"Robustness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long, abandoned it altogether. In his then state of health existence would have been a burden anywhere, but it was a greater one away from his accustomed surroundings. Moreover, English life to be enjoyable requires a robustness of constitution, sentimental and intellectual as well as physical, which the delicately-organised artist, even in his best time, could not boast of. If London and the rest of Britain was not to the mind of Chopin, it was not for want of good-will among the people. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... afternoons and evenings a delight which no one would suspect from their faces to be the wild thing it is. If they go home at the end "high sorrowful and cloyed," there is no forecast of it in their demeanor, which is as little troubled as it is animated. The young people are even openly gay, and the robustness of their flirtations adds sensibly to the interest of the spectator. Our own public lovers seem of a humbler sort, and they mostly content themselves with the passive embraces of which every seat in our parks affords ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... that of the French monarchy, presupposed for success the constant personal supervision of an industrious and strong-willed king. Henry III was never a strenuous worker, and his character failed in the robustness and self-reliance necessary for personal rule. The magnates, who regarded themselves as the king's natural-born counsellors, were bitterly incensed, and hated the royal clerks as fiercely as they had disliked the ministers of his minority. Opposed by the barons, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... their author. He loves robustness. If he cannot produce it, he can at any rate affect it, or attack its enemies. This worship of the robust is the fundamental fact of all Chesterton's work. For example, as a critic of letters he confines himself ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... had grown gray with fear. When he spoke it was in a changed tone. He had lost his confidence, his defiant robustness. He almost seemed to be begging for mercy, as ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... Suppose it to be a man's ambition to aid his city as a trooper mounted on a charger of his own: why not combine the rearing of horses with other stock? it is the farmer's chance. [7] Or would your citizen serve on foot? It is husbandry that shall give him robustness of body. Or if we turn to the toil-loving fascination of the chase, [8] here once more earth adds incitement, as well as furnishing facility of sustenance for the dogs as by nurturing a foster brood of wild animals. And if horses ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... languor, ill concealed by the most studied artifice of countenance, and even of posture, characterizes Lord Hervey. He would have abhorred robustness; for he belonged to the clique then called Maccaronis; a set of fine gentlemen, of whom the present world would not be worthy, tricked out for show, fitted only to drive out fading majesty in a stage coach; exquisite in every personal appendage, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... working hard all day while the daylight lasted they much preferred an evening of complete solitude. Rossiter's new robustness of taste included love of a gramophone. Money being no consideration with them, they acquired a tip-top one with superlative records; not so much the baaing, bellowing and shrieking of fashionable singers, but orchestral performances, heart-melting duets between violin ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... paid far more attention to Mrs. Dangerfield than to the fishing. Besides her charming eyes and delightful voice, her air of fragility made a strong appeal to his vigorous robustness. His first discomfort sternly vanquished, its place was taken by the keenest desire to remain in her presence. He not only stayed with them till the Twins had caught their three fish, but he walked nearly to Colet House with them, and at last bade them good-by with an air of the deepest ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... cold. There are no carpets, curtains, and generally no fire-places in the bedrooms, all is cold, cool, and bare as in Egypt, and many are approached from without. The people must enjoy a wonderful vigour of health and robustness of constitution, or they could not resist such hardships as these, and what a Jura winter is, makes one shudder to think of. Snow lies often twelve feet deep on the road, and journeys are performed by sledges, as ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the influence of Giorgione with which its beginnings were saturated. The beautiful head of St. John shows the Giorgionesque type and the Giorgionesque feeling at its highest. The Joseph of Arimathea has the robustness and the passion of the Apostles in the Assunta, the crimson coat of Nicodemus, with its high yellowish lights, is such as we meet with in the Bacchanal. The Magdalen, with her features distorted by grief, resembles—allowing for the necessary differences imposed by the situation—the ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... An air of robustness and strength is very prejudicial to beauty. An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to it. Whoever examines the vegetable or animal creation will find this observation to be founded in nature. It is not the oak, the ash, or the elm, or any of the robust trees of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... world to-day is for men and women who are good animals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. They must have a robustness of health. Mere absence of disease is not health. It is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life and beauty to the valley below. Only he is healthy who exults in mere animal existence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... devotion to his uncle's recovery—no less than twelve a day—that he intended to expend, and his cheery robustness almost won his uncle to leap up recklessly and clutch health ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... everything that offends their ideal. Lessing is obsessed with too high an estimate of the Captivi. Lamarre, Naudet and Ritschl commit the error of imputing to our poet a moral purpose. Schlegel and Scott deprecate the crudity of his wit without an adequate appreciation of its sturdy and primeval robustness. Langen, Mommsen, Korting and LeGrand approach a keen estimate of his inconsistencies and his single-minded purpose of entertainment, but Korting accuses him of attempting to create an illusion of life while aiming solely ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... old Hank and you playing a foursome with Aunt Mary and me for the cider and apples. Why, it would add years of robustness to our ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... said Annie; she annexed some irrelevancies about the weather, which Mrs. Munger swept away with business-like robustness. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... [*] that "the anomaly disappears" on careful study. He assures us that a modern skull of the same dimensions would have a capacity of 1800-1900 cubic centimetres, and warns us that we must take into account the robustness of the body of primitive man. He concludes that the real volume of the Neanderthal brain (in this highest known specimen) is "slight in comparison with the volume of the brain lodged in the large heads of to-day," and that the "bestial or ape-like characters" of ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... melancholy task of bewailing its departure, and tracing very hastily and imperfectly its track. The intellectual powers of Hugh Miller had certainly not declined. He was marked to the very last by that wonderful robustness of mind which had characterized him all through life. His sense was as manly, his judgment as sound and comprehensive, his penetration as discriminating and deep, his imagination as vigorous and bold, and his taste ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... unsteady, the sinews being supported by some assistance. Then he becomes strong and swift, and passes over the hours of youth; and the years of middle age, too, now past, he glides adown the steep path of declining age. This undermines and destroys the robustness of former years; and Milo,[13] {now} grown old, weeps when he sees the arms, which equalled those of Hercules in the massiveness of the solid muscles, hang weak and exhausted. The daughter of Tyndarus weeps, too, as she beholds in her mirror the wrinkles of old age, and enquires of herself ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... some sort like a blind man and a cripple. Now that they were together they felt sound and strong. Living in the shadow of Christophe Olivier recovered his joy in the light: Christophe transmitted to him something of his abounding vitality, his physical and moral robustness, which, even in sorrow, even in injustice, even in hate, inclined to optimism. He took much more than he gave, in obedience to the law of genius, which gives in vain, but in love always takes more than it gives, quia nominor leo, because it is genius, and genius half consists in the instinctive ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... feelings," said Lydia, laughing. "But I was serious, Lucian. Alice is energetic, ambitious, and stubbornly upright in questions of principle. I believe she would assist you steadily at every step of your career. Besides, she has physical robustness. Our student-stock needs an infusion ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... almost every other distemper. The bodies of men are enfeebled and enervated; and it is not uncommon to observe very high degrees of irritability under the external appearance of great strength and robustness. The hypochondriac, palsies, cachexies, dropsies, and all those diseases which arise from laxity and debility, are, in our days, endemic every where; and the hysterics, which used to be peculiar to the women, as the name itself indicates, now attacks both sexes ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... had married Miss Annie Beverly Whiting of Hampton. Hers were the face and form to take captive his poet's fancy, and she possessed a character as lovely as her person; a courage and strength of will far out of proportion to her dainty shape, and an intellect of masculine robustness. Often the editor brought his work to the table of his library that he might avail himself of his wife's judgment, and labor with the faces around him that he loved, for their union was a very congenial one, and when two daughters came ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... character, testimonies borne out by the evidence of his own writings. Impulse with him took the place of conscience. Moral law, accompanied by the sanction of power, and imposed by outside authority, he rejected as a form of tyranny. His nature lacked robustness and ballast. Byron, who was at bottom intensely practical, said that Shelley's philosophy was too spiritual and romantic. Hazlitt, himself a Radical, wrote of Shelley: "He has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... hardly be doubted, either, that he was an amateur in verse, whose life was rather centred in his contemplative, retiring existence among the fields and hills of Amherst. There may even seem to some a delicate Pharisaism about this sonnet, a Pharisaism removed from the robustness of Thoreau, who would certainly have argued the point with ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton |
