"Seraphic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other respectable men were the words that had once kindled the souls of St. Catharine and St. Francis into a white-hot hatred of the carnal. He could-not be as the saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a little ashamed of loving a wife. "Amabat, amare timebat." And it was here that Margaret ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... mothers in itself. We all felt it, mothers or not. But the great sensation was when he got into the pulpit. The manner in which he dropped on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, and showed his beautiful rings was, as a young lady said behind me, simply seraphic. We understood his celebrity, from that moment—I wonder whether I can remember ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... de Sant Pablo, [13] preacher and minister provincial of this province of Sant Gregorio of the Philipinas Islands of the order of the discalced religious of our seraphic father St. Francis, and son of the province of Sant Joseph of the same order, who minister in the convent of La Purissima Concepcion [i.e., "the most pure conception"] in the town of Barajas, and the least vassal of your Majesty, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... to say about the Pegram mystery, as it had come to be called in the newspapers. I found him playing the violin with a look of sweet peace and serenity on his face, which I never noticed on the countenances of those within hearing distance. I knew this expression of seraphic calm indicated that Kombs had been deeply annoyed about something. Such, indeed, proved to be the case, for one of the morning papers had contained an article, eulogizing the alertness and general competence of Scotland Yard. So great was Sherlaw ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... his couch an angel fair, with radiant, glitt'ring wings Of hues as bright as the living gems the fount to Heaven flings; With loving smile he bent above the fair child cradled there, While sounds of sweet seraphic power ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... "And this seraphic ocean-child And heroine was Orlie Wilde: And thus it was I came to hear Her voice's music in my ear— Ay, thus it was Fate paved the way That I walk ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... poem to watch her listening to a theme of Weber, or Beethoven, or Herold,—her eyes raised, her lips silent, regretting no doubt the life escaping her. The cure Peroux and Monsieur Habert, her two religious comforters, admired her saintly resignation. Surely the seraphic perfection of young girls and young men marked with the hectic of death, is a wonderful fact worthy of the attention alike of philosophers and of heedless minds. He who has ever seen one of these sublime departures from this life can never ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... expect I didn't—so I wrote to her giving both our thanks and explaining the state of affairs. "All is over," I said, "between that lady and myself. Do not name her to me, lest the hideous word 'Woman' should blind me to the seraphic word 'Aunt.' My life is a howling waste—but what matter? Ha! Ha! Ha!" I cannot remember my exact words, of course. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... eyes and smiled, a faint, seraphic smile. "My dear boy," he said, "you forget. This is the ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... striking ONE before it occurred to me that it was time to depart. Again I traversed the streets at that solemn hour, insensible to every feeling, and regardless of every object but the flaming torch lit up in my heart and the seraphic image of Laura. At length I was warned by the scrutinizing gaze of a watchman to repair to my lodgings. But my pillow afforded no rest. All night long I pondered on the exhilarating events of the day. Many were the endearing accents ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... have been suggested to the seraphic Bard, Williams, of Pantycelyn, by the approach of Columbus to the shores of ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... rasping bass voices of the well-fed monks; women were out of the question in the then social stage of church evolution; so that at last a compromise was effected by admitting the eunuch, who could chant in a most seraphic soprano, as his prototype, the mendicant priests of ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... first much interest in their own danger is very rarely felt. In writings of fiction, whether novels or biographies, these death-beds are generally depicted as almost seraphic in lucidity of intelligence. Sadly large has been my experience in death-beds, and I can only say that I have seldom or never seen such. Indifference, excepting with regard to bodily suffering, or to some duty the dying man desires to ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... so very large because it shone so much; and the long grey hair at its sides and back, like floss silk or spun glass, which looked so very benevolent because it was never cut; were not, of course, to be seen in the boy as in the old man. Nevertheless, in the Seraphic creature with the haymaking rake, were clearly to be discerned the rudiments of the Patriarch with the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... again, whose flow And fire were more than Sapphic; Her voice was sweet, and very low; Her singing quite seraphic: ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... is that wild, sweet face, Which thus and ever gleams, And smiles, with a seraphic grace, ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... of the mortal Jennie. But in a land of perpetual summer, lighted by the smile of God, robed in garments of everlasting light, faithful and true, there awaits me Jennie the immortal! She knows it all now. Those bright seraphic eyes lighted with heaven-born love, have turned from celestial light to mark my gloomy wanderings. When she died, there was added to the band of ministering spirits the one whose silent influence was most powerful for good, most potent to aid me in overcoming evil. I have been better ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at Miss Lord with the innocent, seraphic gaze that always warned those who knew her best that is was wisest to ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... thy heavenly aid bestow, O'er my rapt soul bid inspiration flow; Let voice seraphic, mighty Lord, be mine, Whilst I unfold this awful bold design. No less a theme my lab'ring breast inspires, Than earth's last throes and overwhelming fires, Than man arising from his dark abode To meet ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... gains and his losses he took with reasonable equanimity, exclaiming over and over, when he lost: "Shucks! I hadn't orter have done that," and snapping his fingers. When he won heavily or was winning he munched tobacco with a seraphic smile and occasionally in the midst of trading would exclaim: "You fellers better come in. It's a-gonta rain some more." He was not easy to trap in any small gambling game, and only lost or won when there was a free, open struggle in the market, or when he was engineering some little scheme ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... studies in my office, by my side, sat with me, walked with me, was my inexpressibly sweet and inseparable companion,—never left me but to go and sit with her mother. We knew all her intelligence, all her pure and delicate sensibility, the quickness and power of her perceptions, her seraphic love. She was all love, and loved all God's creation, even the animals, trees, and plants. She loved her God and Saviour with an angel's love, and died like ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... remark of Montfaucon (Diario Italico) "aera Dodonaea dixisses", alluding to the brass kettles of the oracle (Potter Arch. Graec. B. 2, Sec. 8) is an exaggeration. Their flabelli are of metal, of a round form, surrounded with little bells, which are sounded at the seraphic hymn, to express, if we might believe Cancellieri, "by the trembling of the hands, that of the blessed spirits, who assist at the throne of the Divine Majesty with fear and trembling". (Tre Pontific. Not. VI). Their mass is anticipated, but not at so early ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... tinkers who were unanimous—that, if sometimes there is a little treachery of this kind amongst the profession, it is no more than would be pronounced 'in reason' by all candid men. And certainly, said one of the three, you wouldn't look for perfection in a tinker? Undoubtedly a seraphic tinker would be an unreasonable postulate; though, perhaps, the man in all England that came nearest to the seraphic character in one century was a tinker—namely, John Bunyan. But, as my triad of tinkers urged, men of all professions do cheat at uncertain times, are traitors in a small ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Indeed there was scarcely a chamber in this vast edifice of which the walls were not breathing with English history in this interesting form. Sometimes more ideal art asserted a triumphant claim—transcendental Holy Families, seraphic saints, and gorgeous scenes by Tintoret and Paul ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... and grumbling be joined with a tendency to exaggeration and with figures of speech corresponding thereto. Consequently, I am surprised that the reverend annalist or chronicler [i.e., San Antonio] of the seraphic province of San Gregorio praises this letter, saying that it is worth printing, since its author has penetrated as far as one may penetrate into the characters of the natives of these islands. And yet the author confesses that it is as difficult ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... the lot of thousands of innocent men and women at the hands of Philip's soldiers in a country at peace with Philip, at the very moment when that monarch was protesting with a seraphic smile on his expiring lips that he had never in his whole life done injury to a single ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... evangelical moderation. "Now, therefore," he continued, "let us resume our correspondence, but let us speak out. We do not like each other, but we will write, each for his own amusement, setting everything down which may come into our heads. You will tell me your seraphic visions and revelations, and I will treat you with my profane adventures; you again will run into ecstasies upon the dignity of man, yea, and of woman; I into an ingenuous narrative of my various profanations; I hoping to make a convert of ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... it would seem, my dear count, that you can at pleasure enjoy the seraphic strains that proceed from the seven ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... standard. That proud honour claimed Azazel as his right, a Cherub tall: Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled Th' imperial ensign; which, full high advanced, Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind, With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host up-sent A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... himself be seen with me everywhere in public." This was embarrassing for Swann, who did not know quite to what rhetorical pitch he should screw himself up in speaking of Odette to my uncle. He began by alluding to her excellence, a priori, the axiom of her seraphic super-humanity, the revelation of her inexpressible virtues, no conception of which could possibly be formed. "I should like to speak to you about her," he went on, "you, who know what a woman supreme above all women, what ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... life of a good woman and her great merits, was to overwork himself, to exert, to exterminate himself, to please her in every way, with fondlings and kissings and wrestlings, and all the delicacies and sweet confectionery of love; and that, if she would taste a little of the seraphic joys of these little ways to her unknown, she would believe all the other things of life as not worth a straw; and that, if such were her wish, he would forever be as silent as the grave, and last no scandal would besmear her virtue. And the lewd fellow, perceiving ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... string of fat pearls she so often wore about her round, full throat; the white frock, say, with arabesques of blue all over it, that Felix Kennaston said reminded him of Ruskin's tombstone; or that other white-and-blue one—decollete, that was—which I swear seraphic mantua-makers had woven out of mists and the skies of June: when I remember these things, I repeat, almost am I tempted to become a boot-maker and a lapidary and a milliner and, in fine, an adept in all the other arts and trades and sciences that go to make a well-groomed American girl what she ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... loss and compassion and pity and loneliness and aspiration and sensitiveness; and lo! there is born from this pain, the spiritual Self, which embraces the lesser consciousness, enfolding all your consciousness in the softness and bliss of pure, Seraphic Love—the heritage of ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... whole choruses of deep-throated echoes, and attending and retentive ocean, catching the strains on her beryl strings, bore them whither—and how far? To palm-plumed equatorial isles, where dying auricular nerves mistook them for seraphic utterances? To toiling mariners, tossed helplessly by fierce typhoons, who, pausing in their scramble for spars, listened to the weird melody that presaged woe and wreck? To the broken casements of fishermen's huts, on distant shores, where ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... said, "I wonder what the bright seraphic beings up there—for surely there must be such in that pure heaven above us—are thinking of the proceedings of us mortals down here below. We have to fight, and it is right to defend our country, but I tell you, Ben, I have seen a good deal of it, and, putting what people call glory aside, ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... virgins, roses strow, Mingled with Ios as you go. The snowy ox is kill'd, The fane with pros'lyte lads and lasses fill'd, You too may hope the same seraphic joy, Old time cannot destroy, Nor fulnesse cloy; When, like these, you shall stamp by sympathies Thousands of ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... far than sculptured fane Is that gray church to me, For in its shade my mother sleeps, Beneath the willow-tree; And often, when my heart is raised By sermon and by song, Her friendly smile appears to me From the seraphic throng. ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... eyes the perambulations of Bung, who was flitting about the garden like a ghost with a curled tail and a turned-up nose. Mr. Amarinth leaned largely upon the piano, in an attitude of rapt attention. His clever, clean-shaved face wore an expression of seraphic sensuality. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... eternal bends his course; Loud thunders round him roll, and lightnings play; Th' angelic host is rang'd in bright array: Some touch the string, some strike the sounding shell, And mingling voices in rich concert swell; Voices seraphic; blest with such a strain, Could Satan hear, he were a god again. Triumphant King of Glory! Soul of bliss! What a stupendous turn of fate is this! O! whither art thou rais'd above the scorn And indigence of him in Bethlem born; A needless, helpless, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... bright comment and illustration in the Madonnas and Cherubim of Raffaelle, it seems to shine out in still more truthful vividness from the brow of a young person rapt in religious ecstasy. The hands clasped in prayer,—the upturned eyes,—the expression of humble confidence and seraphic hope, (displayed, let me suggest, on a beautiful face,) constitute a picture of which, having witnessed it, I can never forget the force. Yet I knew it was only a trance. So one knows that village churches are built by common mechanics. Yet when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... if for you to choose, Discretion in the interval, With gay delays he goes To some superior tree Without a single leaf, And shouts for joy to nobody But his seraphic self! ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... the interpretation and ultimatum in its final form. The laws which rule the world as forces are, in it, thoughts and liberties. All the grand imaginations of men, all the glorified shapes, the Olympian gods, cherubic and seraphic forms, are but symbols and adumbrations of what it contains. As the sun, having set, still leaves its golden impress on the clouds, so does the absolute nature of man throw up and paint, as it were, on the sky testimonies of its power, remaining ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... flights and to the corner, although it was midnight and bitter cold. Then, with a seraphic grin on his countenance, he went to bed and slept ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... these seraphic, and, as far as my boyish experience extends, novel, elements of pantomime, there were yet some of its old and fast-expiring elements. There were, in speciality, two thoroughly good pantomime actors—Mr. W. H. Payne and Mr. Frederick Payne. All that these two did, was ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... these doctrines shows "a heart secretly disaffected to the government of God," and daring to oppose presumption and ignorance to the wisdom of the Eternal. As if it were not the fact, that Calvinism has been viewed with abhorrence by men of the humblest and the purest piety, by men of seraphic minds and ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... Maker! of thy power the trace In every creature's form and face The wond'ring soul surveys: Thy wisdom, infinite above Seraphic thought, a Father's love 5 As ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 'Tis not the crown of kings, Nay, nor the fire of white seraphic wings! Is it a child's heart leaping while he sings? Even so say ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... sank again, though it was easy to see that a prayer trembled on his lips. As a strain of music fades into silence, his tones fell away, fainter and fainter; and with the same seraphic light on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... (exciting) 824; cheering &c. 836; bewitching; enchanting, entrancing, enravishing[obs3]. charming; delightful, felicitous, exquisite; lovely &c. (beautiful) 845; ravishing, rapturous; heartfelt, thrilling, ecstatic; beatic[obs3]; beatific; seraphic; empyrean; elysian &c. (heavenly) 981. palmy, halcyon, Saturnian. Phr. decies repetita placebit[Lat]; "charms strike the sight but merit wins the soul" [Pope]; "sweetness and light" [Swift]; beauty is only ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the kind token of her pardon, "can you give to me again a hand so ill deserved? can you look with such compassion on the author of your woes? on the wretch, who for an instant could doubt the purity of a mind so seraphic!" ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Julian thought, "I should have guessed by your writing that you were in some unusual frame of mind, either tired, or—or—" he looked again, and closely, at the writing,—"or in a temper less delightfully calm and seraphic than usual. Yes, it looks actually a bad-tempered hand. Valentine's!" Then he laughed, and tossed the note carelessly into the fire that was crackling upon the hearth. Rip lay by it, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... criticism as this, a shining reflection, so to speak, of the work which it exalts; yet MacSilly, the seraphic aesthete of Edinburgh, has expressed in a still more moving and penetrating fashion the impression produced upon his mind by the sight of this primitive painting. "The Madonna of Margaritone," says the revered MacSilly, "attains ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... girl ... ... Her flesh was the soft seraphic screen Of a soul that is meant ... To just see earth, and hardly be seen, And blossom in heaven instead. Yet earth saw one thing, one how fair? One grace that grew to its full ... ... She had ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... originally rougher, more earth-born, and of less genial goodness than that of Joan of Arc, but with a shaping imagination of the same realizing intensity, the beautiful myths of Romish superstition, which her innocent soul transfigured into gracious ministering spirits of seraphic might and seraphic tenderness, glared in upon his more morbid spiritual vision as menacing angels, or grinning imps, or scoffing fiends. But still the tortured soul toiled sturdily on through the anguish of its self-created hells, the mind crazed and shattered, the heart ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Hark! strains seraphic fall upon the ear, From shining ones around th' eternal gates: Glad that man's load of guilt may disappear, Infinite strength on ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... in an incredibly short time. One by one, two by two, they rose heavily and lumbered out with one last, wistful look at Mrs. Field. She will never know how seraphic she seemed sitting there amid those rough surroundings—the dim, red light of the kerosene lamp falling across her clear pallor, out of which her dark eyes shone with liquid softness, made deeper and darker by her half-sorrowful tenderness for ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... no description, however minute and glowing, could perfectly represent the life and love of the Redeemer, as displayed in his own person. The imperfection of language rendered it impossible to portray the glorious reality. What inspired or seraphic pen, though dipped in heaven, could display all that was seen when they "beheld his glory?" Had Omnipotence remanded back the flood of ages, and recalled from the invisible state the illustrious saints that had been carried down ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... It is not much, Monsieur Jean," she interrupted, with a seraphic smile. "To be your servant, monsieur, is—— I mean, to do anything to ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... boy of energy, very decided, although not very intelligent. His uncle, Fray Jose de Calasanz, when he knew him, grew fond of him. Fray Jose enjoyed great esteem in the Order that is called,—nobody knows whether it is in irony,—the Seraphic Order. Fray Jose consulted several competent persons and they advised him to send his nephew to study outside of Spain. It is known that among her ministers the Church prefers men without a country. Catholicism means universality, ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... in white, was bareheaded and barefooted. The dress, the action, the seraphic face were not infrequent on the water, and especially in the churches; recognition was instantaneous, and through the eager crowded ranks the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... curves and fashion'd every sphere, Spaced out their suns, and round each radiant goal, Orb over orb, compell'd their train to roll, Bade heaven's own harmony their force combine. Taught all their host symphonious strains to join, Gave to seraphic harps their sounding lays, Their joys to angels, and to men ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... the young Venetia was not the hereditary gift of her beautiful mother. It was not from Lady Annabel that Venetia Herbert had derived those seraphic locks that fell over her shoulders and down her neck in golden streams, nor that clear grey eye even, whose childish glance might perplex the gaze of manhood, nor that little aquiline nose, that gave a haughty expression to a countenance that had never yet dreamed of pride, nor that radiant complexion, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... him, their wrath seemed to him too tempestuous, their passion too overpowering, the lion-marrow which fills every member of his phases was matter too substantial for his tastes, and the Raphaelic and Seraphic profiles which are wrought into the midst of the nervous and powerful creations of this great genius, were to him almost painful from the force of the cutting contrast in which ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... loud and Clarions be upreard His mighty Standard; that proud honour claim'd Azazel as his right, a Cherube tall: Who forthwith from the glittering Staff unfurld Th' Imperial Ensign, which full high advanc't Shon like a Meteor streaming to the Wind With Gemms and Golden lustre rich imblaz'd, Seraphic arms and Trophies: all the while Sonorous mettal blowing Martial sounds: 540 At which the universal Host upsent A shout that tore Hells Concave, and beyond Frighted the Reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through the gloom were seen Ten thousand Banners rise into the Air ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... I am seasoned; I have great experience: you would not repent, and shall not, by the Face on the Handkerchief! But happen you see my master, happen he wear his brocade of white and gold—it is all peacocks' eyes, my seraphic heart, in gold and blue upon snowy white—happen again he look, 'Come' at you—why, off you trot as a hound to the platter, and I speed you thither with open heart. Thus walks his world, Guarino Guarini, my ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... staff unfurled Th' imperial ensign, which, full high advanced, Shone like a meteor, streaming to the wind, With gems and golden lustre rich imblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host upsent A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. Paradise Lost, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... passions! How did my frame tremble, and madden, and shiver, and burn! How were my lips at once bursting with frenzy and locked in silence! It was my guardian angel that protected me, that pleaded for me, that awed me to patience, and that repaid by her seraphic praise the virtue ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... soul and heart had been at one time (nay, was at the very moment of composition) inspired and suffused with that firm belief in God's goodness and His justice—that full assurance of rewards beyond the grave—that exulting and seraphic cheerfulness which associates joy with the Creator—and that animated affection for the Brotherhood of Mankind, which Christianity—and Christianity alone, in its pure, orthodox, gospel form, needing no aid from schoolman or philosopher—taught ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... with closed eyes; but a heavenly smile was upon her lips, and a holy light seemed to play around her pale but beautiful face. Not the least tinge of color was on her cheeks; and but for the tint of carmine upon her lips—so unearthly, so seraphic was her beauty—that she might have been mistaken for a sculptor's dream of Azrael, the pale angel ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... with keen eyes, as if uncertain what to do, but his hesitation did not last long. A piece of pine wood lay near him, and picking it up he drew from under his belt a great keen-bladed bowie-knife, with which he began to whittle long slender shavings that curled beautifully; then a seraphic smile of content spread ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... from them, as Bunyan's hero did, to get a place by himself in heaven. He was 'a little lower than the angels', like our own Bishop Jewells and Berkeleys; and yet he was no poet. He was too delicately, not to say feebly, absorbed in his devotions, to join in the energies of the seraphic choir. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of Miss Morgan's melted heart shone upon her face. Through a seraphic smile she spoke: "It's apple pie, too, Henry—your kind." As she put the supper upon the table, she asked: "Did you have a good time ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... upon the card-table, paying no heed to his guests or their pleasure. Eugenie, to whom such a type of perfection, whether of dress or of person, was absolutely unknown, thought she beheld in her cousin a being descended from seraphic spheres. She inhaled with delight the fragrance wafted from the graceful curls of that brilliant head. She would have liked to touch the soft kid of the delicate gloves. She envied Charles his small hands, his complexion, the freshness and refinement of his features. In short,—if ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Auckland, which is superior to this. It is beautifully laid out, and to us, fresh from the uncouth barbarism of our shanty and its surroundings, this place seems to breathe of the "Arabian Nights." And is there not a certain princess within, into whose seraphic presence we are now entering? We inhale a new atmosphere, and tread lightly, almost on tiptoe, speaking unconsciously in whispers, and with the blood running ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... sidelong eyes, 'Queen Bertha's voice was that! A woman's man! Since first from Gallic shores That dainty daughter of King Charibert Pressed her small foot on England's honest shore The whole land dwindles!' In seraphic hymns Ere long that serpent hiss was lost: for soon, In raiment white, circling a rocky point, O'er sands still glistening with a tide far-ebbed, On drew, preceded by a silver Cross, A long procession. Music, as it moved, Floated on sea-winds inland, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... from without. And this happened at the very moment when my two guardian angels had betaken themselves to heaven to supplicate the Lord. I was quite alone therefore, and when Satan assumed the appearance of an angel, bent over the wall of Paradise, and intoned seraphic songs of praise, I was deceived, and thought him an angel. A conversation was held between us, Satan speaking through ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... aerial Gothic construction. Mr. Browning, with his little son, drove over to the wild, curious town of Bagnorgio, which, though near Orvieto, is very little known. But this was the birthplace of Giovanni da Fidenza, the "Seraphic Doctor," who was canonized as St. Buonaventura, from the exclamation of San Francesco, who, on awakening from a dream communion with Giovanni da Fidenza, exclaimed, "O buona ventura!" Dante introduces this saint into the Divina Commedia, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... two Jews that met by chance, One old, stern-eyed, deep-browed, yet garlanded With living light of love around his head, The other young, with sweet seraphic glance. Around went on the Town's satanic dance, Hunger a-piping while at heart he bled. Shalom Aleichem mournfully each said, Nor eyed the other straight ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... was Ryland, who was soon to train missionaries for the work at Bristol College. The treasurer was the only rich man of the twelve, who soon resigned his office into a layman's hands, as was right. Of the others we need now point only to Samuel Pearce, the seraphic preacher of Birmingham, who went home and sent L70 to the collection, and who, since he desired to give himself like Carey, became to him dearer than even Fuller was. The place was a low-roofed parlour in the house of Widow Wallis, looking on to a back garden, which many a pilgrim ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... boy and girl, lying naked side by side, were joined through the silent hours, in the seraphic promiscuousness of the shadows; such dreams as were possible to their age floated from one to the other; beneath their closed eyelids there shone, perhaps, a starlight; if the word marriage were not inappropriate to the situation, they were husband and wife after the fashion ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... sort, but of a deeper, more exacting, keen-eyed kind, that sees faults where even a true mother will not, so jealous is it of the perfection of the beloved. But one thing was plain, even to this seraphic dragon that dwelt sleepless in him—and there was eternal content in the thought—that such a woman, once started on the right way, would soon leave fault and weakness behind her, and become as one of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... his name and the story of his life, that is not likely soon to pass away. He belonged to a class of men who seem to be chosen of Heaven to illustrate the sublime possibilities of Christian attainment—men of seraphic fervor of devotion, and whose one overmastering passion is to win souls for Christ and to become wholly like Him themselves. Into this goodly fellowship he was early initiated. There is something startling in the depth and intensity of his religious emotions, as recorded ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... to Assisi, the "Seraphic City," prefigures itself almost as a journey to the Mount of Vision. "Any line of truth that leads us above materialism," says Dr. Wilberforce, Venerable Archdeacon of Westminster Abbey, "that forces us ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... the Medicean popes. Christianity has only modified Art by purifying it from sensual attractions. Christianity added very little to Art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their Saints and Madonnas the seraphic sentiments of Christian love and angelic purity. Art even declined in the Roman world from the second century after Christ, in spite of all the efforts of Christian emperors. In fact neither Christianity nor Paganism creates it; it seems to be independent ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... spot in the world be sacred, it is that in which grief ceases, and for which, if the voice within our hearts mocks us not with an everlasting lie, we spring upon the untiring wings of a pangless and seraphic life—those whom we love around us—our nature, universal intelligence, our atmosphere, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... was perplexed at seeing this gesture followed by gloomy looks, and what French reporters call "sensation," in these young men, whom naturally I viewed with awe as my leaders—boys that were called young men, men that were reading Sophocles, (a name that carried with it the sound of something seraphic to my ears,) and who had never vouchsafed to waste a word on such a child as myself. The day was come, however, when all that would be changed. One of these leaders strode up to me in the public playground, and, delivering a blow on my shoulder, which was not intended ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... consecration of the first-fruits of the year to God; and secondly, in honoring the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God, particularly his birth and circumcision. The church invites us on this day to unite our homage with the seraphic ardors and transports of devotion with which the glorious Mother of God assisted at these wonderful mysteries which we commemorate, but in which she acted herself so great a part. With what sentiments did Mary bear in her womb, bring forth, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... different from him as possible. Mr. Lurton was as gentle as his predecessor had been boisterous. There was a strong substratum of manly courage and will, but the whole was overlaid with a sweetness wholly feminine and seraphic. His religion was the Twenty-third Psalm. His face showed no trace of conflict. He had accepted the creed which he had inherited without a question, and, finding in it abundant sources of happiness, of moral development, and spiritual consolation, he thence concluded ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... with the seraphic calm of one who sees beyond the pomps and vanities of existence, and would begin the relation ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and what French reporters call "sensation," in these young men, whom naturally I viewed with awe as my leaders, boys that were called young men, men that were reading Sophocles—(a name that carried with it the sound of something seraphic to my ears)—and who never had vouchsafed to waste a word on such a child as myself. The day was come, however, when all that would be changed. One of these leaders strode up to me in the public playgrounds, and delivering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... this and that distinguished spirit— 50 His cheeks' raised colour, soon to sink, As long I dwell on some stupendous And tremendous (Heaven defend us!) Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous Demoniaco-seraphic Penman's latest piece of graphic. Nay, my very wrist grows warm With his dragging weight of arm. E'en so, swimmingly appears, Through one's after-supper musings, 60 Some lost lady of old years With her beauteous vain endeavour And goodness unrepaid as ever; The ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... schemes of future poetical work, vigorous hopes of carrying some of them, and an inspiration and faculty of utterance unimpaired. It was in Dumfriesshire that he composed the most tenderly and melodiously seraphic of his lyrics—"To Mary in Heaven" and "Highland Mary;" the most powerful and popular of his narrative poems—"Tam O' Shanter;" the first of all patriotic odes—"Bruce's Address to his Army"; and the noblest ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... mannered, chills the spectator on a first glance. When POPE was a child, he found in his mother's closet a small library of mystical devotion; but it was not suspected, till the fact was discovered, that the effusions of love and religion poured forth in his "Eloisa" were caught from the seraphic raptures of those erotic mystics, who to the last retained a place in his library among the classical bards of antiquity. The accidental perusal of Quintus Curtius first made BOYLE, to use his own words, "in love with other than pedantic books, and conjured up in him an unsatisfied appetite ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... ecclesiastical interests. In order that religious fanaticism should be inoffensive, the heart in which it exists must be very pure. It is true that even in that case it is unproductive of good. But the hearts that have been born without the seraphic purity which establishes a premature Limbo on the earth, are careful not to become greatly inflamed with what they see in retables, in choirs, in locutories and sacristies, unless they have first erected in their own consciences an altar, a ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... of the Friend, his beautiful images and grand simplicity, but the seer's perfect familiarity with the New Hampshire landscape, its mountains, its watercourses, the ways and customs of the people, the local legends and poetical associations, the sympathy with the Indian, and the seraphic delight which he took in the play of light upon the New Hampshire hills. Not more did Daniel Webster study with eager eyes the glowing and the paling of the light on the hilltops, no more rapturously did Rembrandt unweave ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... season tickets for both your groups, if you will only make your limit of age include me. I am only five feet ten, and I 'll sit very low if you 'll admit me to the charmed circle. Shall you have a stage name? I would suggest 'The Seraphic Sapphira.'" ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... all round it," said Emmeline, who was seated on Paddy's shoulder, holding on tight to him, and gazing upon the island, the green of whose trees was now visible, an oasis of verdure in the sparkling and seraphic blue. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... since he came back from his exile, has not ceased to wage war on this city. He demanded aid for arresting the religious of the seraphic father St. Francis, who preached in favor of the royal patronage; item, for arresting those who were ministering in Mariquina, the fathers of the Society; item, for seizing Father Cano; and all these acts proceed from the fury and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... that Noisy Boy found him out,—and, quarrelling with him, (your boy, marvellous to relate! having provoked the quarrel by some mean trick, in spite of his seraphic training,) gave him a black eye,—and afterwards, turning out to be the best-hearted Noisy Boy in the world, taught him to climb trees and hunt for birds' nests,—and stopped him when he was going to kill the little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... of his experience, of which Le Caron's was the counterpart. Sagard reckons from eighty to a hundred waterfalls and rapids in the course of the journey, and the task of avoiding them by pushing through the woods was the harder for him because he saw fit to go barefoot, "in imitation of our seraphic father, Saint Francis." "We often came upon rocks, mudholes, and fallen trees, which we had to scramble over, and sometimes we must force our way with head and hands through dense woods and thickets, without road or path. When the time ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... was particularly playful on the morrow at breakfast. Though his face beamed with Christian kindness, there was a twinkle in his eye which seemed not entirely superior to mundane self-complacency, even to a sense of earthly merriment. His seraphic raillery elicited sympathetic applause from the ladies, especially from the daughters of the house of Brentham, who laughed occasionally, even before his angelic jokes were well launched. His lambent ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... this situation, the more convinced did he become that mischief was brewing. Did not periods of seraphic calm always precede a tornado? In the impending social explosion, a few hard missiles would most certainly come his way, and in a sudden agony of apprehension and shame because he had told The Laird a half-truth, he sprang to his ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... expression; but what a Picture she made, the faint golden radiance, a sort of angelic atmosphere hovering about her! Who could have passionate thoughts or wild desires in the presence of that swaying, white-clothed girl with the seraphic head? She played a thing of Schumann's called "Warum?" Then Halliday brought out a flute, and the spell was broken. After this they made Ashurst sing, Stella playing him accompaniments from a book of Schumann songs, till, in the middle of "Ich grolle nicht," two small figures clad in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... daughter of the Gods, angel of Light, what seraphic visions thou dost weave for us in thy celestial loom! How beautiful and bright the star that blazes upon thy ethereal brow; yet alas! how oft obscured by the deadly vapors of Doubt ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain, That a word which is only conceived in the brain Is a type of eternal Generation; The ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... night was perfect. Crayford fell into a seraphic mood. Beneath his hard enterprise, his fierce energies, his armor of business equipment, there was a strain of romance of which he was half-ashamed, and which he scarcely understood or was at ease with. That ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... her—was surrounded by a wealth of fair hair, which brought out the purity of her features. Whoever has seen the sublime Virgin of Titian in his great picture of the "Presentation" at Venice, will know that Veronique was in her girlhood,—the same ingenuous candor, the same seraphic astonishment in her eyes, the same simple yet noble attitude, the same majesty of ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... of this kind, have a curiosity to see, in its first rudiments, this seat of primitive piety; for such it must be called by future ages, to the eternal honour of the founders. I have read Madonella's excellent and seraphic discourse on this subject." The lady immediately answers, "If what I have said could have contributed to raise any thoughts in you that may make for the advancement of intellectual and divine conversation, I should think myself extremely ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... seraphic being who but a short time since, rich in the charms of native grace and loveliness, had been the star of a happy home, and the delight of a fond and admiring parent—that Theodora was now changed into the fearful ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... insurance. I have seen an entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. And I have seen nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's face when he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fiery kisses, while Mrs. Etheridge also was utterly bereft of power to resist his advances, so pulling up her clothes he forced his legs between her yielding thighs, and soon brought the nose of Mr. Peaslin to the mark. As it just touched the lips of that seraphic cunt the effect was irresistible on the slightly struggling lady, who suddenly opened her legs as widely as possible to meet his charge, and throwing her arms around his neck, returned his kisses with equal ardour as she sighed, "Oh, I am undone, give it me now, dear ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... but it was evident that he was enjoying his own melody. Such pure, sweet notes—now rippling softly, now with a gay little quiver of joy, now a tender prolonged note, now a succession of trills, high and low, that set the air throbbing, and every now and then a great burst of seraphic music, as if his little heart was so full of happiness he was compelled to pour it forth to all who chose to listen. Our party would gladly have listened for a long time, and have omitted the story altogether; but after some minutes of delicious song the strains suddenly ceased, and a little ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles drop a bow or curtsey as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle I can be content to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic doctor. ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... that he never thought it. If William was covetous about anything it was salvation. He was never satisfied with being as good as he was. He was always longing and praying and going about in the effort just to be a better man, more worthy of the message he had to deliver. These were the kind of seraphic pleasures he took in living. And there was no mortal power, no poverty or hardship that could do him out of them. He would come back from feeding some vicious sinner with his gospel substances ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... But, even those seraphic Sundays were surpassed by the Wednesday concerts established for the patriarchal family. At those concerts she would sit down to the piano and sing them, in her own tongue, songs of her own land, songs calling from the mountain-tops to Vendale, "Rise above the grovelling level country; come far ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... had heard of a Mexican priest whose life-springs seemed to be the soul-stirring impulses of the thirteenth century; who was devoted in soul and in body to the service of God and of his fellow-men; in whom, in a word, the seraphic spirit of St. Francis of Assisi seemed to live again. But by this way coming to such tangible evidence of the survival in the present time of forces which were born into the world six hundred years ago, my thoughts ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... at her child's prayer and murmured, Amen. And as the little innocent knelt there, a perfect picture of seraphic beauty, purity, innocence and faith, the thought of the poet came ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... whim, and obeying the slightest signal of the jewelled hand. As that is her sacred pleasure, I have been inhabiting the most abstract realms of heroic sentiment, living on the most diluted moonshine, and spinning out elaborately all those charming and seraphic distinctions between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee with which these ecstatic creatures delight themselves in certain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... so near," declared Letitia, amiable and seraphic once more. "Somehow or other, I invariably mix up Norway and Sweden and Denmark. I know I shall always look upon Gerda as an Ibsen girl, who has come here to 'live her life,' or 'work out her inheritance.' Perhaps, dear, she has some interesting internal disease, or a maggoty brain. Don't ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... come, I come! prepare your roseate bowers, Celestial palms and ever-blooming flowers. Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go, Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow; Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay, And smooth my passage to the realms of day; See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll, Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul! Ah no—in sacred vestments may'st thou stand, The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand, Present the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... began to play on her violin, and Sahwah's discontented thoughts took wing, and she went floating out on a magic sea of music, and sat with closed eyes drinking in those wild, seraphic melodies that flowed from Veronica's enchanted bow until it seemed as if it could be no mere violin making that music, it was the Angel Israel, playing on his own heart strings. As Sahwah sat and listened there suddenly ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... that it might be so," she answered, as her face brightened in poetic fervor, and her eyes sparkled with seraphic luster. ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... it is an admirable likeness.[32] The expression is an exceptional expression, but highly characteristic; it is one of Fisher's best works. Now he is about our Wiedeman, and if he succeeds as well in painting angels as men, will do something beautiful with that seraphic face. You are to understand that these works are done by the artist for the artist. Oh, we couldn't afford to have such a luxury as a portrait done for us. But I am pleased to have a good likeness of each of my treasures extant in the possession of somebody. Robert's ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... What Man can range From such Seraphic Pleasure? 'Tis want of Charms that make us change, To grasp the Fury, Treasure. What Man of Sense wou'd quit a certain Bliss, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... as a seraphic smile overspread her face, she added, "Leave me alone till he comes, Lizzie, but be quick. I would see him now, now; all is light, light, light! Joy, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott |
