jacket, with a silk shirt and his new peach-coloured tie. And what shoes? White was the obvious choice, but there was something rather pleasing about the notion of black patent leather. He lay in bed for ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... plenty to do and to talk about after this. Constance was perplexed what name to give her baby. She had never consulted any will but her own before, for she had not cared about pleasing Le Despenser. But she wanted to please Kent, and she did not know what name would gratify him. At length she decided on Alianora, a name borne by two of his sisters, of whom the eldest, the Countess of March, she believed ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... painted the characters, and ridiculed the follies, of life with equal strength, humour and propriety. The supreme autocrat of the eighteenth century, Dr Johnson himself, though always somewhat hostile to Fielding, read Amelia through without stopping, and pronounced her to be 'the most pleasing heroine of all the romances.' "What a poet is here," cries Thackeray, "watching, meditating, brooding, creating! What multitudes of truths has that man left behind him: what generations he has taught to laugh ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... had peered out into the night. Many of the prisoners in the snowbound coaches had enjoyed the experience somewhat at first, for there is pleasing and indefinable thrill to unexpected adventure, and this, for a brief spell, had been adventure de luxe. There had been warmth and light, men's laughter, women's voices, and children's play. But the loudest jester among the men was now silent, huddled deep in his great coat; and the young ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... knives and forks form a pleasing accompaniment to Auber's music, and Auber's music would form a pleasing accompaniment to the dinner, if you could hear ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... eighteen; a face, not what most people would call pretty, but still having a fair share of beauty. Her features were, perhaps, a little too strongly outlined, but the brow was fair as a lily, and from it the great mass of dark hair was drawn back in a pleasing way. But her eyes—those earnest, grey eyes—were the most impressive of all in her unusually impressive face. They were such searching eyes, as though she had stood on the brink scanning the very Infinite, and yet with a certain baffled look ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... old and unsentimental gamblers, who told me that this game was particularly pleasing because you did not see from whom you were winning, as is the case in other games; a lackey brought, not money, but chips; each man lost a little stake, and his disappointment was not visible . . . It is the same with roulette, which is everywhere ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... another platform which not only includes all this, but which introduces principles of an infinitely higher grade. It is the platform enforced by Jesus Christ as essential to a life which shall be pleasing to our Heavenly Father. Our Saviour says, You must love God in whom you live and move and have your being: you must daily pray to him with gratitude for the favors you receive. In the great conflict, raging here below, between sin and holiness, ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... parliamentarian. He was thoroughly educated, ambitious, and withal an excellent speaker, and was the possessor in full measure of the suaviter in modo. His personal popularity was great, and a more obliging, agreeable, and pleasing associate it would have been difficult to find. He was optimistic to the last degree. To him every cloud had a silver lining,—the lining generally concealing the cloud. It was said of him by one of his colleagues that when the election returns were coming in, showing overwhelming defeat to his ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... solitude life becomes a dialogue of man with his own soul, and the internal colloquies render more bitter and intense the affections which have returned to the heart for want of nourishment in the world. Mournful colloquies and yet pleasing, where man is the suicidal vulture perpetually preying upon himself, and caressing the wound that drags him to the grave.... The first cause of his sorrow is Recanati: the intellect, capable of the universe, feels itself oppressed in an obscure ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... well in hand to make himself acquainted with the same early in life. Accordingly, the squaws teach these things to their children in a kind of sing-song not greatly unlike that which was the national furore some time ago in rural singing-schools, wherein they melodiously chanted such pleasing items of information as this: 'California. Sacramento, on the Sacramento River.' Over and over, time and again, they rehearse all these bowlders, etc., describing each minutely and by name, with its surroundings. Then when the children are old enough, they take them around to ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the piece with the first and most pleasing in the volume, 'Love the greatest Enchantment', in which the same myth [that of Circe and Ulysses] is exhibited in a more life-like form, though not without some touches of allegory. Here we have a classical plot which is adapted to the taste of Spain in the seventeenth century ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... I never met with so pleasing, so honest, and so truly deserving a Book, I shou'd never have done, if I explain'd All my Reasons for admiring its Author.——If it is not a Secret, oblige me so far as to tell me his Name: for since I feel him the Friend of my Soul, it would be a Kind of Violation to retain him a Stranger.——I ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... have had a rather pleasing face had he let it alone; but his people love bright colors, and he was never seen without a lot of paint daubed over it. This was made up of black, white, and yellow circles, lines, and streaks that made him ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... contracted a close friendship with Monteverde as a result of meeting him so often at the countess's. He no longer seemed foolish and unattractive. Renovales found in him something of the woman he loved and therefore his company was pleasing. He experienced that calm attraction, free from jealousy, that the husband of a mistress inspires in some men. They sat together at the theater, went to walk, conversing amiably, and the doctor frequently visited the artist's studio in the afternoon. This intimacy quite disconcerted ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a love story, simple, tender and pretty as one would care to read. The action throughout is brisk and pleasing; the characters, it is apparent at once, are as true to life as though the author had known them all personally. Simple in all its situations, the story is worked up in that touching and quaint strain which never grows wearisome, no matter how often the lights and ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... would have been less favourable than that which it has experienced. It is more polished in its diction, and more regular in its versification; the story is constructed with infinitely more skill and address; there is a greater proportion of pleasing and tender passages, with much less antiquarian detail; and, upon the whole, a larger variety of characters, more artfully and judiciously contrasted. There is nothing so fine, perhaps, as the battle in Marmion, or so picturesque as some of the scattered sketches ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... impatient when she could not find the things he called for, even broke into restrained profanity now and then. She went a little pale over her mistakes, but preserved her dignity and her wits. Now and then he found her dark eyes fixed on him, with something inscrutable but pleasing in their depths. The situation was: rather piquant. Consciously he was thinking only of what he was doing. Subconsciously his busy ego was finding solace after last ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... down. This naturally provoked the many friends of Schiller, and they replied by assailing Goethe. His 'universality' was decried as a lamentable weakness: it meant lack of character, of principle, of patriotism. His pleasing form was only the seductive veil of immorality and pococurantism. And so the controversy raged, becoming at last, in some cases, mere blind fury. One who would like to get a vivid impression of the state of German criticism at this time, and of the extent to which partisanship could obfuscate the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... gives of itself a certain dramatic cohesion. Of the so-called Dramatic Unities of Time and Place, however, there is no suggestion; there is no unity of characters; there is no consideration of what may be shocking, what pleasing as a spectacle. Whoever saw the whole play through was hurried through thousands of years, was carried from heaven to earth and down to hell; he beheld kings, shepherds, high priests, executioners, playing ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... even for trifles, difficult of access, never in accord with himself, and keeping all around him in a tremble; to conclude, impetuosity and avarice were his masters, which monopolised him always. With all this he was a man difficult to be proof against when he put in play the pleasing ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and partnerships are of little account, because, excepting the sign of honor, each one receives what he is in need of. To the heroes and heroines of the republic, it is customary to give the pleasing gifts of honor, beautiful wreaths, sweet food, or splendid clothes, while they are feasting. In the daytime all use white garments within the city, but at night or outside the city they use red garments either of wool or silk. They hate black as they do dung, and therefore ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... that they are no worse than most other royal apartments; our guide led us to them through many granite courts and corridors where we left groups of unguided Americans still maddening over their Baedekers; and we found them hung with pleasing tapestries, some after such designs of Goya's as one finds in the basement of the Prado. The furniture was in certain rooms cheerily upholstered in crimson and salmon without sense of color, but as if seeking relief from the gray of the church; and there are ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... or mob, in all ages, have been a set of blind, deaf, obstinate, senseless, illiterate savages. That no man of genius, in his senses, would be ambitious of pleasing such a capricious, ungrateful rabble. That the only legitimate end of writing for them is to pick their pockets, and, that failing, we are at full liberty to vilify and abuse them as much as ever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... sacrifice, that they created the universe by sacrifice, that Prajapati, the creator, is the sacrifice. Although some writers are disposed to distinguish magic sharply from religion, the two are not separated in the Vedas. Sacrifice is not merely a means of pleasing the gods: it is a system of authorized magic or sacred science controlling all worlds, if properly understood. It is a mysterious cosmic force like electricity which can be utilized by a properly trained priest but is dangerous in unskilful ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... the picturesque rows and groups of old fifteenth-and sixteenth-century houses with their tiled roofs and gables, weather-boarded or tile-hung after the manner of Sussex cottages, graceful bay-windows—altogether pleasing. Wherever one wanders one meets with these charming dwellings, especially in West Street and Pump Street; the oldest house in Rye being at the corner of the churchyard. The Mermaid Inn is delightful both outside and inside, with its low panelled rooms, immense fire-places ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... week Mr. Terhune made his advent among us. He was a fair type of the adventurer, and seemed a man who could be equal to any emergency circumstances might demand; of robust form, a complexion bronzed by exposure, and with an address so pleasing when he wished to exert himself, that he soon became a favorite, especially with the female portion of the family. He adapted himself to our mode of life with wonderful ease, and apparently was making preparations for a visit that should outlast ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... blood—the boasted sangre-azul. His features were well formed, oval, and slightly aquiline, his complexion dark, yet clear, his hair and moustaches black, lustrous, and profuse. But for a sinister cast in his eyes, not always observable, his countenance would have been pleasing enough. As it was he prided himself upon it even now that he was well up in years, and his hair becoming silvered. As for the moustaches, black pomatum kept them ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... don't like it!" said Ludlow, with an air of disappointment. "And yet I aimed at pleasing you ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... hours passed ere it befell emphatically even so. There had been the evening meal, followed by an hour or so of the always pleasing and often instructive talk of my hostess, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill, who has largely known life for sixty years and found it entertaining and good. And we had parted at an early nine, both tired from the work and the play that ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... evil which compel us to repeat them for other reasons than the force of habit. For instance, a fraudulent book-keeper has to go on making false entries in his employer's books in order to hide his peculations. Whoever steps on to the steeply sloping road to which self-pleasing invites us, soon finds that he is on an inclined plane well greased, and that compulsion is on him to go on, though he may recoil from the descent, and be shudderingly aware of what the end must be. Let no man say, 'I will do this doubtful thing once only, and never again.' Sin is like an octopus, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... scholarly nor well-informed outside of his especial line of work. According as he is endowed with mental graces and forms of culture, apart from his science, will be his charm as a companion; but while the absence of these means of pleasing is sometimes met with, and while their lack in no wise lessens his power of investigation, I have found most men of science to possess in a high degree qualities which rendered them delightful as comrades at the camp-fire ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... the Terror, and who was ruined by these events. Born in 1781. During the Consulate he returned to France, at which time he declined certain offers made by Bonaparte. He remained ever true to the tenets of Louis XVIII. Of pleasing presence he won his way, and the Faubourg Saint-Germain regarded him as an ornament. About 1809 he married the widow of Colonel Chabert, who had an income of forty thousand francs. By her he had two children, a son and a daughter. He resided on rue de Varenne, having ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... day, and corrupt his worship, by immixing human inventions therewith, which was directly a framing mischief into a law. Yet, with all these impositions above noticed, this church has generally complied; and thereby declared that they are more studious of pleasing and obeying men, than God, seeing their practice therein infers no less, than a taking instructions in the ministerial function, and matters of divine worship, from another head ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... if I were to tell you that your papa did not perish at sea, but was saved from a humid grave?" asked the stranger in pleasing tones. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... teamster by the name of Drake and his two sons, and together they had felled and dressed trees enough for a cabin, laid them up with clay brought five miles on mule-back, roofed the structure with shakes made on the spot with a froe, and the result was pleasing, indeed, to this man straight ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... only reported a small part of the conversation I had with the Literary Celebrity. He was so much taken up with his pleasing self-contemplation, while I made him air his opinions and feelings and spread his characteristics as his laundress spreads and airs his linen on the clothes-line, that I don't believe it ever occurred to him that he had been in the hands of an interviewer until he found himself exposed to the wind ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "Annuals" is of equal literary merit with its precursors; but not quite equal in its engravings—The Sisters' Dream, by Davenport, from a drawing by Corbould, is, however, placidly interesting; the Bridal Morning, by Finden, is also a pleasing scene; and the Seventh Plague of Egypt, by Le Keux, from a design by Martin, though in miniature, is terrific and sublime. In the literary department we especially notice the Sun-Dial, a pensive tale, by Delta, but too long for extract; and the Sky-Lark by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... perhaps so much truth in the suspicion as this: that Mrs. Thornton was the mother of one whose regard she valued, and feared to have lost; and this thought unconsciously added to her natural desire of pleasing one who was showing her kindness by her visit. Mrs. Thornton stood up to go, but yet she seemed to have something more to say. She ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... given. But precious time went on, and again came telegrams from the ladies that nothing was done. Again I went to the minister to urge the matter upon his attention; again he assumed the same jellyfish condition, pleasing but evasive. Then I realized the situation; went at once to the prefect of St. Petersburg, General von Wahl, although it was not strictly within his domain; and he, a man of character and vigor, took the necessary measures and the ladies ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... an interview with Joseph William Carter and several of his daughters. The data was cheerfully given to the writer. Joseph William Carter has lived a long and, he declares, a happy life, although he was born and reared in bondage. His pleasing personality has always made his lot an easy one and his yoke seemed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... said he, "whether any one expects a feast to-night, from a few unlucky remarks which fell from me this morning; if so, gentlemen, I wish immediately to dispel the pleasing delusion, assuring you of the melancholy fact, that my golden pippins have ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... account of my situation; for, to have the eyes of the whole continent fixed on me, with anxious expectation of hearing some great event, and to be restrained in every military operation for want of the necessary means to carry it on, is not very pleasing; especially as the means used to conceal my weakness from the enemy, conceal it also from our friends, and add to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... was mad with me for cutting down the tree in the horse park, which was none of my doing, please your honour—ill-luck to them that went and belied me to your honour behind my back! So if your honour is pleasing, I'll tell you the whole truth about the horse that he swopped against my mare out of the face. Last Shrove fair I met this man, Jemmy Duffy, please your honour, just at the corner of the road, where the bridge ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... squares, with an occasional pane of bottle glass, which winked like an eye rounded by amaze. Within, the wide fireplaces and ceilings were enriched by delicate mouldings, whose once clean-cut outlines were blurred to a pleasing, uncertain quality by successive coats of whitewash. The room where Ishmael had been born boasted a domed ceiling, and a band of moulding half-way up the walls culminated over the bed's head in a representation of the Crucifixion—the drooping Christ ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... humility kills it, for he that fears to give umbrage to the Lord, desires not to do wrong even in his thoughts. This is what I recognized at the last, after I had done penance on account of Joseph, for true atonement, pleasing to God, enlightens the eyes, illumines the soul with knowledge, and creates a counsel of salvation. My penance came in consequence of a sickness of the liver that God inflicted upon me. Without the prayers of my father ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... weak. He was the most delightful fellow in society that I have ever seen. He comprehended everybody and everything with the grasp of an ardent and sympathetic spirit. He was happy in possessing a natural facility for pleasing women of all ages and all degrees. The professors' wives and daughters were all in love with him: his rooms were full of the work of white hands. He had as many smoking-caps as there are days in the week, and might have fitted out the entire class with slippers. But nobody ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... the military classes, since they inherit the blood and habits of conquerors, naturally love war and their irrational combativeness is reinforced by interest; for in war officers can shine and rise, while the danger of death, to a brave man, is rather a spur and a pleasing excitement than a terror. A military class is therefore always recalling, foretelling, and meditating war; it fosters artificial and senseless jealousies toward other governments that possess armies; and finally, as often as not, it precipitates disaster by bringing ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... naturally on the Turkey carpet! You observe she sits majestically in a commodious chair; she needs one! For she is five feet eleven inches in height, and weighs sixteen stone. I call her "The Queen," for when she stands up she is erect and queenly with a noble head and pleasing countenance. ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... the accommodation of the middle ranks of society, the crowds of well-dressed peasantry going to and returning from church; the frank and cheerful countenances of the men, and beauty of the women—all presented a most pleasing spectacle. If we had not proposed to cross the channel, we should have compared all that we now saw with our recollections of Scotland; and the feeling of the difference, although it might have increased our admiration, would perhaps ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... was the more pleasing, when I looked back upon those scenes of horror and outcry which filled London but a week or two ago, when danger was not confined to night only, and the environs of the capital, but haunted our streets at midday. ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... brought upon her. Sitting in the sunshine near the window, she seemed to receive with its warmth a kind influence, which made her both happy and good. Thus disposed, she looked her best, and her best was a pleasing vision. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... given a copious run, and tended his kettles, to boil and save what the bounty of Providence so lavishly furnished. He had no one with him but his dog, and yet he was never alone. His thoughts were his companions, his hopes, his pleasing pastimes. A veil of blinding atmosphere hung over him, and his eyes perceived no objects beyond his camp but the solemn trees and the lofty stars; and yet his mind was not muffled up in that veil. When Jesus died, the veil of God's temple was rent in twain; the veil ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... have had experience in warring against white desperadoes and law-breakers than against Indians. Some of our best recruits came from Colorado. One, a very large, hawk-eyed man, Benjamin Franklin Daniels, had been Marshal of Dodge City when that pleasing town was probably the toughest abode of civilized man to be found anywhere on the continent. In the course of the exercise of his rather lurid functions as peace-officer he had lost half of one ear—"bitten off," it was explained ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... would not have succeeded with Malcolm, however, but for the youth's love to Duncan, the fervent heat of which vaporized the dark heavy stone of obligation into the purple vapour of gratitude, and enhanced the desire of pleasing him until it became almost a passion. Obligation is a ponderous roll of canvas which Love spreads aloft into a tent ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... had tough work before they obtained this success. They found that the King would not consent to their wishes without much opposition. They hit upon a devilish plan to overpower his resistance. Hitherto, they had only been occupied in pleasing him, in amusing him, in anticipating his wishes, in praising him—let me say the word— in adoring him. They had redoubled their attention, since, by the Dauphine's death, they had become his ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... shame be it told—were sufficient to induce a governor of Kentucky to withhold the exercise of executive clemency, the most glorious prerogative intrusted to our chief magistrates, and which it ought to have been a most pleasing privilege to grant: for, incredible as it may seem, Governor —— knew, when he signed the death-warrant, that the man he was consigning to an ignominious grave was innocent of the crime for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... threw back their heads and poured down their throats the drink which they preferred. On a table were bread, butter, cheese and sausages. Each one would step up from time to time and swallow a mouthful, and under the starlit sky this healthy and violent exercise was a pleasing sight, and made one also feel like drinking from these enormous casks and eating the crisp bread and butter with ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... useless to quarrel with the tendency of mankind to turn its eyes from disagreeable subjects, and to dwell complacently upon those which minister to self-content. We mostly read the newspapers in which we find our views reflected, and dispense ourselves easily with the less pleasing occupation of seeing them roughly disputed; but a writer on a subject of national importance may not thus exempt himself from the unpleasant ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and then either to be chosen or rejected by the judgment!" At that moment, he adds, "I was in that eagerness of imagination which, by over-pleasing fanciful men, flatters them into the danger of writing." GIBBON tells us of his history, "At the onset all was dark and doubtful; even the title of the work, the true era of the decline and fall of the empire, &c. I was often tempted to cast away the labour of seven years." WINCKELMANN ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... familiarity with the town soon changes all these notions, and while we admit that Paris is altogether secondary, so far as trade is concerned, we come to feel the magnificence of her public works, and to find something that is pleasing and picturesque, even in her huge and unwieldy wood and coal barges. Trade is a good thing in its way, but its agents rarely contribute to the taste, learning, manners, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and sweetness. There is work to be done, and there are empty hours to be filled as well. It is happiest of all, for man and woman, if those hours can be filled, not as a duty but as a pleasure, by pleasing those whom we love and whose nearness is at once a delight. We ought to make time for that most of all. And then there ought to be some occupation, not enforced, to which we naturally wish to return. Exercise, gardening, handicraft, writing, ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... pronounced Phil Compton's sentence all the same. He did not say a word about this encounter to Mrs. Dennistoun; at least, he did tell her that he had met Elinor at the So-and-So's, which, as it was one of the best houses in London, was pleasing ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... a smile of his own, a weak inane sickly smile that irritated instead of pleasing you, and made you always feel as if you would like to punch his head for being such a fool, when all the time he was not a fool at all, but a thoroughly good-hearted, brave, and clever fellow—true as steel—steel of the very elastic watch-spring ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... the thunder came the shower, more violent than Kynon had described, and after the shower the sky became bright. Immediately the birds came and settled upon the tree and sang. And when their song was most pleasing to Owain he beheld a knight coming towards him through the valley; and he prepared to receive him, and encountered him violently. Having broken both their lances, they drew their swords and fought blade to blade. Then Owain struck ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... prospered more through gifts in a single year than I should have done if I had stayed there a hundred. True it is that the weakness of womankind makes their needs and sufferings appeal strongly to people's feelings, as likewise it makes their virtue all the more pleasing to God and man. And God granted such favour in the eyes of all to her who was now my sister, and who was in authority over the rest, that the bishops loved her as a daughter, the abbots as a sister, and the laity as a mother. All ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... diverged into a more independant style, he at no time showed himself content with the earlier poet's simplicity of motive.[13] The eclogue in which he followed Theocritus most closely, the eighth, is equally, perhaps, the most pleasing of the series. It combines the motives of the love-lament and incantation, and the closeness with which it follows while playing variations on its models is striking. One instance will suffice. Take the passage in the second Idyl thus ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... find you out. Through wilful perversion of the pleasing name the Professor had rendered ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... cleaning some grass seeds in a worley, with a child who could just walk. The moment he saw us he jumped up, and, seizing his father's spear, took the child by the hand and walked off out of our way. It was quite pleasing to see the bold spirit of the little fellow. On nearing Central Mount Stuart we saw two men, who made off into the scrub. Arrived at the creek after dark, but the water is all gone. On examining the hole where ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... unhopefully at work—hard on themselves, anxious-minded, assured that in spite of their efforts all will turn out for the worst, often scrupulous, capable of long-sustained efforts, often of heroic devotedness and superhuman endurance, for which their reward is not in this world, as the art of pleasing is singularly deficient in them. Here are found the people who are "so good, but so trying," ever in a fume and fuss, who, for sheer goodness, rouse in others the spirit of contradiction. These characters are at their best in adversity, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... of pleasing friendship, Thou worst invader of our tender bosoms; How does thy rancor poison all our softness, And turn ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... she said, and marched out, making Miss Mapp, Diva and the mouse feel remarkably young. She might drop her eye-glass and talk with her mouth full, but really such tact.... They all determined to adopt this pleasing device in the future. The disappointment about the announcement of the engagement was sensibly assuaged, and Miss Mapp and Susan, in their eagerness to be younger than the Contessa, and yet take precedence of all the rest, almost stuck in the doorway. They rebounded ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... his own life; he prayed to Hengest, his chieftain, that he should give him the maid-child. Hengest found in his counsel to do what the king asked him; he gave him Rouwenne, the woman most fair. To the king it was pleasing; he made her queen, all after the laws that stood in the heathen days; was there no Christendom, where the king took the maid, nor priest, nor any bishop, nor was God's book ever handled, but in the heathen fashion he wedded her, and brought her to his bed' Maiden he had her, and ample ...
— Brut • Layamon
... out prominently as offering possibilities which are very great. Not only do they represent a very concentrated form of food which is highly digestible, but they possess a number of characteristic and highly pleasing flavors that recommends them for use in all manner of culinary procedures. The variety of uses to which nuts can be put in the kitchen is amply demonstrated right here in Dr. Kellogg's sanitarium and I feel sure that even he has not exhausted the possibilities of nuts in the dietary. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... with delight. Lying asleep upon the walk in the warmest spot that could be found was a large Newfoundland dog. Clad in his heavy coat of shaggy fur and surrounded by a bed of green, he was indeed a pleasing picture. There had been several dogs at the poorhouse of which Edwin had been especially fond, but there had been none so beautiful as the one upon the walk below. The bees, too, were busy gathering ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... opened with a suite in F Major for orchestra (op. 39) by Moszkowski. This was much more clear and, in every way, interesting than the Beethoven; every now and then there were passages that were pleasing, not to say more. Jones liked it better than I did; still, one could not feel that any of the movements were the mere drivelling show stuff of which the concerto had been full. But it, like everything else done at these concerts, is too ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... and manners of the time, but it is none the less genuine. Perhaps nowhere more than in the personal essays about subjects of contemporary importance—of which these are examples—is there a more pleasing record of the social and ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... form of Gertrude continued leaning on the rail, it is true, but Wilder was unable to catch another glimpse of her averted and shadowed lineaments. In the mean while, events, that were of a character to withdraw his attention entirely from even so pleasing a study, were hastening ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... notice that the clothes both wore were simple and inexpensive—he only registered the impression that the mother seemed quiet and refined and the girl had a frank honesty in her face that was most pleasing. ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... by his pluck; hence the pleasant expression of his eyes. He was a little touched, too, by the unmistakable admiration in the over-bright blue regard. Urquhart was not unused to admiration; but here was something very whole-hearted and rather pleasing. Margerison seemed rather a nice ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... pleasing anguish in the mind, and fix the audience in such a serious composure of thought, as is much more lasting and delightful, than any little transient ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... he is a promising lad," said the banker. "I have taken a great liking to him. He has a droll, comical way that is very pleasing." ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... joy from the renewed friendship, we will have the smile of God on our life. We will know that we have done what is well pleasing in His sight. Sweeter than the peace which comes from being at one with men, is the peace which comes from being at one with God. It settles on the soul like the mist on the mountains, enveloping and enswathing it. It comes to our fevered life as a great calm. Over the broken ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... advertises one of her stories as Letitia: A Castle Without a Spectre. Mystery slips, almost unawares, into the domestic story. There are, for instance, vague hints of it in Charlotte Smith's Old Manor House (1793). The author of The Ghost and of More Ghosts adopts the pleasing pseudonym of Felix Phantom. The gloom of night broods over many of the stories, for ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... of Adelheid throbbed quick and violently; and, for a moment, she doubted her ability to command her feelings. But the pleasing conviction that Sigismund had been honorable and delicate, even in his most sacred and confidential communications with his own mother, came to relieve her, and to make her momentarily happy; since nothing is so painful to the pure mind, as to think those ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... the picture. The great religious painter, Murillo, has given us many pictures of the Christ child and John the Baptist, but perhaps none more pleasing than this one which critics have so often declared the most beautiful ...
— Stories Pictures Tell - Book Four • Flora L. Carpenter
... life. There are sounds sweet to the ear and sights pleasing to the eye. In the new-mown water-meadow grasshoppers—such hosts of them that they could never be numbered for multitude—are chirping and dancing merrily. "They make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst the great cattle chew the cud and are ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... fair in its charges. The old palace, though not intrinsically worth a visit in point of architecture, yet conveys one of those "sermons in stones," in which the Fauxbourg de St. Germain so much abounds; and presents also more pleasing recollections of Louis Quatorze (a prince possessing many of the good points of the bon Henri) than the bombastic personification of him as Jupiter Tonans, in the palace of Versailles, which is on a par as a painting with Tom Thumb as ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... the favorite nut of nearly everyone, in fact it is preferred to any other nut for its pleasing flavor and easy cracking. Wild nuts used to be gathered from native trees without consulting the owner, but since they are selling at good prices the owners of trees gather them themselves. Fortunately, through efforts of far-seeing individuals some very good pecans have been found ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... retain such a mass of recollections; yet we seem to be, in general, little aware that for one solitary incident in our lives, preserved by memory, hundreds have been buried in the silent charnel-house of oblivion. We peruse the past, like a map of pleasing or melancholy recollections, and observe lines crossing and re-crossing each other in a thousand directions; some spots are almost blank; others faintly traced; and the rest a confused and perplexed labyrinth. ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... Fat, panting men, and thin, enfeebled ones cannot possibly be considered good citizens any more than dirty or verminous people. He will be just as fine and seemly in his person as he can be, not from vanity and self-assertion but to be pleasing and agreeable to his fellows. The ugly dress and ugly bearing of the "good man" of to-day will be as incomprehensible to him as the filth of a palaeolithic savage is to us. He will not speak of his "frame," and hang clothes like sacks over it; he will know and feel that he and ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Emerson again, 'must always seem unreal and mocking until the landscape has human figures, that are as good as itself.' And 'tis well, if they are but half as good. To me, the discovery of a woodman in the wadi were as pleasing as the discovery of a woodchuck or a woodswallow or a woodbine. For in the soul of the woodman is a song, I muse, as sweet as the rhythmic strains of the goldfinch, if it could be evoked. But the soul plodding up the hill ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani |
