"Homeliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... liked her conversation, laughed at her ugliness, and said that the priests must have recommended her to his brother by way of penance. She well knew that she was not handsome, and jested freely on her own homeliness. Yet, with strange inconsistency, she loved to adorn herself magnificently, and drew on herself much keen ridicule by appearing in the theatre and the ring plastered, painted, clad in Brussels ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... lastly," I said, "in my analysis and explication of the agreeableness of those same parlors, comes the crowning grace,—their homeliness. By homeliness I mean not ugliness, as the word is apt to be used, but the air that is given to a room by being really at home in it. Not the most skilful arrangement can ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... rich, showy livery was slowly opening the folding leaves of the magnificent gates, so as to admit them into the park. The very oxen hesitated ere they took their slow way through it, as if dazzled by so much splendour, and ashamed of their own homeliness—the honest brutes little suspecting that the wealthy nobleman's pomp and glitter are derived from the industry of the lowly tillers of the soil. It certainly would seem as if only fine carriages and prancing horses should be permitted to pass through such a portal as ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... of MELNOTTE'S cottage; flowers placed here and there; a guitar on an oaken table, with a portfolio, etc.; a picture on an easel, covered by a curtain; fencing foils crossed over the mantelpiece; an attempt at refinement in site of the homeliness of the furniture, etc.; a staircase to the right conducts to the ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... grasses are lush, and the hedges are tall and luxuriant. Restless boys scramble to and fro, quiet nursemaids loiter, and a vagrant has sat down to rest though the bank is dripping with autumn rain. How fair a prospect of southern England! Land of exquisite homeliness and order; land of town that is country, of country that is town; land of a hundred classes all deftly interwoven and all waxing to one class—England. Land encrowned with the gifts of peaceful days—days that live in thy face and the faces of ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... that the sallow daughter was devote and a 'black.' The mother, however, seemed to be of a different stamp. She was at any rate a person of cultivation. That, the books lying about were enough to prove. But she had also the shrewdness and sobriety, the large pleasant homeliness, of a good man of business. It was evident that she, rather than her fattore, managed her property, and that she perfectly understood what she ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of life; the chords are simple as Handel's, but they are as perfect. Lytton's work, although as vulgar as Verdi's is, in much the same fashion, sustained by a natural sense of formal harmony; but all that follows is decadent,—an admixture of romance and realism, the exaggerations of Hugo and the homeliness of Trollope; a litter of ancient elements ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... mongrels from Canada or the Indian and wild lands of the West, and such other lazy brutes as our good farmers would not impose upon the government with or later were condemned by the army buyers. These were largely of the Abdallah type of horse, noted for coarseness, homeliness, also soft and lazy constitutions. No one disputes the brute homeliness of the Abdallah horse, and in this the old and trite saying of "Like begets like" is exemplified in descendants, with which our country is flooded. The speed element of which we boast was left in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... locks beneath were carefully arranged; and the port of his head and shoulders, the mould of his limbs, the cast of his features, and the fairness of his complexion, made his appearance ill accord with the homeliness of his garb. In one hand he carried a bow over his shoulder; in the other he held by the ears a couple of dead rabbits, with which he playfully tantalized the dog, holding them to his nose, and then lifting them high aloft, while ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sincerity. To those who regard the declamatory note as indispensable to a national hymn (as we have it, for instance, in "Hail, Columbia," and "The Star-spangled Banner") the low key in which Bjoernson's songs are pitched will no doubt appear as a blemish. But it is their very homeliness in connection with the deep, full-throbbing emotion which beats in each forceful phrase—it is this, I fancy, which has made them the common property of the whole people, and thus in the truest sense national. I could never tell why my heart gives a leap at the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Barnes a false air of homeliness; but in a few moments it became apparent that her life had been spent amid muslins, confidences, and illicit conversations. Now, with motherly care she removed a tulle skirt from the table, and Violet, with quick, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... appeared one more example of the same species of epic, "The Malmantile," by Lippi (1606-1664). This poem is considered a pure model of the dialect of the Florentines, which is so graceful and harmonious even in its homeliness. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... apparently. Something was said before him and Lowell of the beauty of his description of a rabbit, startled with fear among the ferns, and lifting its head with the pulsation of its frightened heart visibly shaking it; then the talk turned on the graphic homeliness of Dante's noticing how the dog's skin moves upon it, and Harte spoke of the exquisite shudder with which a horse tries to rid itself of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... poems as Peter Bell, the Idiot Boy, Goody Blake and Harry Gill, Simon Lee, and the Wagoner. But there are multitudes of Wordsworth's ballads and lyrics which are simple without being silly, and which, in their homeliness and clear {229} profundity, in their production of the strongest effects by the fewest strokes, are among the choicest modern examples of pure, as distinguished from decorated, art. Such are (out of many) Ruth, Lucy, A Portrait, To a Highland ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... most mining villages of Scotland are an outrage on decency. In Lowwood there were no sanitary conveniences of any kind, and it was a difficult matter for the women folk to keep a tidy house under these circumstances. But it was wonderful, the homeliness and comfort found in those single apartment houses. It was home, and that made it tolerable. In such homes fine men and women were bred and reared, but the credit was due entirely to our womenfolk; for they had the fashioning of the spirit of the homes, and the spirit of the homes ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... it. He's not much to look at, but you forget his homeliness right off," replied Columbine, warmly. "You feel something ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... shaded by cottonwoods and built around three sides of a square. It was roomy, cool, and comfortable, with a picturesqueness all its own. To Solange, it was inviting and homelike, much more so than the rather cold luxury of hotels and Pullman staterooms. And this feeling of homeliness was enhanced when she was smilingly and cordially welcomed by a big, gray-bearded, bronzed man and a white-haired, motherly woman, the ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... for a certain unconscious ease and homeliness. Even when, in the course of their progress, they grow more copious and mature, they hardly discover any consciousness of literary dignity. Of the Latin writings of the Anglo-Saxon period this could not be said. ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... were attracted by Jeff's friend. He was one of those persons who, despite their homeliness of face and feature, win us by their genial nature and honest, outspoken ways. No one ever saw a finer set of big, white teeth, nor a broader smile, which scarcely ever was absent from the Irishman's countenance. ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... in the valley along the pleasant Neckar with a comfortable friendliness. The smoke from the chimneys hung over it, a pale blue haze; and the tall roofs, the spires of the churches, gave it a pleasantly medieval air. There was a homeliness in it which warmed the heart. Hayward talked of Richard Feverel and Madame Bovary, of Verlaine, Dante, and Matthew Arnold. In those days Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam was known only to the elect, and Hayward repeated it to Philip. He was very fond of reciting ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... magnificent, but before we examine it let us proceed with the Tintorettos. In "The Adoration of the Shepherds," in the far left-hand corner as one enters, there is an excellent example of the painter's homeliness. It is really two pictures, the Holy Family being on an upper floor, or rather shelf, of the manger and making the prettiest of groups, while below, among the animals, are the shepherds, real peasants, looking ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... is the same, but the second goes beyond the first in the grandeur of the emblems, and in the inclusion of the parents in the act of obeisance. Both sets of symbols were drawn from familiar sights. The homeliness of the 'sheaves' is in striking contrast with the grandeur of the 'sun, moon, and stars.' The interpretation of the first is ready to hand, because the sheaves were 'your sheaves' and 'my sheaf.' There was no similar ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... restaurant is pleasant from its novelty. The guests seem less ceremonious and more gay; the absence of the elegance that marks the dinner-table appointments in a maison bien montee, gives a homeliness and heartiness to the repast; and even the attendance of two or three ill-dressed garcons hurrying about, instead of half-a-dozen sedate servants in rich liveries, marshalled by a solemn-looking maitre-d'hotel and groom of the chambers, gives a zest to the dinner ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... become possessed since her marriage and which it seemed to her might be utilized delightfully in her department. She would endeavor to treat dress from the standpoint of ethical responsibility to society, and to show that both extravagance and dowdy homeliness were to be avoided. Clothes in themselves had grown to be a satisfaction to her, and any association of vanity would be eliminated by the introduction of a serious artistic purpose into a weekly commentary concerning them. Accordingly she accepted the position and ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... sentiments—like a bad tavern's worst wine. Sir Fret. Ha! ha! Sneer. In your more serious efforts, he says, your bombast would be less intolerable, if the thoughts were ever suited to the expression; but the homeliness of the sentiment stares through the fantastic encumbrance of its fine language, like a clown in one of the new uniforms! Sir Fret. Ha! ha! Sneer. That your occasional tropes and flowers suit the general coarseness of your style, as tambour sprigs would a ground of linsey-woolsey; while your ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... in winter instead of the sitting-room, drawn by its antique homeliness. Mrs. Iden warmed elder wine, and Iden his great cup of Goliath ale, and they roasted chestnuts and apples, while the potatoes—large potatoes—Iden's selected specialities—were baking buried in the ashes. Looking over her shoulder Amaryllis ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... "taffy" was accompanied by a woodcut portrait of Miss H—s which made her resemble a half-naked Indian squaw suffering with an acute attack of mulligrubs, superinduced by an overfeed of baked dog. If Miss H—s' face does not hurt her for very homeliness, any male jury in the country would award her damages against the News in the sum of a million dollars, and help her ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... pale Little Scout—whose simple touch would then have instantly revived and soothed him, whose tender love was his comfort, his sanctuary from pursuing evils; the scene of his old home, far cosier, far more beloved, far more cheerful for all its homeliness, for all its poverty, than the more pretentious one of Emanuel Griffin; the scene of lowly pleasures it had cherished; of the bitter trials it had assuaged; and, finally, of the bright, laughing group he had ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... man, the self willed, violent, tyrannical father,—to whom his daughter is but a property, the appanage of his house, and the object of his pride,—is equal as a portrait: but both must yield to the Nurse, who is drawn with the most wonderful power and discrimination. In the prosaic homeliness of the outline, and the magical illusion of the coloring, she reminds us of some of the marvellous Dutch paintings, from which, with all their coarseness, we start back as from a reality. Her low humor, her shallow garrulity, mixed with the dotage ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... an abyss of mystery, surmise, and metaphysics you fell into while I was eating my dinner! I used the phrase 'brown thrush,' only in reference to her dress and general homeliness." ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... shun melancholy. She asked how I came there? I answered, as I was walking with my lord of Hunsdon, as we passed by the chamber door, I heard such melody as ravished me, whereby I was drawn in ere I knew how, excusing my fault of homeliness as being brought up in the court of France, where such freedom was allowed; declaring myself willing to endure what kind of punishment her majesty should be pleased to inflict upon me, for so great an offence. Then she sat down low upon a cushion, and I upon my knees ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... calculating appraisal. Both men inwardly acknowledged that the mother had spoken less than half the truth, for the girl was extravagantly, bewitchingly attractive. Her face and form would have been noticeable anywhere and under any circumstances; but now in contrast with the unmodified homeliness of her parents and brother her comeliness was almost startling. The others seemed to harmonize with their drab surroundings, with the dull, unattractive house and its furnishings, but Lorelei was in violent opposition to everything about her. She wore her beauty unconsciously, too, as a ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... younger members of the royal family, whose ages are indicated by their occupations.(3) The employment of basalt in place of limestone does not disguise the sculptor's debt to Assyria. But the design is entirely his own, and the combined dignity and homeliness of the composition are refreshingly superior to the arrogant spirit and hard execution which mar so much Assyrian work. This example is particularly instructive, as it shows how a borrowed art may be developed in skilled hands and made to serve a purpose ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... ripping our fragrant patches of roses into fantastic "parterres," covering our centre tables with albums and wax flowers, and, in short (for these details pain us), stripping our nooks and corners of the welcome warm air of pleasant homeliness, which was wont to be a charm and a privilege, to substitute for it a chilly gloss—an unwholesome straining after effect—a something less definite in its operation than in its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... any rate, will give one no notion of it;—any more than Pope will of Homer. It is no square-built gloomy palace of black ashlar marble, shrouded in awe and horror, as Gray gives it us: no; rough as the North Rocks, as the Iceland deserts, it is; with a heartiness, homeliness, even a tint of good humour and robust mirth in the middle of these fearful things. The strong old Norse heart did not go upon theatrical sublimities; they had not time to tremble. I like much their robust simplicity; their veracity, directness ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... avenue, where the gate opens, or the gateless path turns trustedly aside, unhindered, into the garden of some statelier house, surrounded in rural pride with its golden hives, and carved granaries, and irregular domain of latticed and espaliered cottages, gladdening to look upon in their delicate homeliness—delicate, yet in some sort, rude; not like our English homes—trim, laborious, formal, irreproachable in comfort—but with a peculiar carelessness and largeness in all their detail, harmonizing with the outlawed loveliness of their country. ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... bony and his hip bones sharp and protuberant; his tail was what is known among horsemen as a "rat tail," being but scantily covered with hair, and his neck was even more scantily supplied with a mane; while in color he could easily have taken any premium put up for homeliness, being an ashen roan, mottled with black and patches of divers hue. But his legs were flat and corded like a racer's, his neck long and thin as a thoroughbred's, his nostrils large, his ears sharply pointed and lively, while the white rings around his eyes hinted at ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... spend a great deal of your time here," said Mrs. Dexter. "I have had the fire lit; we burn wood only in the larger rooms." She nodded towards the great logs glowing between the brazen dogs and giving the room not only warmth but an air of comfort and homeliness. "I hope you will find everything you want; but if not, you have only to ask for it. His lordship sent me special instructions that I was to provide you with ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... days the shop was shut at eight, but when Willy and Frank dined there it was closed an hour earlier. Frank enjoyed his evenings there; he enjoyed it all—the homeliness and the quiet. He enjoyed seeing Willy nurse the missus after dinner, and he found no difficulty in pretending a certain interest in the book-keeping, and an admiration for the lines of figures all carefully formed, and the beautifully ruled lines. ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... "billy," from which a steaming aroma, most appetizing at that hour of the morning, was issuing. Various camping utensils were scattered carelessly about, and a perfect atmosphere of the most innocent homeliness prevailed. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... friend's complexion if it was really bad. With her, as with a great many of her sex, charity began at homeliness and did ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... startled by the realism that looked for the infinite in "the meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan." They could understand the deep thoughts suggested by "the meanest flower that blows," but these domestic illustrations had a kind of nursery homeliness about them which the grave professors and sedate clergymen were unused to expect on so stately an occasion. But the young men went out from it as if a prophet had been proclaiming to them "Thus saith the Lord." No listener ever forgot that Address, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a different country and a different race. And he who has been called the father of German painting is thoroughly German, not only in his Saxon honesty, sedateness, and strength, but in the curious mixture of simplicity, subtlety, homeliness, and fantasticalness, which are still found side ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... illustrates are treated with even more than the homeliness usual in works of this description when not dealing with such solemn events as the death and passion of Christ. Except when these subjects were being represented, something of the latitude, and even humour, allowed in the ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... field of duty and labor. Except hospital matrons,[B] all women regularly employed in the hospitals, and entitled to pay from the Government, were appointed by her. An examination of the qualifications of each applicant was made. A woman must be mature in years, plain almost to homeliness in dress, and by no means liberally endowed with personal attractions, if she hoped to meet the approval of Miss Dix. Good health and an unexceptionable moral character were always insisted on. As the war progressed, the applications ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... during the war was like that of a Roman army. He left behind him a firm road on which public confidence could follow; he took America with him where he went; what he gained he occupied, and his advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness of his genius was its distinction. His kingship was conspicuous by its work-day homespun. Never was ruler so absolute as he, nor so little conscious of it; for he was the incarnate common-sense of the people. With all that tenderness of nature whose ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... durable and ultimate. The roofs of both houses and piazzas are broken, projected, picturesque, and often ornamented. They shelter, they protect, they brood, they embrace. There are little trellises and cornices and fanciful adornments. The solid homeliness is fringed with elegance. The people and the houses do not own each other, but they are married. There is love between them, and pride, and a hearty understanding. I can think of a country where you see little ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... errors as faithfully as its perfections. But, such as it is, it is a fine specimen of fourteenth-century English. He translated not for scholars or for nobles, but for the plain people, and his style was such as suited those for whom he wrote—plain, vigorous, homely, and yet with all its homeliness full of a solemn grace and dignity, which made men feel that they were reading no ordinary book. He uses many striking expressions, such as (II Tim. ii. 4): "No man holding knighthood to God, wlappith himself with worldli nedes;" and many of the best-known phrases in our present Bible originated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... born in a poor district, and which yet 215 Retaineth more of ancient homeliness, Than any other nook of English ground, It was my fortune scarcely to have seen, Through the whole tenor of my school-day time, The face of one, who, whether boy or man, 220 Was vested with attention ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... children, while the men were out exploring the country, with a careful and steady shrewdness and good sense, to determine where should be the site of the future colony. The record of their adventures is given in their journals with that sweet homeliness of phrase which hangs about the Old English of that period like the smell of ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... not tend to clear definition on points of theology. The mass of all this controversial stuff is no more absurd, no more frantic, than it used to be: but in language it has lost its dignity with its homeliness. It has lost the colouring of the Scriptures, the intonation of the ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... illuminating glow. A tiny tea-table was drawn up before a bright fire. As he sat down by her side there swept over him once more a desire, keen, passionate, to escape from the turmoil of the last few months. Here at least was rest. The very homeliness of the little scene awoke in him the domestic instinct—heritage of his middle-class ancestors. Cicely chattered gaily to him. She was very charming in her dark red dress, and she had so much to say about this sudden fame which had come to him—so well deserved, so brilliantly won. Her face was aglow ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... deal of yellow soap in it. As a matter of fact—there are no secrets between our readers and ourselves—she had been washing a shirt. A useful occupation, and an honourable, but one that tends to produce a certain homeliness ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... sunk in contemplation, and reveling in remembrances, till the sun was almost dipping behind the snow-clad tops of Nivolex. I did not wish to cross the lake, or enter the town by daylight, as the homeliness of my dress, the scantiness of my purse, and the frugality of life to which I was constrained, in order to live some months near Julie, would have seemed strange to the inmates of the old doctor's house. They formed too great a contrast ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... declared I alighted from the old gig as if I had a mind to dance. They were awed by the high heels on my boots, the feather in my hat, and the quilted satin of my pelisse. They wondered I could deign to speak anything but French, and concluded I did so only out of compliment to their homeliness. ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... Poet should not only avoid such Sentiments as are unnatural or affected, but also such as are [mean [9]] and vulgar. Homer has opened a great Field of Raillery to Men of more Delicacy than Greatness of Genius, by the Homeliness of some of his Sentiments. But, as I have before said, these are rather to be imputed to the Simplicity of the Age in which he lived, to which I may also add, of that which he described, than to any ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... reason and probability, whether natural or dramatic—is here to be recognized in the redemption of a cowardly bully, and his conversion from a lying ruffian into a loyal and worthy sort of fellow. The same gallant spirit of sympathy with all noble homeliness of character, whether displayed in joyful search of adventure or in manful endurance of suffering and wrong, informs the less excellently harmonious and well-built play which bears the truly and happily English title of "Fortune by Land and Sea." ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... worthy to be written, than writing things fit to be done. What that before time was, I think scarcely Sphynx can tell; since no memory is so ancient that gives not the precedence to poetry. And certain it is, that, in our plainest homeliness, yet never was the Albion nation without poetry. Marry, this argument, though it be levelled against poetry, yet it is indeed a chain-shot against all learning or bookishness, as they commonly term it. Of such mind were certain Goths, of whom it is written, that having in ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... Wearing of the Green," and even the outlander, little sympathetic to the cause of Ireland and holding patriotism a provincial thing, is moved in some strange way he does not understand. Performance brings out its homeliness, its touches of humor, its wistfulness, its nobility. It is with this thought of its nobility that every thought of "Cathleen ni Houlihan" ends, that is every thought of it on the stage. Off the stage it is, except to him to whom the cause is all, something that falls short ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... want more homeliness, more simplicity, more directness in sermons; and so few people seem to be aware that these qualities of expression are not only the result of being a homely, simple, and direct character, but are a matter of long practice ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... found to be the passport to social life among the Americans I met. At a social evening ladies as well as their escorts were expected to remove bonnets and mantles in the hall, instead of being invited into a private room as in Australia—a custom I thought curious until usage made it familiar. The homeliness and unostentatiousness of the middle class American were captivating. My interests have always been in people and in the things that make for human happiness or misery rather than in the beauties of Nature, art, or architecture. I want to know how the people live, what wages ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... was everywhere about the old place, yet its old charm was undisturbed, its old homeliness was unchanged. Comfort had come to dejection, tidiness had been restored to beauty. The windows of the old house now looked upon the highway boldly, owing the world nothing in the way ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... an' me jist wishes ye was free to jine us,' she said with unwonted warmth and homeliness of accent. Her hand went to the fastening of her purse, and hesitated. No! Something told her this was not the moment for a ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... day to day, the object of each day's observation and criticism, under each day's varying circumstances and feelings, within our reach always if we wanted to see him or to hear him, he was presented to our thoughts in that partial disclosure, and that everyday homeliness, which as often disguise the true and complete significance of a character, as they give substance and reality to our conceptions of it. As the man's course moves on, we are apt to lose in our successive judgments of the separate steps of ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... park, the depth of shadow where the old oaks and beeches spread wide and dark, had a look of unreality which contrasted curiously with the scene as she had last beheld it in all its daylight verdure and homeliness. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... who gallantly declared that if he had not been what he was he would have liked to be his wife's second husband. And no wonder that Mr. Coade wanted nothing better than to remain attached to so adorable a creature as his wife, played with a delightful homeliness by Miss MAUDE MILLETT, who has lost nothing of that charm to which, with Mr. Coade, we retain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... not prove an unmixed pleasure. She objected to what she considered the terribly long drive of some five miles from the railway station to Katherine's secluded residence; she turned up her pretty little nose at the smallness of the cottage and its general homeliness; she evinced an unfriendly spirit toward Miss Payne, who was perfectly unmoved thereby; and when the boys, well washed and spruced up, approached her, not too eagerly, she scarcely noticed them. This, of course, reacted on the little fellows, who showed a decided inclination ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... the house of a Flemish peasant; the racial relationship tends to homeliness. The painful cleanliness of the white-washed cottages makes a pleasant contrast to the homes of the Walloons. War and politics are never mentioned, as these delicate subjects would ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... miles. The distant mountains that bound the prospect you may see elsewhere, but this ravine, with the traces of the 'Willey Slide' on one side of it, has no parallel. Don't laugh at me for the homeliness of the simile—it suggested a gigantic cradle. Here, as elsewhere, we were dazzled by the brilliancy of the October foliage, and having found a seat quite as convenient as a sofa, though being of rock, not quite so easy, we loitered till the last golden hue faded from the highest summit. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in him, as Gibbie did, therefore cannot find it except where it has been shown to him. Neither was a common house like this by any means devoid of any things to please him. If there was not the lovely homeliness of the cottage which at once gave all it had, there was a certain stateliness which afforded its own reception; if there was little harmony, there were individual colours that afforded him delight—as for instance, afterwards, the crimson covering the walls of the dining-room, whose colour was ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... interested and so busy about it. And he, what were his sensations as he watched through the long, weary hours till evening? He examined the room round and round in which he was to see her; with all its strangeness and homeliness it seemed to him to be an abode for angels. He thought over and over what he had better do; whether he should take her by surprise, or whether he should prepare her for meeting him. At last the second course seemed the preferable one. He sat down ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... life and an atmosphere which the people can touch and live in and be made willing to believe in when the higher truths are brought before them. In many things it is a most prosaic life, dirt and dust and noise and silliness and sin in every form, but full, too, of the kindliness and homeliness and dependence of children who are not averse to be disciplined and taught, and who understand and love just as we do. The excitements and surprises and novel situations would not, however, need to be continuous, as they wear and fray the body, and fret the spirit and ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... of the young doctor, when he saw his brother's slovenly figure in his own chair, was nothing to his disgust now, when he saw that same form, so out of accordance with the neat little sitting-room which Nettie's presence made dainty and refined in its homeliness, lounging in Nettie's way. He could not bring himself to speak with ordinary patience to Fred; and Fred, obtuse as he was, perceived his brother's disgust and contempt, and resented it sullenly; and betrayed his resentment ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Victoria, and the astonishing homeliness of it gives us both a warm feeling of delight. It seems as if we really had got almost in touch with our own country again. As we wandered through the town to-day we saw in the outskirts red-brick creeper-covered houses that might have been ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... becoming the dominant culture of thousands, and which is beginning to permeate our common literature to an extent which few watch enough, quite tends the same way. The two peculiarities are its homeliness and its inquisitiveness; its value for the most "stupid" facts, as one used to call them, and its incessant wish for verification—to be sure, by tiresome seeing and hearing, that they are facts. The old excitement of thought has half died out, or rather ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... the plains, describing a gay party of Easterners who exchange a cottage at Newport for the rough homeliness of a Montana ranch-house. The merry-hearted cowboys, the fascinating Beatrice, and the effusive Sir ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... very short walk we arrived at our dwelling, an elegant little building of white stone, and only two storeys in height. There was such a general appearance of comfort and homeliness about it, both inside and out, that M'Allister exclaimed: "Professor, I never thought coming to Mars meant a reception like this. I rather expected to have had a fight when ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... acquaintance of my former voyage, pretty Sister Winifred, showed us around the garden, with its smooth green lawns, bright flower-beds, and white statue of Our Lady in a shrine of pine boughs. All the surroundings wore an air of peace and homeliness suggestive of some quiet country village in far-away France, and I could have lingered here for hours had not large and bloodthirsty mosquitoes swarmed from the woods around and driven me reluctantly back to ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... that has thought fit to disclose the Beauties of some Pieces to the World, that might have been otherwise indiscernable, and believ'd to have been trifling and insipid, for no other Reason but their unpolish'd Homeliness of Dress. And if we were to apply our selves, instead of the Classicks, to the Study of Ballads and other ingenious Composures of that Nature, in such Periods of our Lives, when we are arriv'd to a Maturity of Judgment, it is impossible to say what Improvement might be made ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... and the merits of his style. It is peculiarly his own, but it is not always felicitous. There are times when it has the true epic touch—or at least as much of it as is possible in an age of detail and elaboration; there are times when it has a touch of the pathetic—when in homeliness of phrase and triviality of rhythm it is hardly to be surpassed; and there are times, as in The Snake Charmer when, as in certain pages in the work of Richard Wagner, it is so studiously laboured and so heavily charged with ornament and colour as to be almost pedantic in infelicity, almost ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... over different scenes; each the produce of separate but confused recollections. As the Rhine flows, so flows the national genius, by mountain and valley, the wildest solitude, the sudden spires of ancient cities, the mouldered castle, the stately monastery, the humble cot,—grandeur and homeliness, history and superstition, truth and fable, succeeding one another so as ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dealings, however, I am convinced you never before had to DEAL with a correspondent so hopelessly plain as I. Yet plain don't half express my looks. Indeed I doubt very much whether any word in the English language could be found to convey an adequate idea on my absolute and utter homeliness. The dates in the old family Bible show that I am in the decline of life, but I cannot recall a period in my existence when I felt really young. My very infancy, those brief months when babes prattle joyously and know nothing ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... of meekness scarcely told A nature passionate and bold, Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide, Its milder features dwarfed beside Her unbent will's majestic pride. She sat among us, at the best, A not unfeared, half-welcome guest, Rebuking with her cultured phrase Our homeliness of words and ways. A certain pard-like, treacherous grace Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash; And under low brows, black with night, Rayed out at times a dangerous ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the deck, and great baskets of roses—pink, and red, and yellow—were placed about here and there. Tea was ready on a low table, a swinging brass kettle hissing merrily, with an air of supreme homeliness. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... customary lines, nay, he even seemed to approve of my conversation with Antonia. So I often stepped in to see the Councillor; and as we became accustomed to each other's society, a singular feeling of homeliness, taking possession of our little circle of three, filled our hearts with inward happiness. I still continued to derive exquisite enjoyment from the Councillor's strange crotchets and oddities; but it was of course Antonia's irresistible charms alone which attracted me, and led me to ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... went into the sculpture-gallery, where I looked at the Faun of Praxiteles, and was sensible of a peculiar charm in it; a sylvan beauty and homeliness, friendly and wild at once. The lengthened, but not preposterous ears, and the little tail, which we infer, have an exquisite effect, and make the spectator smile in his very heart. This race of fauns was the most ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... leaving himself at that rate, you could take pencil and paper and figure to the minute when Alexander Fulton was booked to cross the big divide. And we liked the kid. In spite of his magnificent feet, and his homeliness, and his thumb-handsidedness, I got to feel sort of as if he was my boy—though if ever I have a boy like Aleck, I put in my vote for marriage being a failure, and everything lost, honor and all. Probably it was more as if he was a puppy-dog, or some ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... was evidently happy. Elinor was really attached to Jane; and yet, never were two girls less alike, not only in person, but in mind and disposition. Jane's beauty was a great charm, in Elinor's eyes. The homeliness of her own features only increased her admiration for those of her cousin, who had always filled, with her, the place of a younger sister and pet, although the difference in their ages was very trifling. If these feelings were not returned as warmly as they deserved, Elinor had never seemed ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... very ill-humour; but his night's rest had much composed his mind, and the effect of this was increased by the extreme politeness of the doctor, so that he answered with tolerable temper, only making bitter complaints of the homeliness of his accommodation. ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... veranda was articulate of summer and girls and gaiety, and of all that pleasant, prosperous American homeliness that we see so much of in life and hear so little about in fiction. Hammocks, rocking-chairs and rugs were scattered about in a comfortable, haphazard fashion; a tea-table here was stacked high with novels ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... any stylistic consciousness whatever; a sort of writing which has been incidental to the accomplishment of some political, social, or moral purpose, and which scarcely regards itself as literature at all. The supreme example of it is the "Gettysburg Address." Homeliness, simplicity, directness, preoccupation with moral issues, have here been but the instrument of beauty; phrase and thought and feeling have a noble fitness to the national theme. "Nothing of Europe here," we may instinctively exclaim, and yet the profounder lesson of this ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... no longer endure having the great, old, hearse-like bed between him and Aggie. With a shiver in the very middle of his body, he hastened to the other side: there lay the country of air, and fire, and safe earthly homeliness: the side he left was the dank region of the unknown, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Still the houses of private citizens remained simple and unadorned; still were the streets narrow and irregular; and even centuries afterward, a stranger entering Athens would not at first have recognised the claims of the mistress of Grecian art. But to the homeliness of her common thoroughfares and private mansions, the magnificence of her public edifices now made a dazzling contrast. The Acropolis, that towered above the homes and thoroughfares of men—a spot too sacred for ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but the gauntness of his face made his coarse features stand out so, that he was almost repulsive. But this homeliness was relieved by the big, lustrous, brown eyes—eyes that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Joining him on the door-step, they sat side by side watching in silence the light die over the scanty fields handed down to him by his father, who had grown bent and weary in wrenching a living from them as he was aging. Neither was young; both were marked by the swift homeliness of the hard-working; but the look on their faces was that which falls when two have gotten an immortal youth and beauty ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... himself, his sympathy, namely, with the animal world. That was a sentiment connected at once with the love of outward nature in himself and in the "Lake School," and its assertion of the natural affections in their simplicity; with the homeliness and pity, consequent upon [95] that assertion. The Lines to ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... latter raised her eyes and fixed them steadily upon the young lady who had so rudely directed towards her the attention of her companion. Her face, was not old nor faded, as the dress she wore. It was youthful, but plain almost to homeliness; and the smallness of her eyes, which were close together and placed at the Mongolian angle, gave to ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... wishing himself safely in New York when a golden head flashed for an instant before the window and then disappeared as Katy emerged into view, waiting at the door to receive him and looking so sweetly in her dress of white with the scarlet geranium blossoms in her hair, that Wilford forgot the homeliness of her surroundings, thinking only of her and how soft and warm was the little hand he held as she led him into the parlor. He did not know she was so beautiful, he said to himself, and he feasted his eyes upon her, forgetful for a time of all else. But afterward ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... arrive at that state of disposition of mind necessary to make those epitaphs thoroughly felt which have an especial recommendation. With the same view, I will venture to say a few words upon another characteristic of these compositions almost equally striking; namely, the homeliness of some of the inscriptions, the strangeness of the illustrative images, the grotesque spelling, with the equivocal meaning often struck out by it, and the quaint jingle of the rhymes. These have often excited regret in serious minds, and provoked the unwilling to good-humoured ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... shop. It was blotted out for a time, then it glowed again, as if there were many passing and re-passing. I wondered what it could all mean in such an hour, on such a night as this. Then I thought of old Conlow's children, of "Possum" in his weak, good-natured homeliness, and of Lettie. How I disliked her, and wished she would keep out of my way, which she never would do. Her face was clear to me, there in the dark. It grew malicious; then it hardened into wickedness, and I slipped from watching into ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... mysterious activities were in movement, as if marshalling vast forces. The stars had vanished. A gentle but equivocal wind on the cheek presaged rain, and seemed to be bearing downwards into the homeliness of the earth some strange vibration out of infinite space. The primeval elements of the summer night encouraged and intensified Hilda's mood, half joyous, half apprehensive. She thought: "A few days ago, I was in Hornsey, with the prospect of the visit to Turnhill before me. Now the visit is behind ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... among the most satisfying objects in natural scenery. The heart reposes on them with a feeling that few things else can give, because almost all other objects are abrupt and clearly defined; but a meadow stretches out like a small infinity, yet with a secure homeliness which we do not find either in an expanse of water or of air. The hills which border these meadows are wide swells of land, or long and gradual ridges, some of them densely covered with wood. The white village, at a distance on the left, appears to be embosomed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... clear, glad accents of his voice, so natural, so unchanged, I looked up with a glance of delighted recognition into the young student's manly face. My first sensation was pleasure, the pleasure which congenial youth inspires, my next shame, for the homeliness of my occupation. I was standing by a beautiful bubbling spring, at the foot of a little hill near my mother's cottage. The welling spring, the rock over which it gushed, the trees which bent their branches over the fountain to guard it from the sunbeams, the sweet music the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... memory that never faltered and a wealth of detail that was Maisie's delight. They were all about love and beauty and countesses and wickedness. Her conversation was practically an endless narrative, a great garden of romance, with sudden vistas into her own life and gushing fountains of homeliness. These were the parts where they most lingered; she made the child take with her again every step of her long, lame course and think it beyond magic or monsters. Her pupil acquired a vivid vision of every one who had ever, in her phrase, knocked against her—some ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... her brother, much of Lady Arpington and of old Mr. Woodseer; and, though she reserved a smile, there was no look of a lock on her face. She seemed pleased to be treated very courteously; she returned the stately politeness in exactest measure; very simply, as well. Her face had now an air of homeliness, well suited to an English household interior. She could chat. Any pauses occurring, he was the one guilty of them; she did not allow them to be barrier chasms, or 'strids' for the leap with effort; she crossed them like ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... disadvantage of being much better known to the country at large than was his antagonist. During his long public career, people had become partially accustomed to his manner of presenting arguments and enforcing them. The novelty and freshness of Lincoln's addresses, on the other hand, the homeliness and force of his illustrations, their wonderful pertinence, his exhaustless humor, his confidence in his own resources, engendered by his firm belief in the justice of the cause he so ably advocated, never once rising, however, to the point of arrogance or superciliousness, fastened ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... the neighborhood of the Tower (places which I visited in affectionate remembrance of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, and other actual or mythological navigators), and would have built the hospital in a kind of ethereal similitude to the narrow, dark, ugly, and inconvenient, but snug and cosey homeliness of the sailor boarding-houses there. There can be no question that all the above attributes, or enough of then to satisfy an old sailor's heart, might be reconciled with architectural beauty and the wholesome contrivances of modern dwellings, and thus a novel and genuine ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her hand she detained him at her side till the King had strolled away with Madame la Sauve, and no one remained near but her German countess. Then changing her tone to one of confidence, which the high-bred homeliness of her Austrian manner rendered inexpressibly engaging, she said, 'I must apologize, Monsieur, for the giddiness of my sister-in-law, which I ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the plaintiff. Without any assistance from turgid rhetoric, or indignant denunciation, he depicted it in a manner so simple, yet so direct, that his audience shivered in response. Then, with consummate art, he played upon their sensibilities by picturing the simple homeliness of Amy Johnson's happy family circle, on to the fervour of Reg's devotion, the complete happiness of the young couple up to their disunion under the diabolical arts of Wyckliffe. Gently, but still with a power that swayed them in their own despite, he wrung ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... headgears, curled hairs, plaited coats, cloaks, gowns, costly stomachers, guarded and loose garments, and all those other accoutrements, wherewith our countrywomen counterfeit a beauty, and so curiously set out themselves, cause more inconvenience in this kind, than that barbarian homeliness, although they be no whit inferior unto them in beauty. I could evince the truth of this by many other arguments, but I appeal" (saith he) "to my companions at that present, which were all of the same mind." His countryman, Montague, in his essays, is of the same opinion, and so are ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... school play-box, so full of papers and books that the lid will not shut down, standing reproachfully in the midst. There is something in it that is still a little gaunt and vacant; it needs a little populous disorder over it to give it the feel of homeliness, and perhaps a bit more furniture, just to take the edge off the sense of illimitable space, eternity, and a future state, and the like, that is brought home to one, even in this small attic, by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at little Elizabeth for her discomfort under the rude homeliness of Stokesley, where the children made a bad copy of their father's sailor bluntness, and the difficulties of money matters kept down all indulgences. She knew that Captain Merrifield was as poor a man for an esquire as her father was for a surgeon, and that if he were to give his sons an education ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tender profuse apologies for its homeliness, on the plea that it is refreshing at times to lay aside ceremonial magnificence and unbend in rural simplicity, though it is not humanly possible to unbend oneself upon the thorny bosoms of chairs and couches severely upholstered ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... well be confident in it. His is a homespun style, not a manufactured one; and what a difference is there between its homeliness, and the flippant vulgarity of the Roger L'Estrange and Tom Brown school! If it is not a well of English undefiled to which the poet as well as the philologist must repair, if they would drink of the living waters, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... seems so glad," said Mary Fuller, struck with a thrill of sympathy for the dog, rendered repulsive to that silly woman by his age, as she was by her homeliness. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... scene which met my eyes inside was sufficiently commonplace to reassure me. At the farther end of a long bare room, draughty, half-lighted, and having an earthen floor, yet possessing that air of homeliness which a wood fire never fails to impart, sat a single traveller; who had drawn his small table under the open chimney, and there, with his feet almost in the fire, was partaking of a poor meal of black bread and onions. He was a tall, spare man, with sloping shoulders and a long ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... orator. He was a plain man, ennobled by the training of religious dissent, at the same time indifferently served often by an imperfect education. But the very simplicity and homeliness of its expression gave additional weight to this first avowal of a strong conviction that the time had come when the Labour party must have separateness and a leader if it were to rise out of insignificance; to ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... eyes than Eleanor's the place seemed to be a realized ideal of charm and homeliness. It was one of the older fashioned duplex apartments designed in a more aristocratic decade for a more fastidious generation, yet sufficiently adapted to the modern insistence on technical convenience. Peter owed his home to his married ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... everything looked fresh and bright and cheerful, and a thin wreath of smoke that floated lazily out of the galley funnel and away over the lee cat-head to the melody of a rollicking sea-ditty chanted by the cook, as he busied himself with the preparation of breakfast, imparted that sense of homeliness and light-hearted happiness which seemed to be all that was required to satisfactorily ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... wandered, after lunch at the inn, into the little church which stood embowered among blossoming trees. The old vicar left his garden and offered to show them its beauties, and Jean fell in love with the simplicity and the feeling of homeliness that was about it. ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... fellows," said Stevenson, "but none of us can write like Hazlitt." To write a style that is easy yet incisive, lively and at the same time substantial, buoyant without being frothy, glittering but with no tinsel frippery, a style combining the virtues of homeliness and picturesqueness, has been given to few mortals. Writing in a generation in which the standards of prose were conspicuously unsettled, when the most ambitious writers were seeking an escape from the frozen patterns of the eighteenth century in a restoration of the elaborate artifices ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the Aesopian fabulist. A great mistake it was, on the part of Doctor S., that the second book in the Latin language which I was summoned to study should have been Phaedrus—a writer ambitious of investing the simplicity, or rather homeliness, of Aesop with aulic graces and satiric brilliancy. But so it was; and Phaedrus naturally towered into enthusiasm when he had occasion to mention that the most intellectual of all races amongst men, viz., the Athenians, had raised a mighty statue to one who belonged to the same class ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... original owner of this quill—and I can't say that he was very smart. He was only a slow-witted, homely old porky who once lived by the Glimmerglass. But in spite of his slow wits and his homeliness a great many things happened to him in the course of ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... small strain of music we recognize the voice of the Creator as distinctly as in the loudest accents of his thunder. So long as Phoebe sang, she might stray at her own will about the house. Clifford was content, whether the sweet, airy homeliness of her tones came down from the upper chambers, or along the passageway from the shop, or was sprinkled through the foliage of the pear-tree, inward from the garden, with the twinkling sunbeams. He would sit quietly, with a ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... career, in family and friends. The contrasts which are created in every one of these respects are far greater and for the ill-fated far more cruel than those of the tax-payers. The beautiful face which is a passport through life and the discouraging homeliness, the perfect body which allows vigorous work and the weak organism of the invalid unfit for the struggle of life, the genius in science or art or statesmanship and the hopelessly trivial mind, the youth in a harmonious, beautiful family life and ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... felt lonely, Gabrielle would walk down the road to Clonderriff, not because she found it beautiful, as it surely was, but for the sake of its homeliness and the contrast of its gentle life to the moribund atmosphere of Roscarna. She loved the pale cabins, each a cradle of mysterious life; she loved the sound of placid cattle feeding in the darkness, and above all she loved the ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... mutual discussion upon decorations, religion, the high cost of living, free verse, two-cent transfers, Charley Chaplin, aviation, ouija, and other equally safe topics. Did I say safe? Dangerous is what I mean. For when a youth who is as homely as young Phil Stacey and in that particular style of homeliness, and a girl who is as far from homely as Barbran begin, at first sight, to explore each other's opinions, they are venturing into a dim and haunted region, lighted by will-o'-the-wisps and beset with perils and pitfalls. Usually they smile as ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... his literary and personal character, they display none of the power of his poetry, and would not alone have raised him to eminence. They are in vigorous and somewhat pedantic English; while most of his poems are in that Lowland Scottish language or dialect which attracts by its homeliness and pleases by its couleur locale. It should be stated, in conclusion, that Burns is original in thought and presentation; and to this gift must be added a large share of humor, and an intense patriotism. Poverty was his grim horror. He declared that ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... one or two points may be noted now. I have referred again to the consummate mastery of technique manifested throughout the opera, and here there is no falling off from this mastery. Throughout we have that atmosphere of bygone generations, and also a combination, curious when looked into, of homeliness with nobility. Sachs' song is merrily trolled out, but underneath its joviality we feel the greatness of the man—a man so great in character that no suits of shining armour, no heralds and no waving banners are needed to make him impressive: ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... present constitution of society—his paradoxical morality, and his perpetual hankerings after some unattainable state of voluptuous virtue and perfection. (2) The simplicity and energy (horresco referens) of Kotzebue and Schiller. (3) The homeliness and harshness of some of Cowper's language and versification, interchanged occasionally with the innocence of Ambrose Philips, or the quaintness of Quarles and Dr. Donne. From the diligent study of these few originals, we have no doubt that an entire art of poetry may be collected, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... out that on Christmas eve Wilhelmine ordered her coach to convey her to the castle. She drove through the snow in no happy frame of mind. Christmas trees and the favourite!—could anything be more incongruous? and she knew it. Angrily she sneered at the simple homeliness of the old German custom. Peasants could do these absurdities, but the Duchess ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... N. simplicity; plainness, homeliness; undress, chastity. V. be simple &c. adj. render simple &c. adj.; simplify, uncomplicate. Adj. simple, plain; homely, homespun; ordinary, household. unaffected; ingenuous, sincere (artless) 703; free from affectation, free from ornament; simplex munditiis ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... according to the custom of the country, coffee and rice boiled in water: to which she added hot yams and fresh cocoas. The leaves of the plantain tree supplied the want of table-linen; and calbassia shells, split in two, served for utensils. The governor expressed some surprise at the homeliness of the dwelling: then, addressing himself to Madame de la Tour, he observed, that although public affairs drew his attention too much from the concerns of individuals, she had many claims to his good offices. 'You have an aunt at Paris, Madam,' he added, 'a woman of quality, and immensely ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... a crowd of miners, Obed Stackpole strode to the claim where he had "struck it rich." In spite of his homely face and ungainly form there was more than one who would have been willing to stand in his shoes, homeliness and all. The day before little notice was taken of him. Now he was a man who had ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... disbelieve the Gospel when preached by a saint whose countenance is honesty itself. The very drapery—il prudente costume e religioso—[31] was held to contribute to Michael Angelo's praise. The grave and kindly face, devout and holy,[32] together with a certain homeliness of attitude, give the St. Mark a character which would endear him to all. He would not inspire awe like the St. John or indifference like St. Peter. He is a very simple, lovable person whose rebuke would be gentle and whose counsel would be wise. In 1408 the Linaiuoli, the ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... aside. And then into what a world she entered! A world of comfort and reassurance, of homeliness and kindliness, without parrots and fierce-eyed cats and swaying pictures of armoured men—a world of urbanity and light and space. There was a high white staircase with brown etchings in dark frames on the white walls. There was a thick soft ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... sale at a department store. She had arranged his books and papers adroitly and had kept them in their places so that he never felt himself obliged to search for any one of them. With many little contrivances she had given his bed-sitting-room a look of comfort and established homeliness, and he had even begun to ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... proof,' said the doctor, 'that you have been married to somebody. But it is no proof that you have been married to Mr. Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose. Jack Nokes or Tom Styles (excuse the homeliness of the illustration!) might have got the license, and gone to the church to be married to you under Mr. Armadale's name; and the register (how could it do otherwise?) must in that case have innocently assisted the deception. I see I surprise you. My dear madam, when you opened this interesting ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... resulting ruin. Susan glanced furtively at each face in turn. She could not think of her own fate, there was such despair in the faces of these others. Mabel looked like an old woman. As for Violet, every feature of her homeliness, her coarseness, her dissipated premature old age stood forth in all its horror. Susan's heart contracted and her flesh crept as she glanced quickly away. But she still saw, and it was many a week before she ceased to see whenever Violet's name came into her mind. Burlingham, too, looked ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... America had won Irving's heart as a trophy. And such evident patriotism is commendable in citizen and writer. We love not Caesar less, but Rome the more, when we believe in America before all nations of history. I love the patriot above the cosmopolitan, because in him is an honest look, a homeliness that touches the heart like the sight of a pasture-field, with its broken bars, where our childhood ran with happy feet. Carlyle was against things because they were English; so was Matthew Arnold. These men were self-expatriated in spirit. I like not the attitude. Give us men who ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... crystallises into inanimate objects. The English dump down Gothic piles on India's coral strand, and the chimes of Big Ben, floating above that crowd of many-hued Orientals, give to the white man a sense of homeliness and racial solidarity. The French, more fluid and sensitive to the incongruous, have introduced local colour into some of their Colonial buildings, not without success. As to this particular Roman tradition, it pursues one with meaningless iteration from ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... leaning indolently on his mallet, his long black lashes down-cast over the dark pallor of his cheeks, very handsome, very graceful. Bobby had drawn near on Celia's other side. The comparison showed all his freckles and the unformed homeliness of his rather dumpy, sturdy figure; it showed also the honest dull red of his cheeks and the clear unfaltering gray of his eyes. Celia, between them, looked down, tapping her croquet ball with the ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... three months; his ears were flappy and big, his tail was knotted, and his legs were ungainly and loose, with huge feet at the end of them—so big and heavy that he stumbled frequently, and fell on his nose. One pitied him at first—and then loved him. For Peter, in spite of his homeliness, had the two best bloods of all dog creation in his veins. Yet in a way it was like mixing nitro-glycerin with olive oil, or dynamite and saltpeter with ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... close relation. The dust of the highway was on the buggy and the blue flannel and the bootees. It showed with special boldness on a black sun-bonnet that covered Mary's head, and that somehow lost all its homeliness whenever it rose sufficiently in front to show the face within. But the highway itself was not there; it had been left behind some hours earlier. The buggy was moving at a quiet jog along a "neighborhood road," with unploughed fields on the right and a darkling woods pasture on ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... of general post among the pulpits of the land, nor do they ask that their people should desert their own ordinances for those of the Established Church. Their people indeed have no such desire. They love the simplicity and homeliness of their own communion services and would not exchange them if they could. But they do feel that to be debarred from communicating when there is no church of their own order available is a real hardship, and they know that nothing would make for comity among the churches so surely as an occasional ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... artist tribe was there, on a grand footing,—in waiting, for the lights and shadows they liked best. The artists were, in truth, an important body just then, as a natural consequence of the nation's hard-won prosperity; helping it to a full consciousness of the genial yet delicate homeliness it loved, for which it had fought so bravely, and was ready at any moment to fight anew, against man or the sea. Thomas de Keyser, who understood better than any one else the kind of quaint new Atticism which had found its way into the world over those ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... day upon the border be-tween Galilee and Samaria. Sounds arose which she interpreted as the stir of village life, the crying and calling of domestic animals, and of busy housewives at their duties, carried on half out of doors, in the homeliness of country custom. Presently the instrument began to tell the gathering of a crowd, with bee-like hum, and the crossing of voice with voice—but, at a distance, the sounds confused and obscure. Swiftly then they seemed to rush together, to blend and ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald |
