"Tantalizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interesting in the history of artists and of Art. Such a volume, if well done, would be of vastly more value than these heavy four. The usual delightful liberality of English collectors in opening their galleries to the public on certain days would make such a volume something more than a mere tantalizing exposition of treasures that could not be seen, and would render it, to all lovers of Art, an indispensable companion in England. We may add that this liberality might be imitated with advantage by the directors of some collections ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... one of those tantalizing fragments, in which Mr. Coleridge has shown us what exquisite powers of poetry he has suffered to remain uncultivated. Let us be thankful for what we have received, however. The unfashioned ore, drawn from so rich a mine, is worth all to which art can add its ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... right! I hadn't thought of that. He must go with me. I had thought it better to leave him. He is so happy with Rosa that I fancied he would remain contentedly until the war ends. But he is in constant danger. He is forever tantalizing the people that visit the house, who make slighting allusions to the Northern armies, and very likely some rebel patriot will take the trouble ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... despaired of being able to bring the machine to a state of practical efficiency. None but those who have occupied themselves in the laborious and often profitless task of helping the world to new and useful machines can have any idea of the tantalizing anxiety which arises from the apparently petty stumbling-blocks which for awhile impede the realization of a great idea in mechanical invention. Such was the case with the water-tight arrangement in the hydraulic press. In his early experiments, Bramah tried the expedient of the ordinary stuffing-box ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... terrace. He scarcely knew whether he hoped or feared the more that they would descend and come nearer to him. After all, it was cruelly tantalizing. He dared not disobey the Baroness, or he would have stepped boldly from his hiding-place and gone up to them. But that, by the terms of his promise, was impossible. He was to make his presence known to Louise only if he could do so secretly. ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions of Flask to "that whale," as he called the fictitious monster which he declared to be incessantly tantalizing his boat's bow with its tail—these allusions of his were at times so vivid and life-like, that they would cause some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look over the shoulder. But this was against all rule; for the oarsmen must put out their eyes, and ram a ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... a series of distortions with her shoulders, ran on ahead, picked up a few pebbles and threw them into the wood, glanced back at Lance with swimming mottled eyes, that seemed a piquant incarnation of everything suggestive and tantalizing, and said: ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... that any thing so delightful should be so indefinite and perplexing, and indeed impossible, which rendered it still more desirable! If Lord Carisbrooke only could have remembered its name, or a single step in its figure—it was so tantalizing! ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Grasshoppers and Crickets. Great masses of orange Jewelweed on one side were variegated with some wonderful Cardinal flowers. Yan viewed all this with placid content. He knew their names now, and thus they were transferred from the list of tantalizing mysteries to that of engaging and wonderful friends. As he lay there on his breast his thoughts wandered back to the days when he did not know the names of any flowers or birds—when all was strange and he alone in his hunger to know them, and Bonnerton came back to him with new, strange force ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to a sharp ache, then to a dull ache, and then to the violent cramping pain again, and once more I struggled to get my toes under me. I realized that by allowing my toes barely to touch the floor they had doubled and tripled the pain by the tantalizing hope of, if not momentary relief, at least the alteration of ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... thanks to the new rage for church and clergy decoration, have become reasonably common again. The note on the "Vernacle" is another bit of close and accurate antiquarian knowledge worth noting. It is most tantalizing that after all he says about that mysterious question of "The Lords son of Windsor," aquestion as mysterious as that demanding why Falstalf likened Prince Henry's father to a "singing man" of the same place, ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... nihilo, Ibn Ezra renders, in accordance with its etymology, to limit, to define, by drawing or incising a line or boundary. Having said this, Ibn Ezra, in his wonted mysterious manner, stops short, refusing to say more and preferring to mystify the reader by adding the tantalizing phrase, "The intelligent will understand." He means apparently to indicate that an eternal matter was endowed with form. In fact he seems to favor the idea of eternal creation and maintenance of the universe, the relation of which to God is as the relation of speech to ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... to keep her gaze away from the tantalizing tail-end of the headline at whose first half ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... figure, while her oval face was shaded by a black picture hat, beneath which her large dark eyes glowed and flashed by turns. Moreover, her complexion was all cream and roses, and when she smiled two rows of even white teeth were exposed between a pair of tantalizing red lips. ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... they were still watching the course of the canoe, he again rose to his feet, and, circling the paddle over his head, gave utterance to a number of tantalizing whoops. His enemies had been outwitted with such cleverness that the youth could not deny himself the pleasure of expressing his exultation in that ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... of the Fountain," and whether or no any such vision appeared to him, we can fairly believe that the tale was suggested by some pretty school-girl who made an impression on him, only to disappear in a tantalizing manner. It is to be presumed that he returned to his mother at Raymond, for Christmas; and at that time he heard a story of how an Otisfield man named Henry Turner had killed three hibernating bears which he discovered in a cave near ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... as the bronco kept galloping from her with aggravating persistence. The Overland girl rode and coaxed until she tired of it, then, touching her mount lightly with the crop, she dashed straight for the tantalizing roamer. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... else—everything outside the ship and the sea and our perilous plight! The death of Alresca, the jealousy of Carlotta Deschamps, the plot (if there was one) against Rosa—what were these matters to me? But Rosa was something. She was more than something; she was all. A lovely, tantalizing vision of her appeared to ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... phrased it, without too great a delay. He was pacing along the terrace which bounded the pension garden lakeward, and his eye wandered back and forth between the superscription of the envelope and the distant mountain-shore of Savoy, as it appeared through the tantalizing line of clipped acacias which bordered the ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... he was now, tearing about the kitchen, pursuing the ever-receding tail of the newest addition to the family, a half-starved cur who had followed Jimmie in from the street, and had been fed into a semblance of reality. From this treasure a bare, round tail hung out behind in tantalizing fashion; Jimmie Junior, always imagining he could catch it, was toddling round and round and round the kitchen-table, clutching out in front of him, laughing so that after a while he ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... state of things!" said the talkative young man to Nekhludoff on the stairs, as though continuing the interrupted conversation. "It is fortunate that the captain is a kind-hearted man, and does not enforce the rules. But for him it would be tantalizing. As it is, they talk ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... locked the door. Her pretty face, momentarily visible through the window, was slightly flushed with the exertion, and the loose ends of her fair hair, wet with perspiration, curled themselves over her forehead into tantalizing little rings. But the window shutter was quickly closed, and this momentary but charming vision withdrawn from the ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... among the trees, was a long military line of tents. Above the noise of construction the boy caught the silent brooding of the forest and, poured round all, the liquid glory of the sunset. Suddenly he saw the whole great picture as his own work, and it was a picture as elusive, as tantalizing, as a boy's first dreams of pirate adventure. Jim had come to his ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... appreciation; but it gave him very little of Jacqueline, and both thought longingly of the Ruin, at present inaccessible. In one thing Jemima's inexperience played her false. To a man of Channing's temperament, occasional and tantalizing glimpses of the inamorata had an allure that unrestricted intercourse might soon have lessened. But considering her youth, Jemima was ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... entirely to himself. From his Chippewa mother, who, though treated with deference, had never dared to disobey his father, he inherited a fond and jealous nature; and his beautiful wife chafed it. Young Repentigny saw that she was like a Parisian. But Louizon felt that she was a spirit too fine and tantalizing for him to grasp, and she had him ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... being disagreeable that Allie was at her wits' end how to manage her; Howard openly quarrelled with her, and even Charlie, the courteous, marched out of the room and slammed the door behind him, while he sang, with tantalizing distinctness,— ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... might be torn in the dancing. The baskets were all put out of sight till wanted, hidden beneath the bushes that bordered the open space. But now and then, when the soft warm breeze swayed the leafy screen of green and gold and crimson, there were tantalizing glimpses of the folded table-cloths covering the baskets, like much ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... are, safe and sound," cheerily said the driver of the huge black ambulance, as he pulled up before the piazza of Crestdale, the beautiful villa whose tower had been tantalizing ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... like burnished copper in the lamp-glow, and had gathered it in a bewitchingly coquettish knot low on her neck, where it shone with a new richness and a new warmth with every turn of her head. But not once did she turn so that Philip could see more than the tantalizing pink of her cheek and the prettiness of her chin, which at times was partly concealed in a collarette of the same silver gray ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... in acquainting the good-natured and astonished young farmer with the situation. Mrs. Higgins was called from her bed and in a jiffy was bustling about the kitchen, from which soon floated odors so tantalizing that the refugees could scarcely suppress the desire to rush forth and storm the ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... her engines, but swept irresistibly on by the grasp of the waters. We were already skirting the willow-clad islands, green and dense with foliage to the river's edge; and beyond these could gain tantalizing glimpses of the mouth of the Rock, its waters gleaming like silver between grassy banks. The opposite shore appeared dark and gloomy in comparison, with great rock-crowned bluffs outlined against the sky, occasionally assuming grotesque forms, which the boatmen pointed ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... in the stillness of the evening the birds are eloquent. The thrushes of Wister Woods, which have been immortalized by T. A. Daly in perhaps the loveliest poem ever written in Philadelphia, flute and whistle their tantalizing note, while the song sparrow echoes them with his confident, challenging call. Down behind the dusty sumac shrubbery lies the little blue-green cottage said to have been used by Benjamin West as a studio. In a meadow beside ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... once, "No, no! What do I care for another new bird? I want to see the beauty of the world." With that I faced about, and, taking a side track, made as directly as possible for the river road. There I should have a mind at ease, with no unfamiliar, tantalizing bird note to set my curiosity on edge, nor any sand through which ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... dressed it again. He believed he could get up and walk if he liked, but he did not mean to. He meant to stay here a few days and conquer this young beauty. It was likely only her way of vamping a man, anyway, and a mighty tantalizing one at that. Well, he would show her! And he would show Billy, too, whoever Billy was! A girl like that! Why,—A girl like that with a face like that would grace any gathering, any home! He had the fineness of taste to realize that after ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... that she had not. She had come because he was a tantalizing object, because she could not credit his invincibility, which was a challenge to her. She ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... and romantic testimony than could otherwise be secured. It is the flaring yellow advertisement of misdirected effectiveness. Probably there mingles with this impulse the love of adventure as developed in the chase. "Flipping cars," tantalizing policemen, pilfering from fruit stands are frequently the degenerate, urban forms of the old quest of, and encounter with, the game ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... slave is quite lost in the thoughts of liberty which fill his breast, and the associations of freedom which cluster around him. He sleeps again. Monday morning he is startled from his dreams by the old "shell-blow" of slavery, and he arises to endure another week of toil, alternated by the same tantalizing mockeries of freedom. Is not this applying the hot iron ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a close examination of the leaves of any water-loving plant bearing small four-lobed blue flowers, usually marked with lines of a deeper blue or purple, should enable one to correctly name the species. None of these blossoms can be carried far after being picked; they have a tantalizing habit of dropping off, leaving a bouquet of ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... watching Lucy whenever she was within sight and each time becoming more helplessly entangled in her fascinations, until any escape from the thralldom of her beauty became impossible. His days were a cycle of tantalizing visions which ceased only with the coming of darkness; and when with the night he would have found release from their misery, it was only to discover that night an endless stretch of hours that intervened betwixt him and the moment when ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... The tantalizing of the poor animals was repeated several times. At last the fanfare was sounded, and the hounds were allowed to rush forward midst the tooting of horns, the cracking of whips, and the cries and shouts of the ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Lake the "pathfinders" have crept into the valley of California. As he shields his face from biting winds, he can see again the panorama of the great plains, billowy hills, and broad vistas, tantalizing in their deceptive nearness. Thundering herds of buffalo and all the wild chivalry of the Sioux and Cheyennes sweep before him. The majestic forests of the West have darkened his way. The Great Salt Lake, a lonely inland sea; Lake ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... tantalizing to pass so near this famous burning mountain without having an opportunity of ascending it; but the expedition would have taken up too much time. In appearance Hecla differs very little from the innumerable other ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... with very short steps, her head a little on one side, hands on hips, with a slight balancing of her body: an approach more tantalizing than an escape. He looked on, eager—charmed. She ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... at him keenly. Sometimes she did not quite know whether to take him in fun or in earnest. Now his face was serious; but she felt almost sure there was a twinkle behind that tantalizing bandage. ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... and my coming out at Covent Garden, and how, "We all of us," said he (and what a noble company of young brains and hearts they were!), "were in love with you, and had your portrait by Lawrence in our rooms"—which made me laugh and cry, and abuse him for tantalizing me with the ghost of a declaration at that late hour of both our days. And so we parted, and I never met him again. On his way home that evening, his daughter told me that he had spoken kind compassionate words of commendation of me. I have kept them in grateful remembrance. Fine genius! and tender ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... us as being entirely devoid of shade, and the heat almost insupportable—with various other difficulties and drawbacks—we have been induced, though with great regret, to abandon the undertaking, which it is as tantalizing to do, as it is to reflect that yesterday we were but a short distance from a hill which is but thirty leagues ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... door. Just what the motto was no one but herself knew. Sprawling in paint-brush hieroglyphics on a great flapping sheet of brown wrapping-paper, the sentiment, whatever it was, had been nailed face down to the wall for three tantalizing years. ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... not be so cruel—so tantalizing, I would say. Consider, you are my first client—your business my first consultation—do not do me the displeasure of withdrawing your confidence because I am a few years younger than you seem to have expected. My attention shall make amends ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... indulged in a characteristic shout. All the employees in the room gathered around and laughed in a manner that must have been very tantalizing to ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... restless. It was tantalizing to be so near the Falls, and yet to be locked up, and prevented from seeing them. Of course it would all come right in time, but it was hard to bear the suspense and confinement. Hunting round the room he found a juvenile book, and sitting ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... on the Garland side of the party-wall began to have a very gloomy effect by the contrast. When, about half-past nine o'clock, one of these tantalizing bursts of gaiety had resounded for a longer time than usual, Anne said, 'I believe, mother, that you are wishing ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... happened to her eyes, so that they did not look tantalizing—"you'd take care of me, Willard," she announced ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... Cap Martin, no Riviera walks are lovelier than those of Cap Ferrat. On the Villefranche side, until you have passed through Saint Jean, the alternative to the tramway road is an inhospitable though tantalizing lane. For large estates, shut off by walls and hedges, are between you and the harbor. Unless you are lucky enough to know one of the owners, you will not see the harbor of Villefranche from the best of the lower ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... in town," she said. "There was no use. I wasn't getting any better, and I got so I didn't care. I began to feel that it was better to be here with you blind, than alone in town with that tantalizing half-sight of everything. I suppose the plain truth is that I got fearfully lonesome. Then you wrote me that letter, and in it you talked about such intimately personal things that I couldn't let Mrs. Moore ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... "you tantalizing enigma, you! Gad! you—you'd drive a man crazy! There's something over your face. A veil. I'd like to ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... in dispute, and seeing that Irene was recovering under the heroic treatment of her amateur nurses, he seated himself in tantalizing silence upon the saw-horse, as if to enjoy the scene he had created. But his enjoyment was short lived. Tabitha, now thoroughly aroused, and forgetful of her dignity, swooped down upon the tormentor, wrested ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Scotch was with me and before he was two years of age, one of the wily coyotes showed a tantalizing spirit and some interesting cunning which put Scotch on his mettle. One day when Scotch was busy driving the main pack into the woods, one that trotted lame with the right fore leg emerged from behind a rocky crag at ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... Deerslayer had not been more critical that day than it was at this moment. It certainly had not been one half as tantalizing. He lay perfectly quiet for two or three minutes, trusting to the single sense of hearing, confident that the noise in the lake would reach his ears, did any one venture to approach by swimming. Once or twice he fancied ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... are a most tantalizing person. Why cannot you tell me? If the matter is secret you have no cause to be afraid. To whom could I whisper ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... and opening. Then, all six-and-twenty of us would be singing; our loud, harmonious song would fill the whole cellar, our voices would travel outside and beyond, striking, as it were, against the walls in moaning sobs and sighs, moving our hearts with soft, tantalizing ache, tearing open old ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... emotion was that of sympathy—it all appeared so unspeakably pathetic, so homesick, so dismally forlorn and barren. Then that half-upturned face riveted his attention and seemed to awaken a vague, dreamy memory he found himself unable to localize; it reminded him of some other face he had known, tantalizing from its dim indistinctness. Then this earlier impression slightly faded away, and he merely beheld her alone, a perfect stranger appropriating little by little her few claims to womanly beauty. There was no certain guessing at ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... "Sweet Harveys," then made a descent upon it and cleared it out. Next morning, when, with great stealth and caution, I had stolen to the place, I found my miniature cavern empty except for a bit of paper, on which, with a lead-pencil, had been hastily inscribed the following tantalizing bit ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... if the truth were known, that the maiden found the situation almost as trying as her lover, for there was a most tantalizing element of uncertainty in it, and uncertainty is especially grievous to the feminine heart. But at last her duty as hostess no longer severely holding her, she left the room, ostensibly to assist in clearing away the ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... and see if you, too, do not find food for frantic conjecture, for tantalizing doubts, and for a ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to the World of Three Dimensions. This done, I immediately sent for my Grandson; for, to confess the truth, I felt that all that I had seen and heard was in some strange way slipping away from me, like the image of a half-grasped, tantalizing dream, and I longed to essay my skill in ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... soul-stirring, soul-subduing; heart-stirring, heart- swelling, heart-thrilling; agonizing &c (painful) 830; telling, sensational, hysterical; overpowering, overwhelming; more than flesh and blood can bear; yellow. piquant &c (pungent) 392; spicy, appetizing, provocative, provoquant^, tantalizing. eager to go, anxious to go, chafing at the bit. Adv. till one is black in the face. Phr. the heart beating high, the heart going pitapat, the heart leaping into one's mouth; the blood being up, the blood boiling in one's veins; the eye glistening, the eyes in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... exclaimed the captain, as he caught sight of a little pouch, woven together of bright colored basket stuff, slung over her shoulder; a little drab paw, darting from out its deepest recesses in pursuit of a tantalizing curl, soon explains how matters stand, and a voice of the greatest feline sweetness is heard in reply to divers catlike salutations, proceeding from the ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... doorstep, her shoulder turned to him and her face turned to the trail by which a man naturally would be supposed to approach the place. Her hair was shining darkly in the sun and the shorter locks were blowing about her face in a downright tantalizing fashion; they made a man want to brush them back and kiss the spot they were caressing so wantonly. She was humming a tune softly to herself. Weary caught the words, ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... was improving in his batting. Hugh had gone to great pains to give him many pointers, and the fruit of this was seen by the clever way in which Owen could lay down a pretty bunt, the ball rolling along just inside the line in a tantalizing fashion, and headed for first or third, as the occasion might require. The player who can be depended on to bunt successfully two times out of three attempts is always a valuable accessory to a club; since he is thus able to push a runner along; and perhaps get his own base in the bargain, when ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... of the war itself do not belong to a work such as this; but, tantalizing as it must be to an historian of any class to pass over the brilliant series of achievements which gave Britain the glory of being twice[175] the principal agent in the deliverance of Continental Europe, the glories of Salamanca, Victoria, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... suffices to turn the thoughts of the sanest man towards themes of suicide and murder—when will southerners learn to eat a proper breakfast at proper hours?—we started on our journey. The sun came out in visions of tantalizing briefness, only to be swallowed up again in driving murk, and of the route we traversed I noticed only the old stony track that cuts across the twenty-one windings of the new carriage-road here and there. I tried to picture to myself the Norman princes, the emperors, popes, and other ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... beauty and ugliness, a wide vision of world-sacrifice, a fierce gleam of world-hate. Which is life and what is death and how shall we face so tantalizing a contradiction? Any explanation must necessarily be subtle and involved. No pert and easy word of encouragement, no merely dark despair, can lay hold of the roots of these things. And first and before all, we cannot forget that this world is beautiful. Grant all its ugliness ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... more tantalizing? Just outside their windows, only a few leagues off, perhaps only a few miles, lay the radiant planet of the night, but in every respect as far off from the eyes of himself and his companions as if she was hiding at the other side of Jupiter! And to their ears ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... with feline grace. "I'm sorry" he replied with his tantalizing good-natured smile, "to be forced to object to your use of the plural pronoun in conjunction with that certain tract, piece and parcel of land known and described as the Baby Mine claim. The fact of the matter is, I have already staked it. You see, I was thinking of ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... prosperity of the descendants of Abraham, was to depend on a condition, viz., their obedience, and that this condition was not fulfilled. But, besides that the Divine Being must have foreseen this circumstance, and therefore must have known that he was only tantalizing Abraham with a promise which would never be accomplished; this disobedience, and the consequences of it are expressly mentioned by Moses, and the other Prophets, only as a temporary thing, and what was to be succeeded by an effectual repentance, and ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... Out with it," he told her. "Confession is good for the soul and removes the tantalizing element ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... the midst of a tantalizing equation. He was accustomed, however, to such invasions on the part of his chum, the two having lived together now for nearly three school years—-ever since ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... among women. For months he had been in a torment of desolation. Cummins' wife was to him like a flower suddenly come to relieve the tantalizing barrenness of a desert, and with the wiles and soft speech of his kind he sought to breathe its fragrance. In the weeks that followed the flower seemed to come nearer to him, and this was because Jan and his people ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... we entered what seemed a cul de sac; it looked like charging a black wall, except where a gleam of grey light suggested the further end of the Box Tunnel, and cheered our poor hearts for a short minute, whilst in the distance we heard the tantalizing song of the wild waves. The boughs on both sides brushed the boat; we held our hands before our faces to avoid the sharp stubs threatening ugly stabs, and to fend off the low branches, ready to sweep us and our belongings into the deep swirling water. The shades closed in like ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... indescribable pleasure in coming upon so definite, so living, so breathing a figure as that of St. Columba, In writing the early history of Ireland, one of the greatest difficulties which the historian—great or small—has to encounter is to be found in that curious unreality, that tantalizing sense of illusiveness and indefiniteness which seems to envelope every figure whose name crops up on his pages. Even four hundred years later the name of a really great prince and warrior like Brian Boru, or ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... pumping—Charlie's sister drew out all the stops—the vicar passed from the prayer-desk to the pulpit with the rapt look of a man who walks in a prophetic dream—we pulled ourselves together, Master Isaac brought the hymn book close to his glasses, and when the tantalizing prelude was past we burst forth with a volume which merged all discrepancies. As far as I am able to judge of my own performance, I fear I bawled (I'm sure the boy ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... for once in a way. I think, though, that in order to prevent them from feeling any disappointment it will be better to throw the basins out of the window, the sight of them would probably be rather tantalizing." And the Eteraedarium began hurriedly to throw all the breakfast things out of the window—spoons, basins, tablecloths, and serviettes, all disappeared, and only the three basins which the children ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... second-rate railroad," was Dave's comment, as they seated themselves in the stuffy coach and had the door locked upon them. Then the train moved off at a slow rate of speed that was tantalizing to both. With half a dozen stops, it took them nearly an hour to reach Christiania, only eighteen miles away. Looking out of the window, the landscape was a dreary one, of marshland on one side and rocks on the other, ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... have been so near incited them to a fresh spurt. Again the tantalizing Thursday was reached before their hopes were dashed. This time the break-down was even crueller, for every pinafored pupil, not excluding Bloomah, was in ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... tantalizing distance between them, but when they reached the fire it was such a grand one they forgot all their differences—and also all ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... Hotel des Alpes, and hoped to be a week in Chamonix. They chatted about the weather, the early snow which had covered the valley in a mantle of white, about the tantalizing behavior of Mont Blanc, which had not been visible since May had arrived, of the early avalanches, which awakened her with their thunder on the night of her arrival, of the pleasant road to Argentieres, of the villages by the Col de Balme, ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... enough, Evelyn lay comfortably back on her pillow, her wonderful golden hair falling in long, loose waves about her. Her beauty now made little impression upon Grace, who knew only too well the tantalizing, troublesome spirit that lay behind it. "It is almost eight o'clock, Miss Ward. Remember, breakfast ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... head. Paul's face was like a peony for colour, but he pouted his lips also, and bent to meet hers. When they had almost met, she drew her head back with a demure shake and a look of doubt The kitchen rang with laughter at Paul's hangdog discomfiture. The innocent, wicked, tantalizing eye mocked him, and he was awhirl with shame; but he found in the midst of it a desperate courage, and, throwing one arm around her neck, he kissed her full on the lips with a ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... interests of the country, and living wholly on public credulity, uttered its ominous voice in the midst of all those acclamations. A paper from that faction lost no time in "reminding the Irish Catholics of the tantalizing and bitter repetition of expectations raised only to be blasted, and prospects of success opened to close on them in utter darkness;" finishing by a significant warning, "not to rely too much on the liberal intentions of the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... sound from another world came Marcia's sweet voice, its very sweetness reminding him of that other lost voice, whose tantalizing music floated about his imagination like a string of phantom silver bells that all but sounded and then vanished ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Dewbell's spider-web silk hose would some morning have been found without a garter, and she herself hanging like a beauteous exhalation among the elm-leaves in the morning sunshine. Oh, had Sir Timothy been there then, he would have found, instead of his imperious and tantalizing coquette, the tenderest and truest of disconsolate maidens, ready to melt into his arms between the delicious pause of a sigh and a kiss. "Naughty, cruel Sir Timothy! Horrid creature! to take all my nonsense for real earnest, and to go away and leave me to be persecuted ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... under Queen Elizabeth settled at Jamestown, Virginia, we have bred upon this soil many a master of speech. They have been men of varied gifts: now of clear intelligence, now of commanding power; men of rugged simplicity and of tantalizing subtlety; poets, novelists, orators, essayists, and publicists, who have interpreted the soul of America to the mind of the world. Our task is to exhibit the essential Americanism of these spokesmen of ours, to point out the ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... that the list might be extended indefinitely. That's a tantalizing suggestion of some very ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... the same time. And still again there was that line of the neck, from the shoulder up to where it hid under the soft, old-gold tendrils, and that line was a thing of beauty and seductive mystery. The dreadful ranchero went down in humility before the splendor of the tantalizing Parisienne. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... form, which was afterwards altered for the worse."[260] The Ancient Mariner also made a decided impression on him, if we judge from the fact that he quoted from it several times.[261] Scott evidently felt that Coleridge was a most tantalizing poet, and once intimated that future generations would in regard to him feel something like Milton's desire "to call up him who left half told the story of Cambuscan bold."[262] "No man has all the resources of poetry in such profusion, but he cannot manage them so as to bring out anything ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... to the skill and good taste of Friedrich Reichert Rapp, an architect and stone cutter, the adopted son of Father Rapp. The fine proportions of the plain buildings, with their vines festooned between the upper and lower windows, the quaint and charming gardens, the tantalizing labyrinth where visitors lost themselves in an attempt to reach the Summer House—these were all of his creation. Friedrich Rapp was also a poet, an artist, and a musician. He gathered a worthy collection of paintings and a museum of Indian ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... state of tantalizing darkness and conjecture I should have departed, had not Cousin Monica quite spontaneously ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... they sat down by the side of the horses, and, worn out with fatigue and exhaustion, fell into a troubled sleep; a sleep which, if it relieved their worn-out frames, condemned them to the same tantalizing feelings as had been created by the mirage during the day. They dreamed that they were in the bowers of paradise, hearing heavenly music; passing from crystal stream to stream, slaking their thirst at each, and reclining on couches of ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... the foreman of his guard's names—Eddie and Shorter—Billy had studied the face of the young American cowpuncher, for the two names had aroused within his memory a tantalizing suggestion that they should be very familiar. Yet he could connect them in no way with anyone he had known in the past and he was quite sure that he never before had set ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... make me guess. I can't wait." And Marjory caught hold of her friend's arm, trying to make her stand still and tell her news—a difficult task, for Blanche was almost beside herself with excitement, and was also bent upon tantalizing Marjory. But Marjory's arms were stronger than Blanche's, and she succeeded in making her ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... plays in prose seem at times almost surcharged with a meaning which is nevertheless often so mockingly intangible and evasive, that we dare to wonder at last whether the secret they persist in hiding in this tantalizing fashion would really reward our efforts to grasp it; and we find comfort in Lowell's apt saying that "to be misty is not to be mystic." Ibsen is mystic, no doubt, but on occasion he can be misty also. And not only the plays that are merely misty but even those that are truly mystic, are ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... tantalizing was that goldenrod. Always just ahead she saw another bunch, and yet another, each a little finer than the one within her reach. With joyous exclamations and gay little calls back to the waiting Jamie, ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... passed a tense hand over a brow suddenly wet; he was shaking as if in the grip of a chill. His condition needed drastic measures. The cold heavy opium gave out its tantalizing odor. In a minute it would be disposed of and he would go for more. He calculated that this necessitated twenty trips at the present rate—a bag might serve his purpose better. He raised an arm with an opium ball, but his hand remained suspended in air. An inarticulate ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... noticed, Mr Holiday,' asked Vera, as if very friendly, 'how awfully tantalizing these flowers are? They won't open ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... my last journey to the trap, I had been able to remember the exact spot where I had deposited them. But now I endeavored in vain to call it to mind, and busied myself for a full hour in a fruitless and vexatious search for the missing articles; never, surely, was there a more tantalizing state of anxiety and suspense. At length, while groping about, with my head close to the ballast, near the opening of the box, and outside of it, I perceived a faint glimmering of light in the direction of the steerage. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to wind up; it turned and twisted in tantalizing lazy curves; it was in no hurry to surmount a hill that began to assume proportions of a mountain; it was leisurely, as were all things in Mexico except strife. That was quick, fierce, bloody—it ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... exclaimed, with something approaching a groan, "I don't mean to be—but I do care so much! And sometimes—" he caught her quickly in his arms, drew her within their strong embrace, and kissed her passionately upon the lips that had been tantalizing him for five ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... next day the native girls lined the shore of the bay, and with pleading gestures besought the captain to let the sailors come ashore, but to no avail. Some fair maidens even swam off to the ship, but were gruffly ordered away by the officers. All this was very tantalizing to the men, who hung over the bulwarks, looking at the fair objects of their adoration. But one man only showed signs of rebellion against the captain's authority; and Porter, calling him out before ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... suffered from thirst, but after we had divided the liquefied snow at the Petits Mulets among us we had nothing to drink. I crammed the clean snow into my mouth, but the process of melting was slow and tantalizing to a parched throat, while the chill was painful to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... we can do!" cried my spirited companion; and he clambered for the second time up on the shelf on which stood the tantalizing jar. This time he did not even attempt to nibble at the hard polished crockery, he wasted not his energies in any such fruitless endeavour; but, putting his mighty strength to the task, he pushed the whole jar nearer and nearer to the edge ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... The prospect was tantalizing, but Philip still felt afraid to appropriate one of his father's bonds. If it had been a fear of doing wrong, I should be glad to say so, but it was more a ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... mobile, impassioned, when passion is aroused at all, are in danger of frightful error, under great temptation. The angel can give place to a more subtle and treacherous demon, though one, generally, of less tantalizing influence, than in the breast of man. In great crises, Woman needs the highest reason to restrain her; but her besetting sin is that of littleness. Just because nature and society unite to call on her for such fineness and finish, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... side. In this way I thought we might possibly catch some of the fugitives, but his extreme caution led him to refuse the suggestion, so we pitched our tents out of range of their desultory fire, but near enough to observe plainly their menacing and tantalizing ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... to be my turn at the wheel the hour before dinner, and I had the tantalizing misery of hearing them laughing and talking about their turtle, while I was hungry from want of dry bread and salt meat. I had resolutely kept my thoughts from the cabin during all the passage but once, and now I found ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... land, or to hold communication with the shore, on account of the prevalence of the yellow fever, then epidemic there. So here we lay, only a few cables' length from the Ilha da Cobras, with all the tropical plants and fruit almost within reach, and tantalizing us with their perfume,—the domes, palaces and public buildings of a gay capital (unvisited by many), rising picturesquely before us, and yet forbidden. We thought of Tantalus, and his fate, of Prometheus and the rock—of—of Adam ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... the wind flung shut the stable door with a bang. Juno leaped as from a gunshot, and dashed away up the river to the northwest. Her rider tried in vain to change her course and quiet her spirit. The mare only surged madly forward, as if bent on outrunning the tantalizing, grinding wind. With the sense of freedom, and with the boundlessness of the plains, some old instinct of the unbridled days of by-gone generations woke to life and power in her, and with the bit between her teeth, she ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... barrier to the further progress of ships towards his longed-for goal, as inexorable as the mountain ranges and vast steppes of Asia, was mercifully concealed from his eyes; and the elusive "secret of the strait" through which he to the last hoped to pass, though tantalizing in its constant evasion, kept in tension the springs of hope and moral energy which might have succumbed under the knowledge ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... a stifled groan Artie flung his arms around her, pressing her to him as if he would never let her go. Then he pushed her away from him almost roughly, and Flora laughed a low, tantalizing laugh, and crept back to him to lean her head on his shoulder, and lay her arms around ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... left her utterly, and she fell back almost senseless. She was carried to her room. Then she rallied by a mighty effort, and sent Gretchen to see if there was a letter for her. In a short time the maid reappeared, bringing another of those welcome yet tantalizing notes, which always seemed ready to mock her, and to lure her on to fresh disappointment. Yet her impatience to read its contents had in no way diminished, and it was with the same impetuous fever of curiosity as before that ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... charmed with the doctor's genial personality. He often found the father a decidedly easier person to get along with than his handsome daughter. The Rev. Hugh McAlpin was a daily caller, and Margaret had a tantalizing way of showing her ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... smilingly on, tantalizing the farmer with sunny indifference concerning drouth, and when he was quite despondent sending great purple clouds from the southeast to wash away his fears. By Christmas the early oranges were yellowing. There had been no frost, and Burson's old ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... other assured him in his tantalizing way. "I wanted to know whether the captain approved of my choice; which I am glad to say turned out to be ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... me little help. The weakest effort of illumination imaginable strayed across the coach window as we passed a burner, about as serviceable as the long interval of darkness that ensued, and far more tantalizing. We were driving through the city. I was still brooding over the singular occurrence, when the coach stopped. The stranger alighted. I endeavoured to obtain sight of him, but he was so wrapped and clothed that I did not succeed. The coach was on its way again, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... taken cannot be told, had he not been surprised by Mr. Linden. Naturally the Squire withdrew,—naturally his enlarged mind became contracted as he thought of the cause thereof; and not unnaturally he walked down that way after tea, still further to use his eyes. The house was in a tantalizing state. For though the light curtain was down, it revealed not only the bright glow of the lamp, but one or two shadowy heads; and the window being open (for the evening was warm) low voices, that he loved and that he did not love, came to his ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... after such a fashion as to open the closed doors of the cabinet. No one yet had robbed them of their secret since first it was placed there three hundred years ago by the old lady and her faithful Italian. It was a beautiful piece of workmanship, was this tantalizing cabinet. Carved out of some dark foreign wood, the doors and panels were richly inlaid with lapis- lazuli, ivory, and mother-of-pearl, among which were twisted delicately chased threads of gold and silver. Above the doors, between them and the cornice, lay another mystery, fully ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... certainly in use by the beginning of the Christian era. While I am not aware of unequivocal evidence of the existence of four-bar linkages before the 16th century, their widespread application by that time indicates that they probably originated much earlier. A tantalizing 13th-century sketch of an up-and-down sawmill (fig. 1) suggests, but does not prove, that the four-bar linkage was then in use. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) delineated, if he did not build, a crank and slider mechanism, also for a sawmill (fig. 2). In the 16th century may be found the conversion ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... mentioned. I did not attempt a monument in the frozen manner of your Flaubert. Mr. Goddard believes—" There was a crash of music from the piano as Arthur endeavored to change the conversation. His wife's fine indifference was tantalizing, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... had been dispatched, the lucky fisherman took it in her mouth and went away into the woods with the prize. Black Bruin followed at a distance, smelling of the bushes, where the fish brushed in passing, leaving a tantalizing scent. ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... programme is connected with clandestine visits to the baskets after the formal ceremonies have been concluded. At a picnic there is no such expression as "from soup to nuts," for there is no soup, and perhaps no nuts, but there is everything else in tantalizing abundance. If I find a plate of deviled eggs near me, I begin with deviled eggs; or, if the cold tongue is nearer, I begin with that. In this way I reveal, for the pleasure of the hostesses, my unrestricted and democratic appetite. Or, in order to obviate ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... another interval an oblong space rather further off even than the band suddenly grew bright, and Edward Henry, by curving his neck first to one side of the pillar and then to the other, had had tantalizing glimpses of the interior of a doll's drawing-room and of male and female ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... equal convenience. Nevertheless, it might be considered a peaceable and satisfactory style of accommodation in an ordinary country. But to ride among the wonders of the Alps in such a vehicle is something like contemplating infinity through the nose of a bottle. It was really very tantalizing and provoking to me till C. was so obliging as to resign his seat on top in my favor, and descend into Sheol, as he said. Then I began to live; for I could see to the summit of the immense walls of rock under which we were passing. By ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
