"Prettiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all solutions. Sir Christopher Wren's account of a Saracenic origin was vague and unsupported; and Warburton's deduction from groves and interlacing boughs, though ingeniously illustrated by the late Sir James Hall, has more prettiness than probability. Dr. Milner's "intersecting hypothesis," as it is technically termed, is brief and simple: "De Blois," he says, "having resolved to ornament the whole sanctuary of his church with intersecting semicircles, conceived the idea ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... colored but tranquil face, her well-shaped figure, coquettishly and spotlessly cuffed, collared, and aproned, and her clear blue but half-averted eyes, he again underwent a change. She certainly was very pretty—that most seductive prettiness which seemed to be warmed into life by her consciousness of himself. Why should he take her or himself so seriously? Why not play out the farce, and let those who would criticise him and think his acceptance of the work degrading understand ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... rode back. When there I told each that he must be searched, to which they submitted at once. After that we went through their baggage. I wasn't going to have the sheriff or cowboys tumbling over Miss Cullen's clothes, so I looked over her bag myself. The prettiness and daintiness of the various contents were a revelation to me, and I tried to put them back as neatly as I had found them, but I didn't know much about the articles, and it was a terrible job trying to fold up some of the things. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... water-monsters are common in Scottish folk- lore. We have them too, but take them much less dreadfully. Our tales turn all their doings to favour and to prettiness, or hopelessly humorize the creatures. A hole in the Sligo river is haunted by one of these monsters. He is ardently believed in by many, but that does not prevent the peasantry playing with the subject, and surrounding it with conscious fantasies. ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... honors with a courteous pomposity. Miss Knowles bore the situation with restraint and decorum. But that "dear little girl of old Marvin's" could not bring herself to bear it at all and wept away her modest claims to prettiness and spirit in one ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... slight creature, too pale and worn for even the natural prettiness of youth, but her large, lovely eyes suggested that in a more fortunate environment she might have been described as beautiful, by that stretch of imagination which chroniclers of the great are allowed. Many a so-called beauty of high caste has shown less natural endowment ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... though in search of a happiness which had been denied her by Fate. Her appearance was one of unusual refinement. She had not a trace of the coarsened blowzy look so common in English country girls; there was nothing of rustic lumpishness in her slim figure, and there was more than mere prettiness in her exquisite small features, her thick dark hair, her clear white skin with a tracery of blue veins in the temples. Her high-bridged nose and firm chin suggested some force of character, but that suggestion was counteracted by her wistful tender ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... of which I am speaking Flavia was a slight, graceful woman of forty years or thereabouts, retaining much of the brilliant prettiness which served her for beauty, and conspicuous always for her extremely bright eyes. She was of the type of women who ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... so-called beautiful landscape may, of course, be material for a beautiful landscape painting, but the chances are great that such a pretty vista will attract the dilettante and not the real artist who knows that the true value of his painting is independent of the prettiness of the model. He knows that a muddy country road or a dirty city street or a trivial little pond may be the material for immortal pictures. He who writes literature does not select scenes of life which are beautiful in themselves, scenes which ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... apartments, and yet they may never have salons. Essential conditions are required which can rarely be found in conjunction. The most important of all is the talent and character of the lady who does the honours. Without being old, she must have passed the age in which a woman is chiefly spoken of for her prettiness or her dress, and be at that point of time when a woman's mind may rule over the self-love of a man more than her youthful attractions enabled her to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... very pleasant to look upon. Her face was not one of mere commonplace prettiness, but had an individuality of its own that caused it to linger in the memory like some sweet picture that once seen cannot be readily forgotten. Her eyes were of a tender, luminous grey, full of candour and goodness. Her hair was a deep, glossy brown; ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... those few, however, happens to be myself, which arose from the accident of having, when a boy of eleven, received a copy of the "De Imitatione Christi" as a bequest from a relation who died very young, from which cause, and from the external prettiness of the book— being a Glasgow reprint by the celebrated Foulis, and gaily bound—I was induced to look into it, and finally read it many times over, partly out of some sympathy which, even in those days, I had with its simplicity and devotional fervour, but much more from the savage delight ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... where delicatessen foods and tempting savories were served by Fraeuleins. Helen Barlow was one of the jolliest of these, and her plump prettiness and long flaxen braids of hair suited well the white kerchief and laced bodice ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... purposes. Looking out from between two strips of the canvas was the rosy and delicate face of a pretty girl, smiling upon Eugene Bantry as he passed. It was an obviously pretty face, all the youth and prettiness there for your very first glance; elaborately pretty, like the splendid profusion of hair about and above it—amber-colored hair, upon which so much time had been spent that a circle of large, round curls rose above ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... of the old king. I can, however, quite imagine the irritation the sharp chirrup-chirrup of this little squirrel would cause to an invalid, for there is something particularly ear-piercing about it; but their prettiness and familiarity make up in great measure for their noisiness. They are certainly a nuisance in a garden, and I rather doubt whether they are of any use, as McMaster says, "in destroying many insects, especially white ants, beetles, both in their perfect and ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... weird about the aspect of the woman who came forward, with a baby in her arms, to greet Miss Saxon. She was still young and pretty, with that delicate London prettiness which meets one in these crowded thoroughfares at every turn. The baby had a shawl drawn over its bald head, and peered out from its shelter with eyes just beginning to observe the sundry and manifold changes of its ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... and be, indeed, a busy ant-heap, with full granaries and long hours of leisure. But even then I think the whip will be in the overseer's hands, and not in vain. For, when it comes to be a question of each man doing his own share or the rest doing more, prettiness of sentiment will be forgotten. To dock the skulker's food is not enough; many will rather eat haws and starve on petty pilferings than put their shoulder to the wheel for one hour daily. For such as these, then, the whip will be in the overseer's hand; and his own sense of justice ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... merits under this head may be emulated, at a distance; the lovely modulations of colour in the three contrasted and harmonised little satin petticoats, the solidity of the little heads, in spite of all their prettiness, the happy, unexaggerated squareness and maturity of pose, are, severally, points to study, to imitate, and to reproduce with profit. But the taste of such a consummate thing is its great secret as well as its great merit—a taste which seems one of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the like, which yield money, but can never give fame. Do that, and your talent is lost and thrown away. Be patient, wait, reflect, chasten your taste by study, and wean yourself from that hankering after prettiness and dandyism. Leave such tricks to those who care but for gold, and propose yourself a higher aim, the never-dying laurels of a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... house, but full of prettiness. Bessie Fairfax had never seen anything so like a picture as the drawing-room, gay with flowers, perfumed, airy, all graceful ease and negligent comfort. From a wide-open glass door a flight of steps ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... Brown was sitting on the fur rugs, not very far from Trenholme. She looked up at him, pretty herself in the prettiness of genuine admiration. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... doomed to failure by the essential nature of sculpture. A Western mind can have little sympathy with the art which has moved most on mystic lines, the art of India, which in such efforts has abandoned the search for beauty, and so given up the really artistic point of view. Mere prettiness no doubt is an unsatisfying ideal: but a loftier beauty, in harmony with the world around us and the soul within us, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the impression of a delicate prettiness, a superior sort of prettiness, like that of the daughter of the Big White House on the Hill, the Squire's house, at Parthenon; though Nelly was not unusually pretty. Indeed, her mouth was too large, her hair of somewhat ordinary brown. But her face was always changing with emotions of kindliness ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... rectitude and good works—which of themselves so often fail of attraction—Miss Althea was possessed of a face so charming even in its slightly faded prettiness that one wondered how it was possible that she could successfully have withstood the suitors who must have crowded about her. Her house on Fifth Avenue was full of old engravings of American patriots, and the library inherited from her editorial parent was replete ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... I had a good reception, but the supper was poor, and the hours that I spent with two young girls of the working class were tedious. They were pretty enough, but my head was full of my perfidious charmer, and besides, despite their neatness and prettiness, they were wanting in that grace which adds so many charms to pleasure. The liberality of my payment, to which they were not accustomed, captivated the old woman, who said she would get me all the best stuff in the town; but she warned me to take care ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Bryan would lean on Miss Jenny's desk, rearrange his white necktie, and talk to her. Miss Jenny was pretty. The class gloried in her prettiness, but it felt it would have her more for its own if Mr. Bryan would go when the number ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... more symmetrical the features of a woman are, the more does she approach to the style of beauty and expression and native gifts of a porcelain doll. The mind and the character can be so symmetrical that they will lose all charm and all significance. They descend into simple prettiness, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... like these veg'table people," said the little girl. "They're cold and flabby, like cabbages, in spite of their prettiness." ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... They wished Angelo to come. Seeing them stand there, rigid, relentless, Marie realized as she had not fully realized before that they were her enemies, that no softness or prettiness, no agony of tears could turn their hearts. She sprang up with a choking cry, and stumbled toward the door. Vanno, thinking she meant to run away, took two long steps ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of what we have demanded; but it is debased in some instances by weakness of expression, in others by false prettiness. 'She bow'd to taste the wave, and died.' The plain truth was, she drank the Bristol waters which failed to restore her, and her death soon followed; but the expression involves a multitude of petty occupations for the fancy. 'She bow'd': was there any ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and swollen from recent weeping, her face was mottled from her tears. Much trouble had made her careless of late of her prettiness, and now she was disheveled, her apron awry around her waist, her hair mussed, her whole aspect one of slovenly disregard. Her depression was so great that Joe was moved ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... had a friend who loved her, he had only to teach him how to tell his story, and that would woo her. Upon this hint, delivered not with more frankness than modesty, accompanied with a certain bewitching prettiness, and blushes, which Othello could not but understand, he spoke more openly of his love, and in this golden opportunity gained the consent of the generous lady Desdemona privately to ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... materials to be of the best but he cares less for color than the Thoracic. Quality rather than style and plainness rather than prettiness are his ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... its commotion, too, the sea lost its purity. The sediment and ooze of decades were churned up, and, as the agitation ceased, were precipitated—a brown furry, slimy mud, all over the garden—smothering the industrious polyps to whom all its prettiness was due. Order is being restored, fresh and vigorous shoots sprouting up from the fulvid basis; but it may be many years before the damage is wholly repaired and the original beauty of the garden restored, for the "growth" of coral—the skeletons of the polyps—is methodical and very ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... girls, she yet kept them thoroughly in hand, and won, if not their tenderness, at all events their affection and respect. The girls themselves were not outwardly charming; Jessie, the youngest but one, had perhaps a certain claim to prettiness, but, like all her sisters, she was of coarse type. Their education had been of the most haphazard kind; their breeding was not a little defective; but a certain tact, common to the family, enabled them to make the very most of themselves, so that they more ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... easier thing to assure a homely female, in prose or rhyme, that she is beautiful, than to represent her so upon canvass. Her effigies are, I believe, pretty numerous, varying in ugliness, but none that I have seen even handsome—prettiness, of course, is out of the question. She was fond of finery, but had no taste in dress. Her ruff is downright odious; and the liberal exposure of her neck and bosom anything but alluring. With all her pearls about her, she looks like a pawnbroker's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... said Lois. She looked at the door, and, so doing, got a chance to observe the minister, who was standing beside the flower-table talking to Ellen Dix. Fanny Dodge was busily arranging some flowers, with her face averted. Ellen Dix was very pretty, with an odd prettiness for a New England girl. Her pale olive skin was flawless and fine of texture. Her mouth was intensely red, and her eyes very dark and heavily shaded by long lashes. She wore at the throat of her white dress a beautiful ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... enthusiasm, goes on to observe: "Michelangelo attended only, as I have elsewhere said, to the perfection of art. There are no landscapes, nor trees, nor houses; nor again do we find in his work that variety of movement and prettiness which may be noticed in the pictures of other men. He always neglected such decoration, being unwilling to lower his lofty genius to these details." This is indeed true of the arid desert of the Pauline frescoes. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... seen on a lady's cheek." Cecilia remembered that her complexion too had been praised before this blow had fallen upon her. "The colour would come and go so rapidly that I used to marvel what were the thoughts that drove the blood hither and thither. There were no thoughts,—unless of her own prettiness and her own fortunes. She accepted me as a husband because it was necessary for her to settle in life. I was in Parliament, and that she thought to be something. I had a house in Chester Square, and that was something. She was promised a carriage, and that conquered ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... probably observe in whatever room you might meet him. And he knew how to talk, and had in him something which justified talking. He was no butterfly or dandy, who flew about in the world's sun, warmed into prettiness by a sunbeam. Crosbie had his opinion on things,—on politics, on religion, on the philanthropic tendencies of the age, and had read something here and there as he formed his opinion. Perhaps he might have done better in the world had he not been placed so early in life in that Whitehall ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... said it would be a mesalliance for him, Tardif! What then would it be for you, a Dobree? No; it is a delusion, an infatuation, which will quickly pass away. I cannot believe you are so weak as to be taken in by mere prettiness without character; and this person—I do not say so harshly, Martin—has no character, no name. Were you free you could not marry her. There is a mystery about her, and mystery usually means shame. A Dobree could not make an adventuress his wife. Then you have seen so little of her. Three times, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... Miss HELENA DACRE looks magnificent. Then Miss EDITH CHESTER combines prettiness with fun, and the duet between her and clever Miss LAURA LINDEN is enthusiastically encored—and deservedly so, for it is seldom that two young actresses will "go in" for a real genuine bit of nonsensical ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... to the English dramatists. Lodge's Rosalind and Robert Greene's Pandosto, the sources respectively of Shakspere's As You Like It and Winter's Tale, are short pastoral romances, not without prettiness in their artificial way. The satirical pamphlets of Thomas Nash and his fellows, against "Martin Marprelate," an anonymous writer, or {90} company of writers, who attacked the bishops, are not wanting in wit, but are so cumbered ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... was a small plump woman, to whose vague prettiness the lines of middle-age had given no meaning: as though whatever had happened to her had merely added to the sum total of her inexperience. After a Parisian residence of twenty-five years, spent in a state of feverish servitude to the great artists of the rue de la Paix, her dress and ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... dear, noble fellow, and has the highest, purest principles and feelings. I can't but love him almost as if he were my own child: I never saw so much sweetness and prettiness about any one, except his mother; and, oh! how far superior he is to her! But then, he is boyish, he is weak—I ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lace which was made for her throat,—and which she had not been ashamed to wear at that memorable dinner,—they were all brought out. It was Christmas, and her father's presence would surely have justified them all! And would she not wish to leave in her lover's eyes the memory of whatever prettiness she might have possessed? They were all produced. But when the moment came for arraying herself they were all restored to their homes. She would be the simple Quaker girl as she was to be found there on Monday, on Tuesday, and on Wednesday. It would be better that he should ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... the direction of restriction from the uncomely, the forced and the sensational, and in favor of the beautiful, the becoming and the divine. Nevertheless, it is the inevitable consequence of a prescription of this kind to run into mere prettiness and tuneful emptiness. Protection is a failure in art. The spirit must have freedom, or it will never take its grandest flights. And it is altogether possible that the needed corrective will presently be discovered ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... situation; but a moment later I saw it must be ascribed to a something about Mrs. Fontage that precluded the possibility of her asking any one a favor. It was not that she was of forbidding, or even majestic, demeanor; but that one guessed, under her aquiline prettiness, a dignity nervously on guard against the petty betrayal of her surroundings. The room was unconcealably poor: the little faded "relics," the high-stocked ancestral silhouettes, the steel-engravings after Raphael and Correggio, grouped in a vain attempt to hide the most obvious stains on ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... pretty; but remember, she is quite a rustic and unformed beauty—and I almost doubt whether she can read or spell properly. She is modest and good, I grant, and I never heard one syllable against her. Ronald, let me appeal to your better judgment—are a moderate amount of rustic prettiness and shy modesty sufficient qualifications for your wife, who will have to take ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... since the last time Geoffrey saw her. She had lost her fresh cream and rose prettiness, but had gained something in place of it, and though her pale blue eyes were too deeply sunk, her face had acquired strength and dignity. She was, as he had always found her, perfectly self-possessed. With a quick glance, which expressed appeal and ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... behind him, and indeed over his shoulder, a woman's face looked out into the darkness; it was pale and a little weary, although still young; it wore a dwindling, disappearing prettiness, soon to be quite gone, and the expression was both gentle and sour, and reminded one faintly of the taste of certain drugs. For all that, it was not a face to dislike; when the prettiness had vanished, it seemed as if a certain pale beauty might step in to take its place; and as both the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a conventional prettiness, but no such beguilement as she had wafted through the telephone. "It's been ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... rays of the setting sun, clad in nothing but a pair of drawers and a hat with a torn brim. He rose as we came near, and proffered us hospitality. His wife, whose costume consisted of a cotton shirt edged with red thread, came running in answer to his call, and was quite in raptures at the prettiness of the "little white traveller," who completely ingratiated himself by saluting her in her own language. We had accomplished a journey of seven leagues, although Lucien, thanks to Don Antonio's horse, had ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... cousin did come, and was driven up to the door in the gig from Taunton, just as had been the case on his previous visit. Then, however, he had come in the full daylight, and the hay-carts had been about, and all the prettiness and warmth of summer had been there; now it was mid-winter, and there had been some slight beginnings of snow, and the wind was moaning about the old tower, and the outside of the house looked very unpleasant from the hall-door. ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... nightingale employs the night—and here it is implied that so did the lover. Mr Horne spoils all by an affected prettiness suggested by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... came three reporters, one of them a woman. She was a young woman, plainly dressed and, though she could not be called beautiful, there was a certain patrician prettiness in her small, oval, womanly face with its grey kind eyes, its aquiline nose, its firm lips and determined jaw, a certain charm in the manner in which her chestnut hair escaped occasionally from under her trim hat. Young, aggressive, keen of mind and tireless, Stella Donovan was ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... prettiness, with a mouth like Cupid's bow, a tiny tip-tilted nose, eyes gold-brown to match her hair, a color like crushed roses ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... she was pretty or plain, Tom was just now incapable of judging. He only knew that her eyes were wonderful. He never remembered to have seen such eyes—clear, dark blue-grey with fine shading of eyelash on the lower as well as the upper lid. Unquestionably they surpassed all ordinary standards of prettiness. Were glorious, yet curiously embarrassing; too in their seriousness, their intent impartial scrutiny—under which last, to his lively vexation, the young man ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... should remain wholly unrepresented in Fine Art, because unfelt by ourselves; and that the only vestiges of a likeness to it should be in some of the more subtle passages of caricatures, popular (and justly popular) as much because they were the only attainable reflection of the prettiness, as because they were the only sympathizing records of the humors, of English girls and boys. Of our oil portraits of them, in which their beauty is always conceived as consisting in a fixed simper—feet not more than two inches long, and accessory grounds, pony, and groom—our sentence need not ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... a smoke-begrimed sparrow on the sill with eyes at once vacant and tender. She was slighter and smaller than her sister, of different complexion, with soft, grey eyes and a broad, humorous mouth. Her whole expression was kindly. She had a delicate prettiness of colouring, and a vivacity which seemed to place her amongst a different order of beings. Never were sisters more like and unlike ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... Arctic solitudes. The imagination is touched. The eye looks out upon a hemisphere. Vast spaces, lost ages, the unsealed mysteries of cold and darkness and eternal silence, sweep around the central thought, and people the wilderness with their solemn symbolism, Prettiness of gentle slope, wealth, and splendor of hue, are not wanting, but they shine with veiled light. Mountains come down to meet the Great River. The mists of the night lift slowly away, and we are brought suddenly into the presence-chamber. One by one they stand out in all their rugged might, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... traveller that which our country generally lacks, and which is so largely the attraction of Italy and Spain. Instead of adapting and modifying the houses and homes that the climate suggests, the new American comers have brought here from the East the smartness and prettiness of our modern nondescript architecture. The low house, with recesses and galleries, built round an inner court, or patio, which, however small, would fill the whole interior with sunshine and the scent of ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... to have thought of nothing but the prettiness of the unhappy child. She gravely informed me that she forgave Marmaduke everything when she saw how he doted on it. Elinor has always shewn ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... begin to sink. When the majority lack, not only the emotion out of which art and religion are made, but even the sensibility to respond to what the few can still offer, art and religion founder. After that, nothing is left of art and religion but their names; illusion and prettiness are called ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... doll; its prettiness; Miss Doane said, "I'm alone. She comforts me. I wanted so A child ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... I acknowledge that there have been moments when the influence of her—beauty, I can't call it—prettiness, joined to the power of my mother's irresistible address, have almost lapped me in elysium—a fool's paradise. But, thank Heaven and Miss Walsingham! I unlapped myself; and though the sweet airs took my fancy, they ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... of her sister. Looking at her, he was reminded of girls he had seen beyond the Alleghanies—girls who knew little, or no, toil, and who jealously guarded their beauty from sun and wind. Answering Lancaster's blunt questions, that followed close upon each other, he paid her prettiness constant and wondering homage; and she, noting the attention, retreated a little and ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... but a nostalgia for open spaces and free wanderings had been always with him. He had come to hate the city with its hard walled-in ways and its dirty air, and also the eastern country-side with its little green prettiness surrounded by fences. He longed for a land where one can see for fifty miles, and not a man or a house. He thought that alkaline dust on his lips would ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... off his velvet and lace, and designedly let his thoughts turn to Arenta. "She is pretty beyond all prettiness," he said softly as he moved about, "She dances well, talks from hand to mouth, and she gave me one sweet glance; and I think if she has gone so far— she might go further." At this reflection he smiled again, and lifting a decanter ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... want to shoot a woman, especially not a young woman of a certain prettiness. So they let her go, when she swore that she would never return to England. But they did not trust her. She is under observation now! Your home is watched, my dear Mrs. Widdicombe, and I dare say there is a man on guard outside now, my ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... speech and Brifault's,' said Circourt, 'you may compare the present declamatory style and that of thirty years ago. Brifault has, or attempts to have, the legerete and the prettiness of the Restoration. Falloux is grandiose and emphatic, ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... distinctly. Speaking of pictures, the miniature of Anne of Cleves is here, on the faith of which Henry VIII. married her; also, the picture of the Infanta of Spain, which Buckingham brought over to Charles I. while Prince of Wales. This has a delicate, rosy prettiness. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tourist, however, will hardly care to exchange his somewhat rough and noisy quarters at Remiremont for the cosmopolitan comforts of Plombires within such easy reach. It is a pretty drive of an hour and a half to Plombires, and all is prettiness there—its little park, its tiny ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... force me to see it! Let me go back and try to be better before I see my likeness. I am afraid now. The outside prettiness is n't anything, unless one's spirit is lovely too; and I—I could not look, for I know—I know how hateful mine would be. I have learned about it now, and it's like a book; if the story the book tells is not beautiful, the pictures won't be good to see. I have learned about it now, and I know ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... opened the brougham. An elderly lady, richly dressed, with diamonds sparkling in her gray hair, came rustling down the steps, bringing with her faint odours of patchouly and violet-powder. She was followed by a girl of doll-like prettiness, with a snub nose and petulant little mouth, who held up her satin-and-lace skirts with a sort of fastidious disdain, as though she scorned to set foot on earth that was not carpeted with the best velvet pile. As they approached their carriage the inert dark bundle, crouched ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... can be desired of them, I would fain hope they are not quite so much of that as Raeburn would have us believe. In all these pretty faces, you miss character, you miss fire, you miss that spice of the devil which is worth all the prettiness in the world; and what is worst of all, you miss sex. His young ladies are not womanly to nearly the same degree as his men are masculine; they are so in a negative sense; in short, they are the typical young ladies of ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... charge. They had failed to induce a liquor dealer to restrict his license, and "smashed" his wine-parlor incontinently. Although public sympathy was theirs for the act, as well as for their youth, prettiness, and sex, none of the lawyers would take up their defense on account of the influence of the brewers' and distillers' agent. In this emergency, Abraham Lincoln stepped into the breach and ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... that spreads over the worshipper. In some cases the main dome rests upon four semi-domes. At the same time, when viewed from the exterior, the main dome rises large, bold and commanding, with nothing of the squat appearance that mars the dome of St Sophia, with nothing of the petty prettiness of the little domes perched on the drums of the later Byzantine churches. The great mosques express the spirit of the days when the Ottoman empire was still mighty and ambitious. Occasionally, as in the case of Laleli Jamissi, where the dome rests upon an octagon inscribed in a square, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... tables absolute fixtures on account of the weighty legs upon which they were built. In short, the careful and cultivated decorator finds it as imperative to guard against exaggerated simplicity as unsupported prettiness. ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... field, not only in prettiness, but in giving an impression that you grow as naturally as they do! Make us feel that you could not have anything ugly or awkward or unbecoming about you. Your dress and your rooms and your dinners should be perfect, but do not entertain your guest with the mere ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... virtuous as ter eat punkin pie fer breakfast. I come from Wisconsin, where we think more of our bodies than our souls; an' 'twas in Wisconsin that I first met Dr. Standish. He had a call to the town, wher I lived with—with my sister. She, my sister, was a real pretty girl then, but of a prettiness that soon fades. An' she hired out as cook ter the Doctor. He was a good man, an' a kind one, but she paid back his kindness by runnin' off with ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... fancy that ingenuous face, as guileless on the eve of my sorrows as on the day when I said to her, "Shall we marry?" as I remembered a heavenly fragrance, the very odor of virtue, and the light in her eyes, the prettiness of her movements, I fled like a man preparing to violate a tomb, who sees emerging from it the transfigured soul of the dead. At consultations, in Court, by night, I dream so incessantly of Honorine ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... most beautiful of the family—a mountain flower also, and one which I ought to find here; but hitherto I know only among the mantlings of the ground, V. thymifolia and officinalis. All these, however, agree in the extreme prettiness and grace of their crowded leafage,—the officinalis, of which the leaves are shown much too coarsely serrated in S. 984, forming carpets of finished embroidery which I have never yet rightly examined, because I mistook them for St. John's wort. They are of a beautiful pointed ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... gowned were receiving; there was just a little something unusual in their prettiness, in their toilets; and also a little something lacking; and its absence was as noticeable in them as it was in the majority ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... became of far more importance than the salon, in the artistic furnishing of a fashionable house. Instead of the majestic grandeur of immense reception rooms and stately galleries, we have the elegance and prettiness of the boudoir; and as the reign of the young King advances, we find the structural enrichment of rooms more free, and busy with redundant ornament; the curved endive decoration, so common in carved woodwork and in composition of this period, ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... Lancelot, feeling the last sparkle taken from his humour. He was damped to the skin by Mary Ann's platitudinarian style of conversation. Despite its prettiness, her face ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... overcome and science well displayed can take the place of what is, after all, the one excuse and breath of art—charm. A little further, and he will regard charm in the light of an unworthy sacrifice to prettiness, and the omission of a tedious passage ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon a mound of earth and staring after it, her face touched by the amber glow of a westering sun that hung as an immense orange in the smoke of battle, all of Hillsdale would have gasped at her amazing beauty. For the mere prettiness which they had known, enhanced by happiness and laughter, was now transformed. As the chisel of Michael Angelo first carved but a placid face for the Mary in his masterful Pieta, and later gnawed into it shadows of ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... of being upbraided with so infamous a conversation. He invited himself sometimes to eat with them; and then, assuming an air of gaiety, he desired the master to bring down the children to bear him company. When he had a little commended their prettiness, he asked to see their mother, and shewed her the same countenance, as if he had taken her for an honest woman. If she were beautiful or well shaped, he praised her, and said "she looked like a Portuguese:" ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... mind a bit, Mrs. Dennison. I dare say I am getting to be rather violent and careless in my way of talking. It's a reaction from the vagueness and prettiness of speech I used to hear down in Silvertree, where they begin their remarks with an 'I'm not sure, but I think,' et cetera. But, really, you must overlook my vehemence. If I could spend my time with sweet souls like you, I'd be a ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... such a mental picture of her prospective room-mate, Mary had imagined her to be a blue-eyed, golden-haired little creature, with a sort of wax-doll prettiness: a girl made to be petted and considered and shielded like a delicate flower. The type appealed to her. Independent and capable herself, she was prepared to be almost motherly in her care for Ethelinda's comfort. With this preconceived notion it was somewhat of a shock when she went ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... experiencing nothing which resembled love. Other women dominated him then with the seduction of their artifices and refinements, but here, in his loneliness, seeing Margalida surrounded by the brown and rural prettiness of her companions, beautiful as one of those white goddesses which inspire religious veneration among peoples of coppery skin, he felt the dementia of desire, and all his acts were absurd, as if he had completely ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... reckoned. As they rode along a swift, overpowering infatuation for Dora Marshall grew upon him. He felt something like a flame rising within him, burning him, bewildering him with its intensity. She seemed all at once to possess every attribute of the angels, from mere prettiness her face took on a radiant beauty which dazzled him, and when she spoke her lightest word held him breathless. As the mountain towers above the foothills, so, of a sudden, she towered above all other women. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... Of course you may, but what help do you imagine you can render, you useless piece of prettiness? Shall I set you on the mantlepiece between the china kittens, and the glass lambs, right under the sharp nose of my grandmother's portrait, where her great solemn eyes will keep you in order? Whence do all those delectable odours come? ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... says an architect, "is an immovable faith that the first duty of a human apartment is to look as high as possible. A cathedral, or the rotunda of the Capitol, must have height to produce an overpowering effect. But in an ordinary room of ordinary size, comfort, convenience and prettiness are more to be sought ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... with an eager young Damer yelling on each side of her; but nevertheless, though thus neglected by the gentlemen of the party, she was all smiles and prettiness, and looked so sweetly on Mr. Ingram when that gentleman stayed a moment to help her on to her donkey, that his heart almost misgave him for leaving her as soon as she ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... contented herself with watching him eat the next course while she toyed with it. As a woman, food meant little to her; she was concerned more with the prettiness of its serving; but Osborn was avidly hungry ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... nearly into their features, I saw some further peculiarities in their Dresden-china type of prettiness. Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... she could not tell why, Charmian felt that there was a dawning of hope in her sky. Her depression seemed to lift a little. She was conscious of her youth, of her grace and charm, her prettiness, her intelligence. She was able to put a little ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... a matter of course, she's a good girl," Presley hastened to reply, "only she's too pretty for a poor girl, and too sure of her prettiness besides. That's the kind," he continued, "who would find it pretty easy to go wrong if they lived in ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished." It nevertheless begins nobly, but soon deviates into conceits, bespeaking a fatigued imagination. The "Hymn on the Nativity," on the other hand, begins with two stanzas of far-fetched prettiness, and goes on ringing and thundering through strophes of ever-increasing grandeur, until the sweetness of Virgin and Child seem in danger of being swallowed up in the glory of Christianity; when suddenly, by an exquisite ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... power of love for an individual,—no capability of so joining himself to another human being as to feel, that in spite of any superiority visible to the outside world, that one should be esteemed by him superior to all others,—because of his love. The young man had liked prettiness and softness and grace and feminine nicenesses; and seeing one who was prettier and more graceful,—all which poor Clary allowed, though she was not so sure about the softness and niceness,—had changed his aim without an effort! Ah, how ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... stress upon the surrounding and concealing superficialities. The average stupid and sentimental man, if he has a noticeably sensible wife, is almost apologetic about it. The ideal of his sex is always a pretty wife, and the vanity and coquetry that so often go with prettiness are erected into charms. In other words, men play the love game so unintelligently that they often esteem a woman in proportion as she seems to disdain and make a mock of her intelligence. Women seldom, if ever, make that blunder. What they commonly value in a ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... morning of Saturday. The clergyman caring little for the spring charm of the maiden summer, but much for John Penhallow's youth of promise, wandered on slowly through the woods, with head bent forward, stumbling now and then, lost to a world where his companion was joyfully conscious of the prettiness ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... he knew that—lovely, no doubt, to her boy lovers. But to him, with the memory of Margaret's grand ideal beauty ever before him, Fay's pink and pearly bloom, though it was as purely tinted as the inner calyx of a rose, faded into mere color prettiness. And as yet the spell of those wonderful eyes, of which Frank Lumsden dreamed, had exercised no potent fascination over her ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... be hard to say what he saw in Semple. Her prettiness, wax-like in its quality, fascinated him; her indifference aroused perhaps his combative soul. He could not have explained why, but he wanted her in an urgent, passionate way. He could not think of ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... hard look that had come into the frank gray eyes. But Nancy was in no mood to be scolded. The truth is, she had reached a difficult age and it was not going to be easy to manage her by lecturing and argument. She had an enormous appetite for flattery and the power of her prettiness ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... clothes merely accentuated her lack of youthful prettiness. With unerring instinct as a child, she had chosen her riding clothes to show off in. Now these same clothes formed the basis of her system. By day she was always in tailored frocks of the strictest simplicity. They were linen, or silk, or wool, made after the ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... pretty at twenty, but at twenty-eight her prettiness had immensely increased; she had really become a beauty of a particularly troubling type. She had long, deep blue eyes, clearly-cut features, hair of that soft, fine light brown just tinged with red called by the French chatain clair; and a flower-like complexion. She ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... for Rose. She saw the faded pathetic prettiness of the woman who'd looked too long and had been trying to pretend for the last fifteen years or so that she didn't care. And the picture in her mind's eye was surmounted by a hat; a hat that conceded some of the years Miss Gibbons had insisted on, and that ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... childlike belief that he was far too grand a personage to require anything. These were the things he was thinking over when he walked up and down the deck in unamiable solitariness. Rosy awakened to the amazed consciousness of the fact that, instead of being pleased with the luxury and prettiness of her wardrobe and appointments, he seemed to dislike ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... orchard where he knew she would be waiting. And there he spied her, idly plaiting dry stems of last year's bluegrass, beneath the distorted old tree which he had named Nirvana. A glow of extreme pleasure warmed him, for this Rosalind with her rustic prettiness made an agreeable diversion from the somewhat monotonous evenings at Arden, and he vastly enjoyed angling about the edges of her rural pool. But he was unaware that she had never left its limpid depths. He did not suspect—because he ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play. He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird, Ascends the neighbouring beech; there whisks his brush, And perks his ears, and stamps and scolds aloud, With all the prettiness of feigned alarm, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... he came back—and he found Clarry O'Grady at the Cummins' cabin. He had been there for a month with a broken leg. Perhaps it was the dangerous knowledge of the power of her beauty—the woman's instinct in her to tease with her prettiness, that led to Marie's flirtation with O'Grady. But Jan could not understand, and she played with fire—the fire of two hearts instead of one. The world went to pieces under Jan after that. There came the day when, in fair fight, he choked the taunting sneer from O'Grady's face back in the woods. ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... a faint chill of regret that he had gone back without an effort to the footing on which they had stood before their last talk together. Her vanity was stung by the sight of his unscathed smile. She longed to be to him something more than a piece of sentient prettiness, a passing diversion to his eye and brain; and the longing betrayed itself in ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... little slip of a girl with a small-featured face and a certain pale prettiness. There was an appealing tinge of melancholy in her eyes notwithstanding they were eager and alert. Her dress was plain, but natty ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... reached this point in his meditations a voice in his ear made him start; and turning, he beheld a pale and distraught-looking young woman who might in happier circumstances have laid claim to a certain uninspired prettiness. At this moment, however, her eyes red-rimmed with lack of sleep, her ashy-coloured hair limp and dishevelled round her unintellectual forehead, she was rather a piteous object; and in spite of his resolve to speak bracingly ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... a prettiness we very much dislike—alter one word, and it would be voluptuous—nor do we hesitate to call the passage a puling one altogether, and such as ought to be ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... word for a toy or doll, {286} so it is not so applicable as the Portuguese name, for the native image is not a doll or toy, and has far more affinity to the image of a saint, inasmuch as it is not venerated for itself, or treasured because of its prettiness, but only because it is the residence, or the occasional haunt, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... walked as well as other girls, and hastily made up her arrears of education, as best she might, at a private school in Watauga. She would always be frail; the invalid habit had gotten into both mind and body; she would continue dependent, demanding; and somewhat irritable; yet there was a fragile prettiness about her, and her very ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... how much importance I have always given, among the fine arts, to good dancing. If you think of it, you will find one of the robin's very chief ingratiatory faculties is his dainty and delicate movement,—his footing it featly here and there. Whatever prettiness there may be in his red breast, at his brightest he can always be outshone by a brickbat. But if he is rationally proud of anything about him, I should think a robin must be proud of his legs. Hundreds of birds have longer and more ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... this same chambermaid was a pattern of town prettiness and smartness. So trim her waist, her cap, her dress—I wondered how they had all been manufactured. Her speech had an accent which in its mincing glibness seemed to rebuke mine as by authority; her spruce attire flaunted an easy scorn ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... powerful man who was a merchant and citizen, who beside his great wealth and treasures, was enriched by the possession of a fair daughter, whom God had given him over and above his substance, and who for goodness, prettiness, and gentleness, surpassed all others of her time, and who when she was fifteen was renowned ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... commences with some general reflections on the advantages possessed by a pretty woman, in all cases of a quarrel with a man. And when, in addition to her prettiness, she has the art to appear ill-used, there is no resisting her attacks. A halo of sympathy gathers round her, while a cloud envelopes the unfortunate antagonist; and people at last think that they are performing an act of pure and disinterested ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... was born, is as it were an appeal from Antiquity to Life, to Nature. In the simplicity and impulse of this movement, so spontaneous, so touching, so full of a sense of beauty, which sometimes, though not often, becomes prettiness, the art of sculpture, awakened at last from the mysticism of the Middle Age, seems to look back with longing to the antique world, which it would fain claim as its brother, and after a little moment in the sun falls again into a sort of mysticism, a new kingdom of the spirit with Michelangelo, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton |
