"Elegancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... language; but I mean, that you should deliver and pronounce what you say gracefully and distinctly; for which purpose I will have you frequently read very loud, to Mr. Harte, recite parts of orations, and speak passages of plays; for, without a graceful and pleasing enunciation, all your elegancy of style, in speaking, is ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... tapestries abound, is to feel oneself welcomed even before the host appears. The bending verdure invites, the animated figures welcome, and at once the atmosphere of elegance and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... his first wife; and, in fact, if he has at any time been touched, no doubt it has been only for her and by her" (tome i. p. 113). "Bonaparte was young when he first knew Madame de Beauharnais. In the circle where he met her she had a great superiority by the name she bore and by the extreme elegance of her manners. . . . In marrying Madame de Beauharnais, Bonaparte believed he was allying himself to a very grand lady; thus this was one more conquest" (p. 114). But in speaking of Josephine's ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... appeared at the dinner-table, she was attired simply, yet with a certain elegance. She wore a plain black silk gown, with no other ornamentation save the string of genuine pearls about her throat. The sombre hue of her gown signified mourning; the gems represented tears; but her manner was by no means in keeping with either; she was cheerful, even gay. But laughter ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... looked about at the rococo elegance as if there were fifty things it didn't give her, so that he suggested with urgency the most absent. But she met his remedy with a smile. "I've the best advice in the world. I'm acting under it now. I act upon it in receiving you, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... arrangement of the Improprieties frequent in Writing and Conversation, with Corrections for attaining to purity and elegance of expression. ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... parts of the Alhambra which are most favorable to this phantasmagoria of the mind; and none are more so than the Court of Lions, and its surrounding halls. Here the hand of time has fallen the lightest, and the traces of Moorish elegance and splendor exist in almost their original brilliancy. Earthquakes have shaken the foundations of this pile, and rent its rudest towers; yet see! not one of those slender columns has been displaced, not an arch of that light and fragile colonnade ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... be a long story—and it is of no importance—to tell you how I came to be dining—for I am no particular friend of his—with a man who thought he combined elegance with economy, but who appeared to me to be both mean and lavish, for he set the best dishes before himself and a few others and treated the rest to cheap and scrappy food. He had apportioned the wine in small ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... his more or less imperfect "plates"; and there is a resident chaplain for the piously inclined. With a chaplain and a "dark room," what more can the aspiring soul of the modern tourist desire? Some of the rooms at the Mena House are small and stuffy; others large and furnished with sufficient elegance: and the Princess Ziska had secured a "suite" of the best that could be obtained, and was soon installed there with befitting luxury. She left Cairo quite suddenly, and without any visible preparation, the morning after the reception in which she had astonished her guests by her dancing: ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... life's fairest flower to be: Petal and spray all elegance and grace: Each blossom beauteous as an angel's face; And yet, alas! the first to drop ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her attention, was the ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... and of more than commonly happy displays of talent and beauty. The figures that used to be seen on Wallack's stage, at the house he established upon the wreck of John Brougham's Lyceum, often rise in memory, crowned with a peculiar light. Lester Wallack, in his peerless elegance; Laura Keene, in her spiritual beauty; the quaint, eccentric Walcot; the richly humorous Blake, so noble in his dignity, so firm and fine and easy in his method, so copious in his natural humour; Mary Gannon, sweet, playful, bewitching, irresistible; Mrs. Vernon, as full of character ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... that wretched style then prevailing, and when not the least intelligence of christian art existed any longer, they pulled down the lobby made by Erwin, so much admired in the middle age as a masterpiece of elegance; in 1692 they adorned the interior of the choir with wainscots of wood painted and gilt; in 1732 they widened it to the detriment of a portion of the nave, and ten years later galleries were made for the orchestra. To ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... hour for closing the exhibition at the neighboring hippodrome had arrived, visitors came pouring into Madame de Nailles's reception—tall, graceful women, dressed with taste and elegance, as befitted ladies who were interested in horsemanship. The tone of the conversation changed. Nothing was talked about but superb horses, leaps over ribbons and other obstacles. The young girls interested themselves in the spring toilettes, which they either praised or ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... the work, the elegance of the volume, the "genuine" condition of the copy, etc., which together determined Mr. Grenville to purchase books printed on vellum, of which he collected nearly a hundred. He paid a very large sum for a copy of the Furioso of 1532, not because ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... hundred thousand francs squandered in six years, that possession, which cannot be bought and is practically of more value than gold and silver; a knowledge which exacts long study, probation, examinations, friends, enemies, acquaintances, certain manners, elegance of form and demeanor, a graceful and euphonious name,—a knowledge, moreover, which means many love-affairs, duels, bets lost on a race-course, disillusions, deceptions, annoyances, toils, and a vast variety of undigested pleasures. In short, he had become what is called elegant. ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... In Montalluyah children are supposed to acquire so much by imitation, that the candidate for the office of Djarke and others must possess refined manners; and even the quality of speaking with elegance and accuracy is considered necessary both in them and in the Zicche. The art of speaking and writing with correctness is imperceptibly acquired from the language of the preceptors and other models with whom the boy comes ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... be careful not to give a false impression. Sutton is no palace in miniature, no grandiose expression of the spacious days of Elizabeth, no pompous outcome of Vanbrugh's magnificent mind, no piece of reticent elegance by Adams. Instead, it may well seem to the visiting stranger little more than a fortuitous concourse of mediaeval, Elizabethan, Jacobean, and modern atoms, which time and the country builder, too unlearned to be vulgar, have harmonized into a very moderate, though admittedly ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... pushed open the baize door, and instantly Hester found herself in a different region. Mrs. Willis' part of the house gave the impression of warmth, luxuriance, and even elegance of arrangement. At the other side of the door were long, narrow corridors, with snow-white but carpetless floors, and rather cold, distempered walls. Miss Danesbury, holding the new pupil's hand, led her ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... later date, some few books printed with special elegance, with broad margins. The "Discourse on the United Submission to Higher Powers" had some copies that were printed on pages ten inches by seven and a quarter inches in size, while the regular edition was only six by six and a half inches. A letter is in existence of Governor Trumbull's ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... writing or speaking, is formed very early in life, while the imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent. I am of opinion, that there never was an instance of a man's writing or speaking his native tongue with elegance, who passed from fifteen to twenty years of age out of the country where it was spoken. Thus, no instance exists of a person's writing two languages perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language, which was most familiar to him in his youth. It appears to me then, that an ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of enamored shepherds."—"You are quite right," replied Don Quixote; "provided that I am free from seeking an imaginary shepherdess, since there is the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso, the glory of these banks, the ornament of these meads, the support of beauty, the cream of elegance, and, in short, the subject on which all praise may light, however hyperbolical it may be."—"That is true," said the curate; "but we shall seek out some shepherdesses of ordinary kind who, if they do ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... storeys above the ground floor, the main hall on the first floor being particularly remarkable for its height. The vaulted ceiling of this hall must have been very fine, and throughout it is apparent that the builders of the Chateau de Coucy had the comfort of the inmates and a certain stately elegance of effect much more in mind than was common with the builders of castles in the thirteenth century. The walls at the summit are more than nine feet thick, and they were doubtless surmounted originally with a great circular gallery of wood covered in with a roof. The Sires de Coucy, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... "bounded beneath him as a barb"—seemingly as gay, as ardent, and as haughty as the boyrider. And the manly, and almost herculean form of the elder Beaufort, which, from the buoyancy of its movements, and the supple grace that belongs to the perfect mastership of any athletic art, possessed an elegance and dignity, especially on horseback, which rarely accompanies proportions equally sturdy and robust. There was indeed something knightly and chivalrous in the bearing of the elder Beaufort—in his handsome aquiline features, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... English would do as well. Conradi says "the age varies from twelve to eighteen, most being fourteen to sixteen." Some indulge this tendency in letters, and would like to do so in conversation, but fear ridicule. Fifty-six per cent reported cases of superfine elegance or affected primness or precision in the use of words. Some had spells of effort in this direction, some belabor compositions to get a style that suits them, some memorise fine passages to this end, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... did as she was told, and they retraced their steps. The young officer now approached, and touching his hat with an air of unspeakable elegance, and then swinging his cane, said, "You asked me, sir, to show ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... part of the book was given piecemeal during a period of twenty-three years. The Koran is written in Arabic prose, but its sentences generally conclude in a long-continued rhyme. The language is considered to be of the utmost elegance and purity, and it has become the standard of the Arabic tongue. Muhammadans pay it the greatest reverence, and their most solemn oath is taken with the Koran placed on the head. Formerly the sacred book could only be touched by a Saiyad or a Mulla, and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... JOHNSON, in consequence of his having eminently distinguished himself by the publication of a series of Essays, excellently calculated to form the manners of the people, and in which the cause of religion and morality has been maintained and recommended by the strongest powers of argument and elegance of language, reflected an equal degree of lustre upon ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... was for the most part much like other rooms in that quarter of the world. There were few luxuries in the way of furniture which fallen man can desire which were not to be found there, but over and above this, there was an elegance in the arrangement of all the nick-nacks and ornaments, and an appropriateness and good taste in the placing of every piece of furniture and vase of flowers, which showed that a higher order of mind than the upholsterer's or housemaid's was constantly overlooking and working there. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... name, and we limped disgracefully. It was the popular impression in Puerto Rico that every American soldier was a full-fledged millionaire, but even they expressed some disappointment at our evident disregard for the external superfluities of elegance. But, when you stop to consider it, we did not go to the Antilles to make love to the pretty girls. We were quite sufficiently clothed and fed to march through tropical underbrush, take several cities, and put our more gaudily ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... superficial forms of versification; and the Castilian poet relinquished, with his redondillas and artless asonantes, the homely, but heartful themes of the olden time; or, if he dwelt on them, it was with an air of studied elegance and precision, very remote from the Doric simplicity and freshness of the romantic minstrelsy. If he aspired to some bolder theme, it was rarely suggested by the stirring and patriotic recollections of his nation's history. Thus, nature and the rude graces of a primitive age gave way to superior ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... actually has not enough room to step back and look at them properly. Look at that one now, with the negress, the Moor, and the water-carrier waiting their turn while the little girl fills her water-pot. See what labour has been thrown away on that fountain. What elegance of design, what columns of sculptured marble, and fine tessellated work stuck up where few people can see it, even when they ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... "The Globe Editions are admirable for their scholarly editing, their typographical excellence, their compendious form, and their cheapness." The BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW says: "In compendiousness, elegance, and scholarliness the Globe Editions of Messrs. Macmillan surpass any popular series of our classics hitherto given to the public. As near an approach to miniature perfection as has ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... confidential fluency of style, which gave distinction even to commonplace remarks. His method did not condescend to nudging when he wished to note a point, but it fell only so far short of it as he thought social elegance required. His conversation presently drifted, or more properly speaking, flowed into a graphic and frank account of his own progress as a banker. He referred to past successful undertakings, descanted on his present roseate responsibilities, and hinted sagely at impending ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... present our readers with the figure of a plant newly introduced from France by Mr. WILLIAMS, Nurseryman of Paris, collected originally in Peru by Mr. DOMBEY, whose flowers, if they do not equal those of the Fuchsia already figured in elegance of form and growth, surpass them somewhat in brilliancy of colour, whence it becomes a most desirable plant for the purpose ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... the highest, finest sense; there is nothing trivial about her pictures, yet they abound in all the graces of the 18th Century. Her drawings and paintings with spread fans and now and then a greyhound or a gazelle opposed against them in design, hold grace and elegance of feeling that Watteau would certainly have sanctioned. She brings up the same sense of exquisite gesture and simplicity of movement with a feeling for the romantic aspect of virginal life which exists ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... a force and dignity of style that accord well with his character. "His orations and addresses are marked by classical purity, chaste elegance of expression, a certain nobleness of diction, and a just proportion of sentence to idea."—John ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... innovations in the field of poetry. The splendour and elegance at the new imperial court of the Han dynasty attracted many poets who sang the praises of the emperor and his court and were given official posts and dignities. These praises were in the form of grandiloquent, overloaded poetry, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... necessity for attending to all these matters no doubt adds greatly to the interest which a chewer of pan supari is able to find in life. Moreover, his taste and wealth have scope for expression in the elegance of his appointments, and by these you may generally judge of a man's rank and means. A well-to-do Mahratta cartman will carry in his waistband a sort of bijou hold-all of coloured cloth, which, when unrolled, displays neat pockets of different forms for ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... what I saw might vanish away, as with the wave of a fairy's wand. Was I not a moment before down in that dusty, squalid street, and here I am now in a beautiful room whose appointments are all of quiet elegance—costly but in exquisite taste, and where absolute peace and quiet reign. The wide windows open upon a lovely green garden, which adds the final touch of restful ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... chiselled features, a brilliant complexion, and light hair, abundant and glossy, which, through his grandmother Isabel, he inherited from the family of the Counts of Hainault. He displayed liveliness and elegance in his tastes; he was fond of amusements, games, hunting, hounds and hawking-birds, fine clothes, magnificent furniture. A holy man, they say, even reproached the queen his mother with having winked at certain inclinations evinced ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... not soil his to any great extent at first. The Captain was plainly overawed by the genteel elegance of his surrounding and the manner of his hostess. But Mr. Keith was very much at ease and full of fun and, after a time, a little of Shadrach's self-consciousness disappeared. When he learned that grandfather Wyeth had been a seafaring man he came out of his shell sufficiently to ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of outward appearance; and whatever can fascinate or attract was so inherent in this singular man that all which in others would have been most artificial was in him most natural: so that it is no exaggeration to add that to be well dressed seemed to the elegance of his person not so much the result of art as of a property innate ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... repetitions that scarcely attract notice amid the variety of synonyms with which the language of the original abounds and amid also the melodious flow of the rhythm, the defects become glaring in translation. At the latter, however, of faithfulness, I have been obliged to sacrifice elegance, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and a diplomatist, was born in 1636, and died in 1694. His plays are, equally with the others mentioned, marked by the licentiousness of the age, which is rendered more insidious by their elegance. Among them are The Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub, and The Man of Mode, or ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... can say, General," said he with a pleasant elegance of expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to each deliberately spoken word. It was evident that Kutuzov himself listened with pleasure to his own voice. "All I can say, General, is that if the matter depended ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... a light little figure flitted up the stairs, leaving an impression of slender elegance and ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... there is a certain elegance in its movements, while the beautiful chiar' oscuro tints of its wings, the gray and orange hues on its breast, its long black legs streaked with pink, its large beak, small head, and symmetrical proportions, combine to render it a bird of no ordinary beauty. Though its ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... mother used to bake; and we admit that the sun shines as brightly and the moon as softly as it did "before the war." We have established thrift in city and country. We have fallen in love with work. We have restored comfort to homes from which culture and elegance never departed. We have let economy take root and spread among us as rank as the crabgrass which sprung from Sherman's cavalry camps, until we are ready to lay odds on the Georgia Yankee, as he manufactures relics ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... half-brick walls, and broken windows, not much better than the houses in Durham Yard. There is, in short, both at Versailles and Paris, a prodigious mixture of magnificence and negligence with every kind of elegance except that of cleanliness, ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... red as roses and joined eyebrows; sweet of speech, laughing-lipped and delighting in mirth and gaiety. Now it chanced one day, as the two sat talking and laughing behold, there came up ten damsels like moons, every one of them complete in beauty and loveliness, and elegance and grace; and amongst them was a young lady riding on a she-mule with a saddle of brocade and stirrups of gold. She wore an outer veil of fine stuff, and her waist was girt with a girdle of gold-embroidered silk; and she was ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Andreyev, and Tchekoff, Merezhkovsky was brought up in the midst of comfort and elegance; he received a correct and careful education; fate was solicitous for him, in that it allowed him to develop that spirit of objective observation and calm meditation which permits a man to look down on the spectacle of life, and indulge in philosophical speculations very ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... admiration the various manufactures of the country. Cotton stuffs so fine as to resemble silk. Pictures of animals, trees, and other natural objects, formed with feathers of different colours, disposed with such skill and elegance, as to resemble, in truth and beauty of imitation, the finest paintings. But what chiefly attracted their eyes were two large plates of circular form; one of massive gold, representing the sun, the other of silver, an emblem of the moon. These were accompanied with bracelets, ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... from the close, fixed attention essential to the best use of words. Perhaps few are endowed with both the inventive and the critical faculty. A certain inner sense enables one to know, according to his lights, whether the story itself is true or false; but elegance of style is due chiefly to training, to a cultivation like that of the ear for music. Possibly we are entering on an age in which the people care less for form, for phraseology, than for what seems to them true, real—for what, as they would express it, "takes hold of them." This ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... attention to the Italian states: Venice and Amalfi were the first which directed their labours to the arts of domestic industry, the forerunners and causes of commercial prosperity. New wants and desires being created, and a taste for elegance and luxury formed, foreign countries were visited. Muratori mentions several circumstances which indicate a revival of a commercial spirit; and, as Dr. Robertson remarks, from the close of the seventh century, an attentive ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... seen elegance and beauty since she went away; she had entered into the life of the cultivated, the intellectually great. In spite of her deep affection for Aunt Raby, she came back to the ugliness and the sordid surroundings of home with ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... very little; it is only the broad average intelligence of the masses that does us any credit. And even this is easily exaggerated. The majority of members of Congress talk bad grammar; so do the majority of public-school teachers. I do not mean merely that they speak without elegance, but that in moments of confidence they say "We was," and "Them things," and "I done it." With the present predominance of merely scientific studies, and the increasing distaste for the study of language, I do not see how this is to diminish. For ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... or heroic deeds like those of the bold cavaliers of former days which excite love in woman. The external qualities of man, such as beauty and elegance, etc., also play a part, although their effect may be less decisive than that of the bodily charms of woman in exciting love in man. Intellectual superiority, high moral actions, and mental qualities in general, easily affect the heart of woman, which becomes ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... was quite imposing. Cato's nephew, a tidy young colored lad, came from one of the inns, and acquitted himself with superior elegance. It was indeed a feast, enlivened with bright conversation. People expected to talk then, not look bored and indifferent. Each one brought something ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... to see. Lo, how the Gods our puny wrath deride, With peace and beauty spread on every side! This earth with pleasure of the Spring complete, Too bright to dwell on, were it not so sweet. No theft of man it's affluence impairs, A thousand flowers, without a loss, it spares; Whose bashful elegance no brush can trace, Heartfelt delight, and plenitude of grace; No palettes match their brilliance, although Pandora filled her box ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... exchange for their provisions: cloths, both woollen and cotton, coarse crockery, and other manufactured articles, especially knives, are what they chiefly take in barter; though I saw some furniture, with pretensions to elegance, among the stuff of the family I met. After the horses came a groupe of men, some walking and keeping pace with the amble of the beasts; others riding and carrying the children; the procession being closed by a very stout good-looking man, smoking as he went along, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... the amount of rubber left at the end of the term whether you have taken my valuable advice," said Florence. "What's in that other package, Baby? I know it is Anita's by the extreme elegance of ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... the 'Pleasures of Memory,'" he wrote in September, 1813. "The elegance of this poem is quite marvellous. Not a vulgar line throughout the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... moves on. The luggage of Madame de Santos is filled with the varied possessions indicating years of elegance. Letters to members of the Confederate court circle at Paris are social endorsements. Wealth will do ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... wife's likes and inclinations somewhat silly; she considered his sordid and material. The husband's business was that of a gunmaker in a thriving city northwards, and his soul was in that business always; the lady was best characterized by that superannuated phrase of elegance 'a votary of the muse.' An impressionable, palpitating creature was Ella, shrinking humanely from detailed knowledge of her husband's trade whenever she reflected that everything he manufactured had for its purpose the destruction of life. She could only recover her equanimity ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... of the New Bridge, which must be greatly admired by all who have not seen the Pontneuf, we past by a row of buildings, not very remarkable for their elegance, being chiefly built of wood, and irregular. Many of them are supported by pillars; but of what order we could ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the belligerent planet. Every detail you can con (I don't know how to spell conjure) up will represent the scene true to the life in everything save the attitude and gestures of the falling literary warrior. Nothing you could imagine would adequately portray the elegance—the dignity of my descent. Daddy was, I believe, the fortunate witness of my native grace of movement under similar trying circumstances. I allude to an incident which occurred during a small festive ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... regarded her future lord, they found that she thought very little about him, but was absorbed in her trousseau, which she proudly displayed. To those accustomed to see and hear of American outfits, with their lavish profusion and extravagant elegance, poor little Pelagie's modest stores were not at all imposing. Half a dozen pretty dresses from Paris; several amazing hats, all rosebuds, lace, and blue ribbon; a good deal of embroidery; and a few ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... employed. Then his paint-brush was seldom idle; and, as he remarked, "variety is pleasant," he coloured differently every room, both inside and out, increasing thereby the gay appearance, if not the tasteful elegance, of the structure. ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... The minute elegance of many of these shells is very striking. Tiny physas and succineas, no larger than shot, live among big paludinas as large as a garden snail, while all sizes of the larger varieties are found, from microscopic ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... exact, for the hatless head had just then become the street mode. There was a good game of Kelly in progress. Giddy, leaning slightly on his stick, stood watching it. Suddenly he was aware that all about the dim smoky little room players and loungers were standing in attitudes of exaggerated elegance. Each was leaning on a cue, his elbow crooked in as near an imitation of Giddy's position as the stick's length would permit. The figure was curved so that it stuck out behind and before; the expression on each face was as asinine as its ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... a nest of luxury and elegance. Its furnishings and adornings were of the newest Parisian style. A carpet woven in the pattern of a bed of flowers covered the floor. Vases of Sevres and Porcelain, filled with roses and jonquils, stood on marble tables. Grand Venetian mirrors reflected the fair form of their mistress from ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... figurative style, on which the English tongue is lifted up, raises the genius at the same time very far aloft, though with an irregular pace. The first English writer who composed a regular tragedy, and infused a spirit of elegance through every part of it, was the illustrious Mr. Addison. His "Cato" is a masterpiece, both with regard to the diction and to the beauty and harmony of the numbers. The character of Cato is, in my opinion, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... admired the easy elegance of the stranger, yet despised his lack of courage, the story having come to her promptly enough. She began to treat him coldly and he was at last driven to feel that he was her most unwelcome suitor. One day he bluntly asked her why she treated ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... and say, that it is built in the 'Burgundian style.' In its general outline and character, it resembles the house in the Place de la Pucelle, at Rouen. Its walls, indeed, are not covered with the same profusion of sculpture: yet, perhaps, its simplicity is accompanied by greater elegance.—The windows are disposed in three divisions, formed by slender buttresses, which run up to the roof. They are square-headed, and divided by a mullion and transom.—The portal is in the centre: it is formed by a Tudor arch, enriched with deep mouldings, and surmounted by a lofty ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... of the fiction. Lothario, with gaiety which cannot be hated, and bravery which cannot be despised, retains too much of the spectator's kindness. It was in the power of Richardson alone to teach us at once esteem and detestation, to make virtuous resentment overpower all the benevolence which wit, elegance, and courage, naturally excite; and to lose at last the hero in the villain. The fifth act is not equal to the former; the events of the drama are exhausted, and little remains but to talk of what is ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... have been a beautiful situation; commanding at that time a full, unobstructed view of the Beverly and Marblehead shores, and all the waters and points of land between them. The mansion was spacious in its dimensions, and bore the marks of having been constructed in the best style of elegance, strength, and finish. It was indeed a curious and venerable specimen of the domestic architecture of its day. A first-class house then; in its proportions, arrangements, and attachments, it would compare well with first-class houses now. Mrs. English ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... June, there entered the parlor of the old-fashioned mansion of the Roberts family a lady who had asked to see Mrs. Roberts on business of an important nature. Though plainly clad, her appearance possessed an elegance which insured respect; but when alone and seated in the darkest corner of the great drawing room she put up a trembling hand to thrust back her veil, the countenance thus revealed betrayed an emotion hardly in keeping ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... the wedding was to take place at the house of the bride on Tuesday of the next week, and that on Thursday evening following, there was to be a grand party at Rose Hill, far exceeding in splendor and elegance the one ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... best plays and the best statues, and were the best architects; of course, they were the best tailors too," said he; and was never weary, when he could find a tolerant listener, of dwelling on the simplicity, the economy, the elegance both of means and effect, which made their system ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... infinity in directions perpendicular to the two planes of projection. These two planes are then made to coincide by revolving the horizontal into the vertical about their common line. Such is the method of descriptive geometry which in the hands of Monge acquired wonderful generality and elegance. Problems concerning fortifications were worked so quickly by this method that the commandant at the military school at Mezieres, where Monge was a draftsman and pupil, viewed the results with distrust. Monge ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... respect of grace and beauty, there were points well worth noting. A ray of humor, now and then, would make its way through the veil of dim obstruction, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after childhood or early youth, was shown in the General's fondness for the sight and fragrance of flowers. An old soldier might be supposed to prize only the bloody laurel on his brow; but here was one who seemed to have a young ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... continued Robinson; "but it is a work of fiction, in which I take leave to think that elegance and ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... woman, who left ease, elegance, a high social circle of rich culture, and with true self-abnegation gave her life, in the country of her adoption, to the teaching of her highest idea of truth, it is fitting that we pay a tribute of just, though late, respect. Her writings are of the purest and noblest character, and whatever ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood. Even to the feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition—too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress. Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, hands, and feet. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... existence, seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as far as eye could see, an immense land of joys and passions. She confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love, like Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Signs by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be separated ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... in her position suddenly revealed her face. It was Miss Faulkner. Previously he had known her only in the riding habit of Confederate gray which she had at first affected, or in the light muslin morning dress she had worn at Gray Oaks. It seemed to him, to-night, that the studied elegance of her full dress became her still more; that the pretty willfulness of her chin and shoulders was chastened and modified by the pearls round her fair throat. Suddenly their eyes met; her face paled visibly; he fancied that she almost leaned against her companion for support; then she met ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... regidor of the loyal city of Guatemala, while composing this most true history of the conquest of Mexico, happened to see a work by Francisco Lopez de Gomara on the same subject, the elegance of which made me ashamed of the vulgarity of my own, and caused me to throw away my pen in despair. After having read it, however, I found it full of misrepresentations of the events, having exaggerated the number of natives which we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... court balls and glittering functions, she devoured and learned by heart. An abominably vulgar little person, she was an interestingly pertinacious creature, and wrought night and day at acquiring an air of fashionable elegance, at first naturally laying it on in such manner as suggested that it should be scraped off with a knife, but with experience gaining a certain specious knowledge of forms. How the over-mature child at school had assimilated her uncanny ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the emperor are quite plain when compared with the adjoining suite of the favorite sultana, but are massive, dignified and appropriate for a sovereign of his wealth and power, and everything is finished with that peculiar elegance which is only found in the East. In all the great cluster of buildings there is nothing mean or commonplace. Every apartment, every corridor, every arch and every column is perfect and a wonder of architectural design, construction ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... bewildering; her gowns the acme of elegance and feminine grace; her wit, her eyes, her lips, the toast of the town. Her songs, a second printing of which is being clamored for, are being read over the Three Kingdoms, with a letter from his Royal Majesty, George ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... trappings, gardens, etc. He invented plots and situations full of fine possibilities by which later poets have profited, but his own handling of them was feeble and prolix. Yet there was a simplicity about the old French language and a certain elegance and delicacy in the diction of the trouveres which the rude, unformed ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... experience, and these years know their own tragedies. It is the time of life when one finds it unendurable not to seem perfect in all outward matters: in worldly position, in the equipments of wealth, in family, and in the grace, elegance, and dignity of all appearances in public. And yet the youth is continually betrayed by the child still intermittently insistent within him, and by the child which undiplomatic people too often assume him to be. Thus with William's attire: he could ill have borne ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... The elegance of the apartment can scarcely be imagined, and the savory smell which arose from neighboring tables occupied by fashionable men and women, invited us to a repast. We called, however, but for a dish or two, ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... ago was Philip A. Bell, formerly of New York City, one of nature's noblemen, broad in his humanity and intellectually great as a journalist. As editor of The Elevator, a weekly newspaper still published in San Francisco, he made its pages brilliant with scintillations of elegance, wealth of learning, and vigor of advocacy. To his request for a correspondent I responded in a series of letters. I forbear to insert them here, as they describe the material and political status of British Columbia thirty-five years ago—being well aware that ancient history is not the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Lyell learned from Gibbon that a 'frontal attack' on a fortress of error is much less likely to succeed than one of 'sap and mine.' Lyell was always most careful in the composition of his works, sparing no pains to make his meaning clear, while he aimed at elegance of expression and logical sequence in the presentation of his ideas. The weakness of his eyes was a great difficulty to him, throughout his life, and, when not employing an amanuensis, he generally wrote stretched out on the floor or on ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... spire on spire; massive piles, which in the deepening haze might be either prisons or palaces; vast ranges of buildings, gloomy or glittering as the partial ray fell on them; with the solemn beauty of the Invalides on one wing, the light and lovely elegance of the St Genevieve on the other, and the frowning majesty of Notre-Dame in the midst, filled the plain with a vision such as I had imaged only in an Arabian tale. Yet the moral reality was even greater ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... sixteenth century, is a mixed but very comfortable code of manners and customs. One has not here to struggle against the ignorance and incapacity of native servants. The clever, quick Indian has learned the polish and elegance of his French masters, and the first thing which struck me was the pretty manners of the native—or, as they are called, creole—inhabitants. Everybody has a "Bon soir!" or a "Salaam!" for us as we pass them in our twilight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... too fresh," he growled sourly, "and I wonder if that cook-boy thinks we dote on ham every meal? I don't for one. It may be all right, if a man's plumb starving to death, but it don't lend no real elegance to a repast." ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... November, 1847, we arrived in Rome, purposing to spend the winter there. At that time, Margaret was living in the house of the Marchesa ——, in the Corso, Ultimo Piano. Her rooms were pleasant and cheerful, with a certain air of elegance and refinement, but they had not a sunny exposure, that all-essential requisite for health, during the damp Roman winter. Margaret suffered from ill health this winter, and she afterwards attributed it mainly to the fact, that she had not the sun. As soon as she heard of our arrival, she ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... that it would have been very disrespectful to put her in it—gave me precisely an idea of greatness. But in the fine proportions of the lady seated upon the "Cosmography of Munster" there was such a proud elegance, such a harmonious majesty, and she maintained an attitude at once so easy and so noble, that she really seemed to me a very great person. Although my ink-bottle, which she examined with an expression of such mockery as appeared ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... gardens of Rome, a great number of trees clad in perennial green, which heighten the illusion produced by the mildness of the climate during winter. Pines, of a particular elegance, large, tufted towards the top, and interwoven with one another, form a kind of plain in the air, whose effect is charming when we mount sufficiently high to perceive it. The lower trees are placed beneath the shelter of this verdant ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... with her father to Inveraray Castle she was then fifteen, and her friend only eight. Miss Clavering became the wife of Mr. Miles Fletcher, advocate, but was better known in later years as Mrs. Christison. She inherited all the natural elegance and beauty of face and form for which her mother, and aunt Lady Charlotte Campbell, were so distinguished, and died at Edinburgh, 1869, at an advanced age. While concocting the story of her first novel, Miss Ferrier writes to her friend in ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... was progressing in her snobology. She had had many languages to learn in her brief day. She had had to change from Missouri to flat New York, then upward through various strata of diction. She had learned to speak with a certain elegance as a movie princess. But she had learned that people of social position do not talk on stilts outside of fiction. She had since been trying to acquire the rough slang of her set. It was not easy to be glib in it. She had attained only a careful carelessness as yet. But she was ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... right and left of Mrs. B., and at the opposite corners from us, sit two other guests, one a colored merchant, and the other a young son-in-law of Mr. B., whose face is the very double extract of blackness; for which his intelligence, the splendor of his dress, and the elegance of his manners, can make to be sure but slight atonement! The middle seats are filled on the one side by an unmarried daughter of Mr. B., and on the other side by a promising son of eleven, who is to start on the morrow for Edinburgh, where he is to remain until ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a corresponding familiarity upon the part of Mr. Newt. Mr. Van Boozenberg learned incidentally that Abel had never been in business before. He observed the fresh odor of cigars in the counting-room—he remarked the extreme elegance of Abel's attire, and the inferential tailor's bills. He learned that Mrs. Newt and the family were enjoying themselves at Saratoga. He derived from the conversation and his observation that there were very large family expenses to ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... to those who had long before made the acquaintance of his writings. He was at once sought out and welcomed by the most (p. 069) distinguished men of the most brilliant capital in the world. The polish, the grace, the elegance, and the wit of French social life made upon him an impression which he not only never forgot, but which he was afterwards in the habit of contrasting with the social life of England and America, to the manifest disadvantage of both, and with the certain ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... remarkable elegance and a delicacy in the features, but also a character of resolution and ability that quite took the portrait out of the category of mere fops or fine men. When people looked at it for the first time, I have so often heard the exclamation—'What a wonderfully handsome ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... looks like an architect's ground plan. On that side the arch of Septimius Severus alone rears itself aloft, virtually intact, whilst of the temple of Vespasian only a few isolated columns remain still standing, as if by miracle, amidst the general downfall, soaring with a proud elegance, with sovereign audacity of equilibrium, so slender and so gilded, into the blue heavens. The column of Phocas is also erect; and you see some portions of the Rostra fitted together out of fragments discovered near by. But if the eye seeks a sensation of extraordinary ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... off-hand at her work; but she is less patient, and sometimes overruns the scent. Sir Bellingharn Graham has been frequently heard to say, that if his kennels would have afforded it, he would never have taken a dog-hound into the field. That in the canine race the female has more of elegance and symmetry of form, consequently more of speed, than the male, is evident to a common observer; but there is nothing to lead to the conclusion that, in the natural endowments of the senses, any superiority ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... through is simply to say that it nearly resembles a walk on Blackheath and the Park if we set out of question the houses and gardens of the latter. The hills and valleys rise and fall with inexpressible elegance. We discovered no water nor any new wood of consequence, but it is impossible that a great want of water can be here from the number of native huts and fires we fell in with in our march. From the top of a high hill I ascended and casting my eyes to the north-east a large sheet of water ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... the carriage, lifting his hat with a slight exaggeration of Chesterfieldian elegance. Sandy, no less than his master, was a survival of an interesting type. He had inherited the feudal deference for his superiors in position, joined to a certain self-respect which saved him from sycophancy. His manners had been formed upon those ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... an occupation for lovers, who, as they thus see themselves twice over, imprint the picture still more deeply on their memories. He could guess, too, the stolen kiss snatched as they separated from each other's loved society. The luxury, the studied elegance, eloquent of the perfection of indolence, of ease; the extreme care shown, either to spare the loved object every annoyance, or to occasion her a delightful surprise; that might and majesty of ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the English has had a great and salutary effect upon national character. I do not know a finer race of men than the English gentlemen. Instead of the softness and effeminacy which characterizes the men of rank of most countries, they exhibit a union of elegance and strength, of robustness of frame and freshness of complexion, which I am inclined to attribute to their living so much in the open air, pursuing so eagerly the invigorating ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... been collected from various deposits in the palace. Of these deposits, one contained tablets written in hieroglyphic; but the rest were in the linear script, 'a highly developed form, with regular divisions between the words, and for elegance scarcely surpassed by any later form of writing.' The tablets vary in shape and size, some being flat, elongated bars from two to seven and a half inches in length, while others are squarer, ranging up to small octavo. Some of them, along with the linear writing, supply illustrations of the objects ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... for the spit. As for the precious buff eggs, against which, one time of day, guineas were weighed,—send for sixpenn'orth at the cheesemonger's, and you will get at least five; which is just as it should be. For elegance of shape or quality of flesh, the Cochin cannot for a moment stand comparison with our handsome dunghill; neither can the indescribable mixture of growling and braying, peculiar to the former, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... and elegance are, as Cowper shows, the three successive purposes for which furniture was designed. And to-day the order of development remains also the order of importance. The first things to be desired in any article of furniture are durability and simple application to its purpose. ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... bigger crowd in the days of miracles, but this isn't Jordan's strand," he added, as he glanced around at the dripping, desolate slopes, and then, fortified in his opinion by the gloomy survey, concluded, with cavalry elegance, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... structures of more recent date only a sixth part are of stone. At Agagna may be counted several buildings possessing some interest on account of their size, if not on that of their elegance, grandeur, or the fineness of their proportions. These are the College of St. John Lateran, the church, the clergy-house, the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... taste for elegance. Some of his people were not above reproach—notice the lady in "Redemption," who becomes suddenly converted to a belief in God because her twenty-fifth lover is suddenly restored to her. I thought that, though he was somewhat corrupted by the influence of the Tuileries, ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... that I was making myself daily more worthy to claim this beloved girl as my own, spread through my soul a delicious, all-pervading sense of uninterrupted happiness. No man, however rough, could thus associate with a delicate and refined woman without acquiring some of the elegance which distinguished her. I imperceptibly lost the clownish air which had so often bitterly mortified me; and as my perceptions became more acute I saw in my own manners all that could render me repulsive, and hastened ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... 1578, died 1660. He had elegance and cheerfulness which hardly rose to grace. He painted mostly scenes from ancient mythology, such as 'Venus and her Companions.' Religious subjects were comparatively rare with him; one, however, often repeated was the 'Infant Christ sleeping on ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... contemporary Parisian, whose diary has supplied us more than one of those graphic traits that assist much in bringing before our eyes the living forms of the great actors in the world's past history, seems to have been strongly impressed by the commanding appearance and elegance of dress of De Berquin, at this time in the very prime of life.[268] But the great Erasmus, his correspondent, stood in far greater admiration of his extraordinary learning, his purity of life—a rare excellence ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... spirit in the solitude of my chamber, and even in the midst of public festivities, or in those balls and banquets which the nobility gave in such profusion at this period of the year. When a shape, however faintly resembling her incomparable elegance of form, passed before my eye, or a voice, in the slightest degree reminding me of her noble tones, reached my ear, I felt an irresistible pang, that, for the time, embittered all the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... to utter neglect and derision? But the Rev. Edward Irving, with all his native wildness, "hath a smooth aspect framed to make women" saints; his very unusual size and height are carried off and moulded into elegance by the most admirable symmetry of form and ease of gesture; his sable locks, his clear iron-grey complexion, and firm-set features, turn the raw, uncouth Scotchman into the likeness of a noble Italian picture; and even his distortion of sight only redeems the otherwise "faultless ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Muehlberg. The picture has, as a portrait by Titian, no very commanding merit, no seduction of technique, and it is easy to imagine that Cesare Vecellio may have had a share in it. Singular is the absence of all pose, of all attempt to harmonise the main lines of the design or give pictorial elegance to the naive directness of the presentment. This mode of conception may well have been dictated to the courtly Venetian by ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips |
