"Embonpoint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mistress of this mansion of rather obsolete luxurious comfort was strikingly singular. She was a woman about sixty years old, tall and large and fat, of what Balzac describes as "un embonpoint flottant," and was habitually dressed in a white linen cambric gown, long and tending to train, but as plain and tight as a bag over her portly middle person and prominent bust; it was finished at the throat ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a timid lieutenant, she sometimes heads the charge; but she is most effective as the directing generalissimo. Miss Anthony is a quick, bright, nervous, alert woman of fifty or so—not at all inclined to embonpoint—sharp-eyed, even behind her spectacles. She presides over the treasury, she cuts the Gordian knots, and when the uncontrollables get by the ears at the conventions, she is the one who straightway drags them ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the latest fashion, with great broad striped blue and red strings; and her dress is of orange- colored brocade, trimmed with tulle, and looped with white blossoms. Down the stomacher it is set with jewels. Her figure seems more embonpoint than when we last saw her; and as she leans on the arm of old Judge Sleepyhorn, forms a striking contrast to the slender figure of that singular specimen of judicial infirmity. Two great doors are opened, and Madame ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... at one another, to find the old beings we had loved, and to learn the new ones we had become! My mother was of course the least altered; indeed, to my surprise, she was more embonpoint than before, instead of having the haggard worn air that I had expected, and though she wept at first, she was soon ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dried-fruit trade by a liaison with the former proprietor of her present business (an affair which had long fed the gossip of the markets), had originally a vigorous and enticing beauty, now lost however in a vast embonpoint. She lived on the lower floor of a yellow house, which was falling to ruins, and was held together at each story by iron cross-bars. The deceased proprietor had succeeded in getting rid of all competitors, and had made his business a monopoly. In spite of a few ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... volume; largeness &c adj.; greatness &c (of quantity) 31; expanse &c (space) 180; amplitude, mass; proportions. capacity, tonnage, tunnage; cordage; caliber, scantling. turgidity &c (expansion) 194; corpulence, obesity; plumpness &c adj.; embonpoint, corporation, flesh and blood, lustihood. hugeness &c adj.; enormity, immensity, monstrosity. giant, Brobdingnagian, Antaeus, Goliath, Gog and Magog, Gargantua, monster, mammoth, Cyclops; cachalot, whale, porpoise, behemoth, leviathan, elephant, hippopotamus; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fasting began to disappear, and they reached a very comfortable embonpoint. At that time they were given as companions two odalisques of great beauty, all of whose well- directed attacks failed, and they came from the ordeal pure ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... so slight that it seemed out of nature, but her perfectly-formed breast appeared an altar on which the god of love would have delighted to breathe the sweetest incense. This splendid chest was, however, not yet well furnished, but in my imagination I gave her all the embonpoint which might have been desired, and I was so pleased that I could not take my looks from her. I met her eyes, and her laughing countenance seemed to say to me: "Only wait for two years, at the utmost, and all that your ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... each other with quaint harmony. Put a cuirass on this large breast, and you will have one of those fat German foot-soldiers so jovially painted by Terburg. With the monks' habit, it is Jean des Entommeurs[*]; nevertheless, do not forget that the eyes throw, through all this embonpoint and good-humour, the yellow look of a lion to counteract this Flemish familiarity. Such a man would be equal to excesses of the table, of pleasure, and of work. We are no longer astonished at the immense quantity ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... true. No conscientious judge of character could have denied that Paul had hit the bull's eye. Bredin was a pig. He looked like a pig; he ate like a pig; he grunted like a pig. He had the lavish embonpoint of a pig. Also a porcine soul. If you had tied a bit of blue ribbon round his neck you could have won prizes with him at ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse |
