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More "Captivate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the character of secret societies in the sixteenth century. A more atrocious confederacy than this the human mind could hardly have conceived. It was, however, peculiarly calculated to captivate the multitude in those days of darkness and blood. Though at first formed and extended secretly, it spread like wildfire through all the cities and provinces of France. Princes, lords, gentlemen, artisans, and peasants rushed into ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... language, and finish of diction, when even ideas fail, words come to his aid—arranging themselves, as it were, so completely, that they not only captivate, but often deceive us for ideas; and hence the vacuum that would necessarily occur in the address of an ordinary speaker is filled up, presenting the same beautiful harmony as do the lights and shades ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... that, which I, in the space of many years, and with many sufferances and dangers, have made proof and gaind the knowledge of. And this work I have not set forth either with elegancy of discourse or stile, nor with any other ornament whereby to captivate the reader, as others use, because I would not have it gain its esteem from elsewhere than from the truth of the matter, and the gravity of the subject. Nor can this be thought presumption, if a man of humble and low condition venture to dilate and discourse upon the governments ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... practically unknown, except of course by repute. That a man of his sagacity would quickly make his weight felt was never in doubt; but few at that time can have anticipated the extent to which a stranger—with an accent proclaiming an origin south of the Boyne—was in a short time to captivate the hearts, and become literally the idolised leader, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... Exactly the sort of thing to attract a man who likes to take a sporting chance. Look at the difficulties of it. Go to a strange town where there are thousands and millions of strange children, locate Mary, isolate her, make friends with her, coax her to the yacht—captivate her, capture her! How are we to do all that, you ask? I reply, the Lord knows. That is where the sport comes in. We are forbidden to use force. We are forbidden to use Mrs. Carstairs or bring her into it in any way. We are forbidden, of course, to let the child know who we are. Everything ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... class of women, however, who as a rule are likely to become fretful and ill-tempered as they grow in years: girls who are allowed to grow up with uninformed judgments, who are taught that the chief end and aim of woman is to captivate and please the opposite sex, who are taught to think a pretty face and delicate figure of more importance than good sense or a thorough education. And yet it is a fact worthy of notice, that those who most eloquently assert their ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... especially interesting to younger visitors to Abdul Baha. One of them writes thus: 'He was a venerable, smiling old man, with long Persian robes and a spotlessly white turban. As we had travelled along, the Persian ladies had laughingly spoken of a beautiful young man, who, they were sure, would captivate me. They would make a match between us, ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... Constitution was initiated and pressed by him:" of Rufus Choate, who combined in more majestic and graceful proportions than any other American lawyer, the ripe scholar and the successful advocate; who with the beauty and power of his language could captivate a jury, a popular audience, or the American Congress with equal facility; who gave to English literature some of its most brilliant gems, and who in his immortal eulogy upon Webster, in the opinion of competent judges, gave to the world one of the most finished and impressive examples ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... in adversity than in prosperity. For tribulation having nothing in itself that is lovable, save that it is God's gift, it is much easier to go by it straight to the will of God, and to unite ourselves to His good pleasure. Easier, I say, than by prosperity, which has attractions of its own that captivate our senses, and, like Dalila, lull them to sleep, working in us a subtle change, so that we begin insensibly to love for its own sake the prosperity which God sends us, instead of bestowing all our grateful love on God Who sends it, and to Whom all ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... of taking upon him the title of physician, under which he did not despair of insinuating himself into the pockets of his patients, and into the secrets of private families, so as to acquire a comfortable share of practice, or captivate the heart of some heiress or rich widow, whose fortune would at once ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... and scar as usual, but in Roman dress. Cleopatra seems to me, for all her Oriental dress, and although she wears a black wig, to be meant for Medea da Carpi; she is kneeling, baring her breast for the victor to strike, but in reality to captivate him, and he turns away with an awkward gesture of loathing. None of these portraits seem very good, save the miniature, but that is an exquisite work, and with it, and the suggestions of the bust, it is easy to reconstruct the beauty of this terrible being. The type is that most admired by the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... heritage revere All learning, and all thought. The painter's fame Is thine, whate'er thy lot, who honorest grace. And need enough in this low time, when they, Who seek to captivate the fleeting notes Of heaven's sweet beauty, must despair almost, So heavy and obdurate show the hearts Of their companions. Honor kindly then Those who bear up in their so generous arms The beautiful ideas of matchless forms; For were these not portrayed, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... further efforts to captivate Perigal, and persuade him to fulfill the desire of her heart. Now, he was constantly about her on any and every excuse, when he would either kiss her or caress her hair. After dinner, they sat by the fire, where they drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. Presently, ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... of genius has in the same degree that brilliancy, that glory which is at once patent even to the most ignoble beholder. Thus, certain pictures by Raphael, such as the famous Transfiguration, the Madonna di Foligno, and the frescoes of the Stanze in the Vatican, do not at first captivate our admiration, as do the Violin-player in the Sciarra Palace, the portraits of the Doria family, and the Vision of Ezekiel in the Pitti Gallery, the Christ bearing His Cross in the Borghese collection, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... think neither Rachel nor I could have thought of anything so sure to captivate a shallow mortal like ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... us, which is the poetry of love. Nothing intellectual, no intoxication of thought or feeling is mingled with that sensual intoxication which those charming nonentities excite in us. Nevertheless, they captivate us like the others do, but in a different fashion, which is less tenacious, and, at the same ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... liked the taste of the foreign liquor, and their eyes were not insensible to the charms of coined gold, of which they had before seen but little. The epaulettes also and stars and ribands were such baubles as were well adapted to captivate the fancy of semi-civilized chieftains; and the Russian fabrics were a temptation to all, especially to the women; but to the honor of the Circassians, the tribes with few exceptions disdained to sell their birthright of independence for a mere mess of pottage. Relations of trade and amity could ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... have the best opportunity of judging, and that they are slow in forming a judgment. The good opinion and confidence of the members of the same profession, like the King's name on the field of battle, is "a tower of strength;" it is the title of legitimacy. The ambition to please the people, to captivate jurors, spectators, and loungers about the court room, may mislead a young man into pertness, flippancy, and impudence, things which often pass current for eloquence and ability with the masses; but the ambition ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... adorns herself to captivate Jove, her zone is fringed with a hundred tassels, and her ear-rings are described in terms corresponding exactly to the triple leaves ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... caused, doubtless, by your looks, for which you ought not to quarrel with Heaven. If the feeble charms which my countenance displays have exposed me to the misfortune of my lover abandoning me, Heaven could not better soften such a blow than by making use of you to captivate that heart. I ought not to blush for an inconstancy which indicates the difference between your attractions and mine. If this change makes me sigh, it is from foreseeing that it will be fatal to your love; amidst the sorrow caused by friendship, I am ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... officers of the court of Oswi, the religious king of the Northumbers: he was very dear to his prince, and was beholden to his bounty for many fair estates, and great honors; but neither the favors of so good and gracious a king, nor the allurements of power, riches, and pleasures, were of force to captivate his heart, who could see nothing in them but dangers, and snares so much the more to be dreaded, as fraught with the power of charming. At the age therefore of twenty-five, an age that affords the greatest relish for pleasure, he bid adieu ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... my mind his father had been fool enough to indoctrinate the same, which was no wise beginning: and when I looked upon the man before me, still so handsome, so apt a speaker, with so great a variety of fortunes to relate, I saw he was the very personage to captivate a boyish fancy. John Paul had left only that morning; it was not to be supposed he had been altogether dumb upon his favourite subject: so that here would be Mr. Alexander in the part of Dido, with a curiosity inflamed to hear; and there would be the Master, like a diabolical Aeneas, full of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... charm by the most exquisite strains, by the harmony of the choir. These powerful incentives are repeated in a hundred different places; the metropolises, parishes, the numerous religious houses, the simple oratories, sparkle with emulation to captivate all the powers of the religious and devout mind. Thus a taste for the arts becomes general by means of so potent a lever, and artists increase in number and rivalry. Under this influence the celebrated schools of Italy and Flanders flourished; and the finest works which now ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Cinderilla fair, Whom she instructed with such care. She gave to her such graceful mien, That she, thereby, became a queen. For thus (may ever truth prevail) We draw our moral from this tale. This quality, fair ladies, know Prevails much more (you'll find it so) T'ingage and captivate a heart, Than a fine head dress'd up with art. The fairies' gift of greatest worth Is grace of bearing, not high birth; Without this gift we'll miss the prize; Possession gives us ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... favored, and treat him to a disquisition on the nature of government and the "beauty" of nullification, striving to make a lasting impression on his intellect. Clay would rise, extend his hand with that winning grace of his, and instantly captivate him by his all-conquering courtesy. He would call him by name, inquire respecting his health, the town whence he came, how long he had been in Washington, and send him away pleased with himself and enchanted with Henry Clay. And what was his delight to receive a few weeks after, in his distant village, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... that you are very fond of gold. Now, how is it that you don't barter your virtue for gold sometimes? I am a philosopher, Ursula, and like to know everything. You must be every now and then exposed to great temptation, Ursula: for you are of a beauty calculated to captivate all hearts. Come, sit down and tell me how you are enabled to resist such temptation ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... much beauty?" This beauty, indeed, was possessed by different lovers; a subject on which the modern hero had many refinements, and seemed to soar in the clouds. He adored at a respectful distance, and employed his valour to captivate the admiration, not to gain the possession of his mistress. A cold and unconquerable chastity was set up, as an idol to be worshipped, in the toils, the sufferings, and the combats of ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... bent forms and tattered garments, sit patiently awaiting a demand upon them. Perhaps they could afford better clothing; but they have an eye for artistic effect, and a true sense of the fitness of things. The children, waiting here for the same purpose, captivate our attention by their large black eyes and gypsy complexions. How graceful and kitten-like they are, in their lazy, lolling motions! The young girls are such as are not seen out of Italy, with large, beautifully ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... remain unknown. He would not relinquish her. She should be a daughter to him. He realized that he had a curious love for the child, that she had attracted him from the first. In the years to come her beauty and winsomeness would captivate a husband, with the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... ability and less morality was the opinion generally entertained, though probably not often expressed. Hence it was not unnatural that the sentimental dandies and high-toned villains of Bulwer's earlier novels should have been the heroes to captivate all hearts. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... the last degree. Sometimes the invaders showed great audacity. Early in June Colonel Fitch at Albany scrawls a hasty note to Winslow: "Friday, 11 o'clock: Sir, about half an hour since, a party of near fifty French and Indians had the impudence to come down to the river opposite to this city and captivate two men;" and Winslow replies with equal quaintness: "We daily discover the Indians about us; but not yet have been so happy as to ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... summat about loading and firing, d'ye see, but as for working ship? why, a corporals guard of the Boadishey's marines would back and fill on their quarters in such a manner as to surround and captivate them all in half a glass. As there was no one to deny this assertion, the marines of the Boadicea were held in a corresponding degree ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the dear old poet felt, and then put them together at the table. Lowell laid himself out to captivate Bryant, and did so completely, for his tact was such that in society no one whom he desired to interest could resist him; and our dinner was a splendid success. Of all present at it only Durand ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... enjoyment more intense, Shall captivate each ravish'd sense, Than thou could'st compass in the bound Of the whole year's unvarying round; And what the dainty spirits sing, The lovely images they bring, Are no fantastic sorcery. Rich odours shall regale ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... affected with anything, he did not confide the execution of his design to the languid and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will; which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul before the understanding is ready either to join with them, or to oppose them. It is by a long deduction, and much study, that we discover the adorable wisdom of God in his works: when we discover it, the effect is very different, not only ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the most ferocious. The author does not boast, like Abyssinian Yakoob, "of no ungracious figure": nor does he, like another beau garcon, Mr. Gibbon, prefix his pleasing countenance to captivate the ladies. ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... is the curious characteristic of the ill-fated House of Stuart that, through all their misfortunes, through all their degradations, they have contrived to captivate the imagination and bewitch the hearts of many generations. The Stuart influence upon literature has been astonishing. No cause in the world has rallied to its side so many poets, named or nameless, has so ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... life, no doubt I shall one day do this; but the plan is not yet ripe. Put that aside, then, and since on the other hand Jeanne de Matel does not captivate me, perhaps I had better think of another abbess even less known, and whose career was one of more tranquil endurance, less wandering and more concentrated, and at any ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... swarms, it is customary to take the shovel from the grate, and the key from the door, and to produce therewith a species of music which is supposed to captivate and soothe the winged tribe. If the bees do not settle on any neighbouring tree where they may have the full benefit of the inharmonious music, they are generally assailed with stones. This is a strange sort of proceeding, but it is orthodox, and there is nothing the villagers despise more than ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... to captivate the fancy with a pretty or striking figure than to move the judgment with sound reason.... His (the speaker's) picture appeals to the mind's visible sense, hence his power over us, though his analogies are more apt to be false ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... would tell thee! List to thee o'er and o'er when near; Yet passioned glances thou dost silence— My words bind to my lips in fear. How, by mere homely speaking, can I E'en hope to captivate thine ears? I swear it would be food for laughter— If it were ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... to every people and kindred by signs; no other discourse, indeed, being needful, than such as the mackerel-fisher holds with his finned quarry, who, if other bait be wanting, can by a bare bit of white rag at the end of a string captivate those foolish fishes. Such piscatorial oratory is Satan cunning in. Before one he trails a hat and feather, or a bare feather without a hat; before another, a Presidential chair, or a tidewaiter's ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... with English people now and after. Where Baltimore first picked him up, I know not: but they have been to Russia together; Baltimore by twelve years the elder of the two: and now, getting home towards England again, they call at Reinsberg in the fine Autumn weather;—and considerably captivate the Crown-Prince, Baltimore playing chief, in that as in other points. The visit lasted five days: [20th-25th September, 1739 (OEuvres de Frederic, xiv. p. xiv).] there was copious speech on many things;—discussion ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... inspire love; some please the sight without captivating the affections. If all beauties were to enamour and captivate, the hearts of mankind would be in a continual state of perplexity and confusion—for beautiful objects being infinite, the sentiments they inspire should ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... countenance, the gesture, and the voice. Here I might run into a pleasing enumeration of many instances of this; but, fearing that I have already trespassed upon your patience, shall desist. Permit me, however unusual, to close with a wish. May none of those unruly passions ever captivate ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... John J. Crittenden and John C. Breckenridge in Kentucky. Tradition still has stories to tell of their exploits and prowess, their wit and eloquence, even their commonplace sayings and doings. They were marked men who never failed to captivate their audiences. The system of stump oratory had many advantages as a public force and was both edifying and educational. There were a few conspicuous writers for the press, such as Ritchie, Greeley and Prentice. But the day of personal journalism ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... "Will captivate by its humor, set all the heart strings to vibrating by its pathos, flood one's being in the great surge of patriotism ... a story that vastly enriches ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... be published anonymously; for as a historical essay it possesses extraordinary merit, and does great credit not only to its author, but to English scholarship and acumen. [19] It is not, indeed, a book calculated to captivate the imagination of the reading public. Though written in a clear, forcible, and often elegant style, it possesses no such wonderful rhetorical charm as the work of Renan; and it will probably never find half a dozen readers where the "Vie de Jesus" has found a hundred. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... of life and death, honour and disgrace, to millions. I had made up my mind how to behave; the poets I had read had taught me but too well. Convinced that a little wilfulness would, from its novelty, be most likely to captivate one who had been accustomed to dull and passive obedience, I allowed my natural temper to be unchecked. The second day after my arrival, the Kislar Aga informed me that the sultan intended to honour me with a visit, and that the baths and dresses were prepared. I replied ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... smiling [at these things], you have said truly that where pleasure of the body is greater and fuller, there is the exile of the soul; and where luxury reigns there the soul is a wretched and afflicted hand-maid. O Paris! How well-suited art thou to captivate and deceive souls! In thee are the nets of the vices, in thee the arrow of Hell transfixes the hearts of the foolish! This my John has felt and therefore he has named it an exile. Would that you were leaving behind that exile of yours just as it is, and were hastening to your ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... comical, as he saw the unusual vivacity of the reigning beauty when in his immediate society. Her voice took instinctively a softer and more musical tone; she showered her glances upon him, dazzling and prismatic as the rays from her diamonds; she seemed determined to captivate him without the tedious process of a siege. And, in truth, he must have been an unimpressible man that could steel himself against the influence of a woman who satisfied every critical sense, who piqued all his pride, who stimulated all that was most manly in his nature, and without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... of vision and revelation, with a complete scheme of reconciliation, with correlated catalogues of Shint[o] and Buddhist gods, with liturgies, with lists of old popular festivals newly named, with the apparatus of art to captivate the senses, K[o]b[o] forthwith baptized each native Shint[o] deity with a new Chinese-Buddhistic name. For every Shint[o] festival he arranged a corresponding Buddhist's saints' day or gala time. Then, training up a band of disciples, he sent them ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... when once divine truth gets entry into the heart of a man, and becomes one with his will and affection, it will quickly command the whole man to practise and execute, and then he that received "the truth in love" is found a walker in the truth. Many persons captivate truth in their understandings, as the Gentiles did, they hold or detain it in unrighteousness, but because it hath no liberty to descend into the heart, and possess that garrison, it cannot command the man. But ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... that Mr. Heady (Uncle Juvinell) has produced a very entertaining and instructive volume. It is written in a racy, sprightly style, that cannot fail to captivate the mind. Partaking himself of the buoyancy and good humor of boyhood, the author is able to write for the boys in a manner that is at once attractive and profitable. He has written a live book of one, who, "though dead, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... has now laid down the external pomp of Protector, and, like Cincinnatus, has withdrawn to retirement, but not with the same view. This modesty is to captivate the crowd, who are to call on him to convert the ploughshare into an Imperial sceptre! I have excellent information to this effect, having found means to obtain it from behind the ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... on the Duke of Orleans all those gifts which usually captivate mankind. His physiognomy was agreeable and prepossessing: to a natural eloquence he joined uncommon sweetness of manner. Brave, full of liveliness, his penetration was never at fault, and his abilities would have procured for him distinction at the head of councils or armies. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... they vividly set forth the love and hate, the craft and hypocrisy, the courage and revenge of his race. Moreover, they portray in a truly dramatic manner the innermost life and thought of the Moslem, while they captivate the senses by a magnificent panorama of exquisite banquets, lovely characters, charming ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... assigned them of ultimate judges and punishers of heresy. Thus the several orders of monks became a kind of regular troops or garrisons of the Romish church; and though the temporal interests of society, still more the cause of true piety, were hurt, by their various devices to captivate the populace, they proved the chief supports of that mighty fabric of superstition, and, till the revival of true learning, secured it from any ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... singular atrocity of this woman gives her a sort of infamous claim to notice. She was born in Paris in 1651; being daughter of D'Aubrai, lieutenant- civil of Paris, who married her to the Marquis of Brinvilliers. Although possessed of attractions to captivate lovers, she was for some time much attached to her husband, but at length became madly in love with a Gascon officer. Her father imprisoned the officer in the Bastille; and, while there, he learned the art of compounding subtle and most mortal poisons; and, when he was released, he taught it to ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... not give his mistress the features which captivate him; he is not then master of loving, or not loving the object of his tenderness; he is not master of his imagination or temperament. Whence it evidently follows, that man is not master of his volitions and desires. "But man," you will say, "can resist his desires; therefore he is free." ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... to drink. He had made me sensual. He had not yet assumed the coarse, red-faced brutish aspect that he wore later, but he had a coarse, red-faced brutish soul. Alas! his body was still fine enough to tempt me. And his mind was devilishly clever enough to captivate my fancy. He took away my faith, even my faith in motherhood. That was ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... I warn thee that there have been very many pleasanter companions than she will make thee, for she is excessively irritable and passionate. Withal she is so fond of admiration, that I have no doubt she would give chace to the ugliest toad that ever devoured a worm, so she could captivate him. She ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... then, ought this Gospel to be received by the guilty, perishing creatures, for whose rescue from perdition it is designed. How should this display of divine compassion melt and captivate the hearts of those, whose sins have been thus expiated, and for whom an offer of free pardon and endless blessedness has ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... through the Stearns' dinner to captivate Dave Darrin. He, without diminution of love and loyalty to Belle Mead, was glad to be on friendly terms with ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... a tall, slim young fellow, with an olive, Velasquez-like face, and dark, tender eyes. I have seldom seen a man who was more likely to excite a woman's interest, or to captivate her imagination. His expression was, as a rule, dreamy, and even languid; but if in conversation a subject arose which interested him he would be all animation in a moment. On such occasions his colour would heighten, his eyes gleam, and he could speak with ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Rosebud was the widow Toothaker. Her troubles had come early, and, tedious as they seemed, had passed before all her bloom was fled. She was still fair enough to captivate a bachelor, or with a widow's cheerful gravity she might have won a widower, stealing into his heart in the very guise of his dead wife. But the widow Toothaker had no such projects. By her watchings and continual cares her heart had become knit to her first husband with a constancy ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... incapable of feeling the beauties which come from delicate concords and truly artistic combinations. They verge towards barbarism, and require things that are strange, odd, dazzling, and peculiar to captivate their jaded senses. Such we take to be the condition of Parisian society now. The tone of it is given by women who are essentially impudent and vulgar, who override and overrule, by the mere brute force of opulence and luxury, women of finer natures and moral tone. The court of France is ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... on, go on! say what you please: I will not hate anything yet. Why have you torn up by the root all these little mountain ash-trees? This is the season of their beauty: come, Ternissa, let us make ourselves necklaces and armlets, such as may captivate old Sylvanus and Pan; you shall have your choice. But why ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... power that associations have of rendering picturesque nature more picturesque still. Therefore, a show-place, to be regarded as such in the true sense of the word, must possess features of interest of another kind, underlying the external loveliness of form and outline that merely please and captivate the eye. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... Miss O'Neill's Juliet came to captivate London, another idol of the stage was led to the altar by William, first Earl of Craven. Louisa Brunton, for that was the name of Craven's Countess, was cradled, like her successor, on the stage; for her father was well known at every ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... opinions, decrees, traditions, and doctrines that they taught distinct from the true and holy doctrines of the prophets. And they made to themselves disciples by such doctrine, men that they could captivate by those principles, laws, doctrines, and traditions: and therefore such are said to be of the sect of the Pharisees: that is, the scholars and disciples of them, converted to them and to their doctrine. O! it is easy ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... which my happiness is wrecked. I have ceased to please because I am not thirty-six years old. In the eyes of some men youth is thought an inferiority. There is nothing to imagine on an innocent face. I laugh frankly, and that is wrong; to captivate I ought to play off the melancholy half-smile of the fallen angel, who wants to hide her yellowing teeth. A fresh complexion is monotonous; some men prefer their doll's wax made of rouge and spermaceti and cold cream. I am straightforward; but duplicity ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Barton as the famous Robin Hood. Emily Barton represented, with very good effect, Maid Marion, under the escort of young Snaffle of the Lancers, who rode over from the nearest Garrison Town to captivate some stray heart by personating Young Lochinvar. The other two sets, figuring in costumes as handsome as they were varied, were made up of the youth and beauty of the neighbourhood, with the exception of the bottom couple of the last set; here, Mrs. Fraudhurst appeared, gorgeously attired, as Sarah, ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... word "able," as I understand it, is applicable to those arts only which involve the exercise of the mind as a controlling factor. One may be a great orator, according to the usual acceptation of the term "great," and yet be only a declaimer and a rhetorician. That is to say, he may be able to captivate audiences by his superior action, as Demosthenes defines oratory to be, and at the same time his elocution and rhetoric may be unexceptionable, yet he maybe in fact totally lacking in every element which goes to ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... that fine young man thus cut down the day after he had been laughing and dancing in our gallery. Yet all people seemed to think of, when everybody went to condole with his young widow in her bed, was that she had set herself off to the best advantage to captivate M. de Nemours! ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... drawings of Piranesi, in the pictures of Rembrandt, one sees this grand language exhibited more truly. It is not picture, but certain primitive and leading effects of light and shadow, or lines and contours, that captivate the attention. I saw a picture of Rembrandt's at the Louvre, whose subject I do not know and have never cared to inquire. I cannot analyze the group, but I understand and feel the thought it embodies. At something similar Turner seems aiming; an aim ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... thee, yes, I do, And all thy blooming kindred too, (More than the works of art,) For in them, I can ever find Such beauty, skill and power combined, As captivate and soothe the mind, And ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... face"—as Lucrece came before her—"is deep enough. Not deep like a river, but like a snake. I could do well enough with your plain, honest sister; but I love you not, Mistress Lucrece. Enville. Your graceful ways do not captivate me. Ah! it takes a woman to know a woman. And the men, poor silly things! fancy they know us better than we ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... avow, neither your birth, your hundred thousand pounds, nor your merit, would put you on a footing, in my estimation, with my Emily. You may form some idea of her power to captivate, and of her indifference to her conquests, when I mention that she once refused—but I forget, you don't know him, and therefore cannot be a judge. The thing is finally decided, and we shortly go into Westmoreland, and next week, the Moseleys ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... knowing how long his precarious power might last, for bettering his low and indigent circumstances. It appeared to him, that the traffic in Indians was the shortest way to riches. He therefore granted commissions to several persons, to assault, trepan and captivate as many Indians as they could, and resolved to turn the profits of such trade to his own private emolument. Not contented with this cruel method of acquiring wealth, he formed a design for engrossing the whole advantages arising to the ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... poor JONES, how sad your fate! The Law's stern coldness comes to freeze Your burning wish to captivate With words you know will always please— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... me until I was eighteen, and then one day I met a gentleman. Oh, my lad, it was no wonder I loved him; he was different from all the lads I had met in those parts, young, handsome, laughter-loving, just the man to captivate a lassie's heart. He married me, Scottish fashion, and on the day we were wed he told me he had received a letter which urged him to go back to his home at once. We were married secretly, my boy, because I was afraid ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... accepted theory is that each female should, at one or other period of her existence, captivate at least one of the opposite sex, though it will be found by experience that some species possess a far more potent influence for this purpose ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Aeneas to a banquet in her palace, an invitation he gladly accepted, charging Achates to hasten back to the ships to announce their companions' safety and to summon Iulus or Ascanius to join his father. To make quite sure Aeneas should captivate Dido's heart, Venus now substituted Cupid for Iulus, whom she meantime conveyed to one of her favorite resorts. It was therefore in the guise of the Trojan prince that Cupid, during the banquet, caressingly nestled in Dido's arms and stealthily effaced from her heart ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... influence, except those who had the misfortune to be in disgrace at Court, which was to stand in lieu of all vices and all corruptions. A scheme of perfection to be realised in a Monarchy, far beyond the visionary Republic of Plato. The whole scenery was exactly disposed to captivate those good souls, whose credulous morality is so invaluable a treasure to crafty politicians. Indeed, there was wherewithal to charm everybody, except those few who are not much pleased with professions of supernatural virtue, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... to be attributed, in part, to the sound of her voice, and to her blunt manner of speaking; for she was said to be a woman of great sense, and devotedly attached to the King and Madame de Pompadour. Some people pretended that she tried to captivate the King, and to supplant Madame: nothing could be more false, or more ridiculously improbable. Madame saw a great deal of these two ladies, who were extremely attentive to her. She one day remarked to the Duc d'Ayen,—[Afterwards Marechal de Noaines.] that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... you to go to them!" said Mme. Verdurin, who regarded the President of the Republic only as a 'bore' to be especially dreaded, since he had at his disposal means of seduction, and even of compulsion, which, if employed to captivate her 'faithful,' might easily make them 'fail.' "It seems, he's as deaf as a post; ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... ever changes. If I ever come there again, I shall find the same houses and shops that I knew of old; the same holes in the pavements will cause my downfall; the same stiff hedges of lindens, the same clipped lilac bushes will captivate my fascinated gaze. Again shall I see the old Mayor who rules the whole town walking down the street with elephantine tread. What a feeling of security there is in knowing that you are walking there! And deaf old Halfvorson will still be digging in ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... instance, that the most mischievous doctrine of pantheism will surrender its elements of truth (for it has an important admixture of truth) to the formation of a new conception of God, which will appeal to and captivate the Indian mind and heart. Indeed, we are witnessing, this very day, even in the far West, the influence of India in her monistic overemphasis upon the divine immanence, working toward a new Christian conception of God. Modern ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... vacant for my reception, and learn the terms of my admission; and in three days' time returned with an engaging account of the place, the master, the regularity of the scholars, of an apartment secured for my reception, and, in short, whatever else might captivate my mother's opinion in favour of his scheme; and indeed, though he acted principally from another motive, as was plain afterwards, I cannot help thinking he believed it to be the best way of disposing of a lad sixteen years old, born to a pretty fortune, and who, at that age, could ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... had travelled on our globe from a desire to convert the gentiles. We therefore told them that they did well to shun them, because their intention was, not to teach, but to secure gain and dominion; and that they strive by various means first to captivate men's minds (animi), and afterwards to subject them to themselves as slaves: moreover, that they did well in not suffering their idea concerning God to be disturbed by such spirits. They said further, that these spirits also confuse them by asserting ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Peregrine, the Commodore assisting at the ceremony as godfather. On Mrs. Pickle assuming the management of household affairs, Miss Grizzle directed her operations upon the Commodore, whom she was resolved to captivate and enslave, in spite of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... to the actual state of the society in which she lived. Her virtues were inherent in her character; every day developed them more and more, and they were such as to make the happiness of all who lived with her and to captivate the affection of all who really knew her. I have never lost anyone I loved before, and though I know the grief I now feel will soon subside (for so the laws of nature have ordained), long, long will it be before I forget her, or before my mind loses the lively impression ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... larger Urn, who at some few Miles distance is lost in the Ocean, which heaves it's broad Bosom to the Sight, and ends the Prospect with an immense Expanse of Waters. Tell me, EUPHEMIUS, would not such a Scene captivate the Heart even before the intellectual Powers discover Minerals in the Mountains; future Navies in the Woods; Civil and Military Architecture in the Rocks; healing Qualities in the smaller Streams; Fertility, that the larger Waters distribute ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... I intend to have her with me very soon. Your mother is anxious that she should get into a high family, trusting that her beauty will captivate some of the members—a bad kind of speculation. I will advertise for a companion, and so arrange that your mother shall not see me; and when your sister does come to me, it shall not be as a companion, but as a child of ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... this desolate world did not fail to captivate them by its very strangeness. They were moving over this region as if they had been borne on the breath of some storm, watching heights defile under their feet, piercing the cavities with their eyes, going down into the rifts, climbing the ramparts, ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... we have a very fair specimen of the pseudo-philosophy which is so admirably adapted to captivate the half-informed, wholly unformed minds of the undiscriminating multitudes who have been taught little or nothing well except to believe in their right, duty, and ability to judge for themselves in matters for which a life-time of specialization were barely sufficient. A ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... The stage associates of Mile. Guimard called her "L'araignee," and Sophie Arnould christened her "the little silkworm," for the sake of the joke about "la feuille." But such spiteful raillery did not prevent her charming men to her feet whom greater beauties had failed to captivate. Houdon the sculptor molded her foot, and the great painters vied for the privilege of decorating the walls of her hotel. When she broke her arm, mass was said in church for her recovery, and she was one of the reigning toasts of Paris. Among ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... islands seemed afloat in an atmosphere of blue; their jungles rooting in the water's edge. The strange birds in the daytime, the flocks of parrots, the din of every kind of life, the flying foxes at night, the fragrant and spicy odours, captivate the senses. How delicious, too, the fresh fruits brought off by the Malays in their scooped-out logs, one's first taste of bananas, juicy shaddocks, mangoes, and custard apples - after months of salt junk, disgusting salt pork, and biscuit all dust and weevils. The water is so crystal-clear ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... manes tied over their heads, would advance with long tubes like monster bassoons, blowing with all their might, contorting their faces and bodies, and going through the most obscene and ridiculous motions to captivate their simple admirers. This, however, was only the feast; the ball then began, for the pots were no sooner emptied than five drums at once, of different sizes and tones, suspended in a line from a long horizontal bar, were beaten with fury, and all the men, women, and children, singing ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... generally regretted every definite step which he took. The glow of romance which had sustained him during the preliminary negotiations had faded entirely. A girl has to be possessed of unusual charm to continue to captivate B, when she makes it plain daily that her heart is the exclusive property of A; and Roland had long since ceased to cherish any delusion that Bessie March was ever likely to feel anything but a mild liking for him. Young Mr. Petheram had obviously staked out an indisputable claim. Her attitude toward ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... And kindly stopp'd the unfinish'd charm. But though not changed to owl or bat, Or something more indelicate; Yet, as your tongue has run too fast, Your boasted beauty must not last. No more shall frolic Cupid lie In ambuscade in either eye, From thence to aim his keenest dart To captivate each youthful heart: No more shall envious misses pine At charms now flown, that once were thine No more, since you so ill behave, Shall injured ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... so as to secure himself a position and a citizenship. Yet Kromitzki, with his reputation as a rich man, could have got all this, and money with his wife besides. Evidently Aniela attracted him personally and for some time. It is not to be wondered at that Aniela should captivate any one. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... cip, cap(t)> (take): (1) receive, deceive, perceive, deceit, conceit, receipt, reception, perception, inception, conception, interception, accept, except, precept, municipal, participate, anticipate, capable, capture, captivate, case (chest, covering), casement, incase, cash, cashier, chase, catch, prince, forceps, occupy; (2) receptacle, recipient, incipient, precipitate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... row of flaming spears, then changing into a silvery veil, undulating in wavy folds with the wind, every here and there interspersed with red sprays. These wonderful night effects are ever new, and never fail to captivate the soul." ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... of Napoleon Bonaparte was never too particular in regard to his facts, but those which he made use of he could array with such skill as to completely captivate the judgment of the unwary. In his History of the Civil War, all the enthusiasm of the writer, his easy flow of rhetoric, his vast fund of anecdote, and his characteristic inability to discriminate between truth and falsity, assert themselves. The chief importance of the work consists in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... stimulated, by uncertainty not merely, but by the calm grace and indefinable sweetness which he did not remember in Eleanor, well as he had loved her before. He loved her better now. That charm of manner was the very thing to captivate Mr. Carlisle; he valued it highly; and did not appreciate it the ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... personification of abstract qualities had never been so happily executed before; the pure spirituality of the conception, the elegance and force of the language, the harmony and variety of the numbers, were all executed with a felicity which none before or since have reached. That these poems did not at once captivate the public attention cannot be accounted for by any cause hitherto assigned. We may not wonder that the multitude did not at once perceive their full beauties; but that, among readers of taste and learning, there should not have been found a sufficient number to set the example ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... tired," she said. I remember how drearily she said it, and how the tears glittered in her weary eyes. I remember, too, how, ten minutes later, I heard that amiable youth boasting of what had happened, and giving a hideous travestie of her attempts to captivate him, till at last my wrath was kindled, and, to his great confusion (for he was of a timid disposition), I spoke, and sharply, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... of Russia seems to have laid himself out most ably at Berlin to captivate the King, and the army, and ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... age, Each heavenly daughter's triumphs we presage; Already see the illustrious youths complain, And pity monarchs doomed to sigh in vain. Thou too, the darling of our fond desires, Whom Albion, opening wide her arms, requires, 20 With manly valour and attractive air Shalt quell the fierce and captivate the fair. O England's younger hope! in whom conspire The mother's sweetness and the father's fire! For thee perhaps, even now, of kingly race, Some dawning beauty blooms in every grace, Some Carolina, to heaven's dictates true, Who, while the sceptred ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... men—the few Who wish they could be ladies too— Display a sprig of yellow Conspicuous in their buttonhole, To captivate a maiden soul ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... impressions. Historians, taking a bird's-eye view of their subject, portray its most general characteristics; they bring out only the prominent features, and sacrificing all the rest, draw pictures whose precision and simplicity captivate our minds. We finally get into the habit of seeing an epoch as they have painted it, and cannot imagine there was anything in it besides the qualities they specify. But when we read letters relating, without alteration or selection, events as they ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... and forced. Note that the native himself is not, naturally inclined to routine, but his mind is disposed to accept all truths, just as his house is open to all strangers. The good and the beautiful attract him, seduce and captivate him, although, like the Japanese, he often exchanges the good for the evil, if it appears to him garnished and gilded. What he lacks is in the first place liberty to allow expansion to his adventuresome spirit, and good examples, beautiful prospects for the future. It is necessary that ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... by every base and treacherous trick, to render Honoria Eversleigh an object of suspicion in the eyes of her husband. She had a double game to play; for she sought at once to gratify her ambition and her thirst for revenge. On one hand she wished to captivate Lord Sumner Howden; on the other she wanted to widen the gulf between Sir Oswald and ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... men you'll meet there; have your fun out first,' were the arguments most frequently put forward; and, in the excitement of breaking off Olive's engagement, even the Land League was forgotten. Olive hesitated, but at length allowed herself to be persuaded to at least try to captivate the marquis before she honoured the captain with her hand. No sooner said than done. Mrs. Barton lost not a moment in writing to Captain Hibbert, asking him to come and see them the following day, if possible, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... set of Geisha girls who were masked below the eyes, one of whom sang what she fondly imagined was a typical American song calculated to captivate her American audience. She sang through her nose, the better to imitate the nasal voices which to the British mind is the national characteristic of the American, and her song had the refrain beginning "For I am an Ammurikin Girl," telling how ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... to hamlet, and chateau to chateau; of testing humanity, high and low, on the romantic side, and, at the end of a victorious conspiracy, of rearing in France the standard of the monarchy—all this was too dazzling not to captivate a young and high-spirited woman, bold through very ignorance of the obstacles she had to surmount, heroic in the hour of danger through levity; able to endure all but ennui, and ready to lull any misgivings with the casuistry of ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... the seclusion of the smoking-room, and was already encircled by the clouds which float on the heaven of tobacco, when I heard a rustling of silk outside, and saw the smile of Mrs. Roylake beginning to captivate ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... me for Venus, contains charms which I can make mine own, and their lustre must be extreme, since beauty herself, Venus, requires them to adorn herself. Would it be a great crime to snatch a few? To captivate a god, who has been my lover, to recover his affection, and put an end to my torture, can anything that I may do be unlawful? Let me open it. What vapours cloud my brain? and what do I behold issuing from this open casket? Love, unless thy compassion ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... such boots as they themselves could make from the hides which they themselves had cured. In Lincoln's boyhood the hunting-shirt and leggings made of skins were a sufficiently respectable garb; and buckskin breeches dyed green were enough to captivate the heart of any girl who wished a fashionable lover; but by the time that he had become a young man, most self-respecting men had suits of jeans. The ugly butcher's knife and tomahawk, which had been essential as was the rapier to ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... comes to the surface, and the courtesan is the queen of ignoble fancy, that has brought forth this most perfect embodiment of purity among the nations. This is of itself one of those miracles which captivate the mind and charm the imagination, the living paradox in which the soul delights. How did she come out of that stolid peasant race, out of that distracted and ignoble age, out of riot and license and the fierce thirst for ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... When they do appear, they are generally disposed of at a high price. [Sidenote: GEORGIAN SLAVE.] This beautiful captive, who proved to be a Georgian, was neither bashful nor timid. She saluted us with smiles, severing her raven locks, and trying to captivate the spectators, by making her beauty appear to the greatest advantage. However, it did not seem to possess any power over the Turks; and as to the Christians, they are not allowed to purchase slaves publicly, though sometimes it is done indirectly, and by the assistance ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... then in a signally untriumphant; and is not now worth any knowledge but a transient accidental one. Chetardie came hither about Stanislaus and his affairs; tried hard, but in vain, to tempt Friedrich Wilhelm into interference;—is naturally anxious to captivate the Crown-Prince, in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Cheronean Sage, is thine. '(Why should this praise to thee alone belong!) 'All else from Nature's moral path decline, 'Lured by the toys that captivate the throng; 'To herd in cabinets and camps, among 'Spoil, carnage, and the cruel pomp of pride; 'Or chaunt of heraldry the drowsy song, 'How tyrant blood, o'er many a region wide, 'Rolls to a thousand thrones its ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... and yet if you have a mind to it he will intertaine you, your fill, and peradventure stumble as little and as seldome against the rules of his tongue, as the best Master of arts in France. He hath no skill in Rhetoricke, nor can he with a preface fore-stall and captivate the Gentle Readers good will: nor careth he greatly to know it. In good sooth, all this garish painting is easilie defaced, by the lustre of an in-bred and simple truth; for these dainties and quaint devices serve but to ammuse the vulgar sort; unapt and ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... outweigh. Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries: and though, perhaps, sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, and keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturb them. Tell a man passionately in love, that he is jilted; bring a score of witnesses of the falsehood of his mistress, it is ten to one but three kind words of hers shall invalidate all their testimonies. QUOD VOLUMUS, FACILE CREDIMUS; what suits our wishes, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... idea we would convey is, that the mother had rather endeavored to fill her child's mind with real information and knowledge, than to teach her that the chief end and aim of life were to learn how to captivate a husband; she preferred to make her daughter a true and noble-hearted woman, possessed of intrinsic excellence, rather than to make her marketable for matrimonial sale; to give her something that would prove to her under any and all circumstances, ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... at Calais and at Paris with the most gratifying honours: he was then entirely the man to captivate the French. The beauty of his person, the grace of his manner, his consummate taste in all things, the exceeding variety and sparkling vivacity of his conversation, enchanted them. In later life he has grown more reserved and profound, even in habitual intercourse; and attention ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them if we would reach the genuine human heart. One of the reasons why he detested what he called stump oratory was because he believed it to be a great school of insincerity. Its end was not truth, but plausibility. It was the effort of interested men to throw opinions into such forms as might most captivate uninstructed men; to keep back every unpopular side; to magnify everything in them that was seductive. He once said to me that two great curses seemed to him eating away the heart and worth of the English people. One was drink. The other was stump oratory, which accustomed men ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... in art, Charmed and delighted his devoted heart, A gorgeous sunset, and a moonlit sky, Ne'er failed to captivate ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... he grow as his aunt reads on that you might have heard a mouse squeak. But for the low, soft tones of Joyce no smallest sound breaks the sweet silence of the day. Miss Kavanagh is beginning to feel distinctly flattered. If one can captivate the flitting fancies of a child by one's eloquent rendering of charming verse, what may one not aspire to? There must be something in her style if it can reduce a boy of seven to such a state of ecstatic attention, considering ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... be carefully noted: the expression of the face should make the gesture of the arms forgotten. Here the talent of the orator shines forth. He must captivate his public in such a way that his arm gestures will be ignored. He must so fascinate his auditors that they cannot ask the reason of this fascination, nor remark ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... we should so receive truth, as that it might rule and be master in us, captivate judgment, will, and affections, and break out into the practice. And this recommendeth ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... the charms of the place and the security from wild beasts were all calculated to captivate their fancy and render them contented, the poor Sakais drooped and pined for the vicissitudes of their wild life in the woods where comfort was unknown and food was sometimes scarce. Their thoughts, their very souls were ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... prefer one of Titian's or Murillo's Virgins to one of Raffaelle's heavenly Madonnas. The less there is of marked expression or vivid color in a countenance or character, the more difficult to delineate it in such a manner as to captivate and interest us: but when this is done, and done to perfection, it is the miracle of poetry in painting, and of painting in poetry. Only Raffaelle and Correggio have achieved it in one case, and only Shakspeare ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... is no wonder that a girl not out of her teens should be captivated by the young poet whom the world was beginning to worship for his genius as very few men are worshipped in their prime, and who could captivate young and old, man, woman, and child, when he chose to try. As yet, his habits of life and mind had not told upon his manners, conversation, and countenance as they did afterwards. The beauty of his face, the reserved ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... the timorous Trout I wait To take, and he devours my bait, How poor a thing, sometimes I find, Will captivate a greedy mind: And when none bite, I praise the wise Whom vain allurements ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... love,' upon which he poured forth a mystical incomprehensible rhapsody, with extraordinary vehemence of manner and power of lungs. There was nothing like eloquence in his sermon, no musical periods to captivate the ear, no striking illustrations to charm the imagination; but there is undoubtedly something in his commanding figure and strange, wild countenance, his vehemence, and above all the astonishing power of his voice, its compass, intonation, and variety, which ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... soon make me forget that I was transplanted; he could act dog, tame rabbit, fox, pony, and a whole nursery collection alive, but he was sometimes absent for days, and I was not of a temper to be on friendly terms with those who were unable to captivate my imagination as he had done. When he was at home I rode him all round the room and upstairs to bed, I lashed him with a whip till he frightened me, so real was his barking; if I said 'Menagerie' he became a caravan of wild beasts; I undid a button of his waistcoat, and it was a lion ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the ring, and began to sing the "Suwanee River" in a manner which he intended should captivate his audience; but he had neglected to give the band any orders, and the consequence was that, when he commenced to sing, Leander began to play "Old Dog Tray," a proceeding which mixed ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... Henry was still superior to William; and yet the latter had no common share of those attractions which captivate ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... self was never worth a pin; But still it suits the superficial mind— The slight observer of the human kind; The airy, fleety, vain, and hollow thing, That only feeds on wily flattering. 'Man owns its powers?' And what will not man own To gain his end—to captivate—dethrone? The truth is this, whatever he may feign, You'll find your greatest loss his greatest gain; For like the bee, he will improve the hour, And all day long he'll hunt from flower to flower, And when he sips the sweetness all away, For aught he cares, the flowers ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... virtue the poet hath given her; which, with these sort of critics, might make her pass for a wit; and that is, her love of a joke—'For gentle Dulness ever loved a joke.' Her delight in games and races is another of her bastard virtues, which would captivate her nobler sons, and draw them to her shrine; not to speak of her indulgence to young travellers, whom she accompanies as Minerva did Telemachus. But of all her bastard virtues, her FREE-THINKING, the virtue which she anxiously propagates amongst her followers in the Fourth Book, might, one would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... philosopher enough to know that these will elevate a man under any circumstances. But Fenwick had no decided points in his character. He had limited intelligence, and no energy arising from clear perceptions and strong resolutions. He was a man fit to captivate a young and innocent girl, but not to hold the affection of ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... of beauty is not the only lure by which a creature may win its mate. Sound may captivate as effectively as beauty. This is true of insects as well as of birds. Certain insects at least advise their mates of their presence by means of a sound which they emit. This is particularly noticeable ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... and Augier. But in "Fromont and Risler," not only is the plot a trifle stagy, but the heroine herself seems almost a refugee of the footlights; exquisitely presented as Sidonie is, she fails quite to captivate or convince, perhaps because her sisters have been seen so often before in this play and in that. And now and again even in his later novels we discover that Daudet has needlessly achieved the adroit arrangement of events so useful in the theatre and ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... never to have worn the abominable European costume—those hideous habits, and frightful hats, which render the men so ridiculous, so ugly, that in truth there is not a single good quality to be discovered in them, nor one spark of what can either captivate or attract! There comes to me at last a handsome young prince from the East, where the men are clothed in silk and cashmere. Most assuredly I'll not miss this rare and unique opportunity of exposing myself to a very serious and formidable ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... to read the same Scriptures from the Bible, as if the awe which it is supposed the fiends entertain for Holy Writ depended, not on the meaning of the words, but the arrangement of the page, and the type in which they were printed. This singular species of flattery was designed to captivate the clergyman through his professional opinions; others were more strictly personal. The afflicted damsel seems to have been somewhat of the humour of the Inamorata of Messrs. Smack, Pluck, Catch, and Company, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... with the taste, want of taste she called it, shown by Mr Arabin in paying so much attention to Madame Neroni. It was as infallible that Madeline should displease and irritate the women, as that she should charm and captivate the men. The one result followed naturally on the other. It was quite true that Mr Arabin had been charmed. He thought her a very clever and a very handsome woman; he thought also that her peculiar afflictions entitled ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... by a peculiar play of feature and of voice, and with unique and original gestures, which seemed to excite and captivate ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... and vice versa, as long as he or she was in demand; a successful man had nearly every woman of prominence at his feet. The men planned their attacks upon the women whom they desired, and the women connived, posed, and set most ingenious traps and devised most extraordinary means to captivate their hero. As the century wore on and the vices and appetites gradually consumed the healthy tissues, there sprang up a class of monsters, most accomplished roues, consummate leaders of theoretical and practical immorality, who were without conscience. To gain their ends, they manipulated ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... prevail upon; overcome, carry; bring round to one's senses, bring to one's senses; draw over, win over, gain over, come over, talk over; procure, enlist, engage; invite, court. tempt, seduce, overpersuade[obs3], entice, allure, captivate, fascinate, bewitch, carry away, charm, conciliate, wheedle, coax, lure; inveigle; tantalize; cajole &c. (deceive) 545. tamper with, bribe, suborn, grease the palm, bait with a silver hook, gild the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... those of Bonaparte, Jourdan, Hoche, Marceau and Klber. Next year his initial successes were interrupted by the Preliminaries of Leoben, and he procured for himself a mission into Italy in order to meet General Bonaparte, who spared no pains to captivate the brilliant young general from the almost rival camps of Germany. Provisionally appointed commander of the "Army of England," Desaix was soon transferred by Bonaparte to the expeditionary force ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... early knowledge of their own beauty. If a young woman once thinks herself handsome, she never doubts the truth of any man that tells her he is in love with her; for if she believes herself charming enough to captivate him, 'tis natural to ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... childish Filipinos, who have no needs; and that the cura has infinite advantages over the governor, for his buffets do not offend, his requests oblige, and his love to the village and his disinterestedness captivate and interest these people, and make them as wax. Thus indeed can it be said that the cura is the soul of the village. In any province where its ruler is united with the curas, where the latter honor the alcalde and instruct him of all that happens, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... "gets things done." He builds bridges and industries; he manages markets and men. His eye is on the practical; he is dependable, rapid, and efficient. In an industrial civilization he is the great heroic type. The statesman and the railroad builder, the newspaper editors and the political leaders captivate the imaginations as they control ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... the art leg they limped on, as Fulkerson phrased it. They had not merely to deal with the question of specific illustrations for this article or that, but to decide the whole character of their illustrations, and first of all to get a design for a cover which should both ensnare the heedless and captivate the fastidious. These things did not come properly within March's province—that had been clearly understood—and for a while Fulkerson tried to run the art leg himself. The phrase was again his, but it was simpler to make the phrase than to run the leg. The difficult ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... were strolling back, Yejiro and I, we came, in the way, upon another species of fish. The bait, which was well designed to captivate, bade for the moment to exceed even the angler's anticipations. It was a sort of un-Christmas tree with fishing-pole branches, from which dangled articulated figures, bodied like men, but with heads of foxes, tortoises, and other less likelybeasts, ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... may contrast the character of Carlo Maratti, who, in my own opinion, had no great vigour of mind or strength of original genius. He rarely seizes the imagination by exhibiting the higher excellences, nor does he captivate us by that originality which attends the painter who thinks for himself. He knew and practised all the rules of art, and from a composition of Raffaelle, Caracci, and Guido, made up a style, of which its only fault was, that it had no manifest defects ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... boat was so elegant, so graceful, and so thoroughly finished in every part, that Conrad could not help coveting it. He was not very much to be blamed, for it was one that would captivate the fancy of any boy who ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... that I might your majesty entreat With clemency to beautify your seat Toward this prince, distress'd by his desires, Too many, all too strong to captivate. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... every morning with the one thought of "pleasing." It was the aim and object of her life. If I told her that in such a house, in such a street, there lived a man who was not attracted by her, it would have caused her real suffering. She wanted every day to enchant, to captivate, to drive men crazy. The fact that I was in her power and reduced to a complete nonentity before her charms gave her the same sort of satisfaction that victors used to get in tournaments.... She had an extraordinary opinion of her own charms; she imagined that if somewhere, in ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... and is not now worth any knowledge but a transient accidental one. Chetardie came hither about Stanislaus and his affairs; tried hard, but in vain, to tempt Friedrich Wilhelm into interference;—is naturally anxious to captivate the Crown-Prince, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... question of specific illustrations for this article or that, but to decide the whole character of their illustrations, and first of all to get a design for a cover which should both ensnare the heedless and captivate the fastidious. These things did not come properly within March's province—that had been clearly understood—and for a while Fulkerson tried to run the art leg himself. The phrase was again his, but it was simpler ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... decided advantage over her more beautiful cousin. When Louise really desired to please she was indeed a charming companion, and young men are not likely to detect insincerity in a girl who tries to captivate them. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... first price he quotes a woman is increased in order to give her a chance to bargain. But she does not bargain down to the proper price, she bargains down to a sum above the proper price, and she frequently buys unnecessary, or inferior things, simply because the dealer was smart enough to captivate her by allowing reductions. This is indicated in a certain criminal case,[1] in which the huckster-woman asserted that she immediately suspected a customer of passing counterfeit coins because ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... herself all through the Stearns' dinner to captivate Dave Darrin. He, without diminution of love and loyalty to Belle Mead, was glad to be on friendly terms with this ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... t'ink, Masser Corny, you consider pretty much, sah. What good it do a nigger to captivate an Injin, if he let him go ag'in, and don't lick him little? Only little, Masser Corny. Ebbery t'ing so handy too, sah—rope all ready, back bare, and feelin' up, like, after such a time in ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... is a very pardonable sort of coxcombry; and tho' it appear sometimes pedantic, and occasionally laughable, yet it tends to encourage learning and science, and compels the young men to read in order to shine and captivate the fair. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Indeed, after those princes of immeasurable energy had looked at Draupadi, the God of Desire invaded their hearts and continued to crush all their senses. As the lavishing beauty of Panchali who had been modelled by the Creator himself, was superior to that of all other women on earth, it could captivate the heart of every creature. And Yudhishthira, the son of Kunti, beholding his younger brothers, understood what was passing in their minds. And that bull among men immediately recollected the words of Krishna-Dwaipayana. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... gifts of no mean order. After imbibing the rather narrow education of a devout Moslem, he formed some acquaintance with western thought, and from it his facile mind selected a stock of ideas which found ready expression in conversation. His soft dreamy eyes and fluent speech rarely failed to captivate men of all classes[360]. His popularity endowed the discontented camarilla with new vigour, enabling it to focus all the discontented elements, and to become a movement of almost national import. Yet Arabi was its spokesman, or ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... think they do. 'Tis not the man they love, but what he seems; A bright Hyperion, moving stately through The rosy ether of exalted dreams. Alas! that love, the purest and most real, Clusters forever round some form ideal; And martial things have some strange necromancy To captivate romantic maiden fancy. The very word "Lieutenant" hath a charm, E'en coupled with a vulgar face and form, A shriveled heart and microscopic wit, Scarce for a coachman or a barber fit; His untried sword, his title, are to her Better than genius, wealth, or high ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... situation, to be accounted altogether invincible, or, as they say, impregnable; for I protest t'ye, Sir Duncan, that I have known twenty-five men, by the mere surprise and audacity of the attack, win, at point of pike, as strong a hold as this of Ardenvohr, and put to the sword, captivate, or hold to the ransom, the defenders, being ten ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... withheld her arm, And kindly stopp'd the unfinish'd charm. But though not changed to owl or bat, Or something more indelicate; Yet, as your tongue has run too fast, Your boasted beauty must not last. No more shall frolic Cupid lie In ambuscade in either eye, From thence to aim his keenest dart To captivate each youthful heart: No more shall envious misses pine At charms now flown, that once were thine No more, since you so ill behave, Shall injured Oberon be ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Irving preached. His subject was 'God's love,' upon which he poured forth a mystical incomprehensible rhapsody, with extraordinary vehemence of manner and power of lungs. There was nothing like eloquence in his sermon, no musical periods to captivate the ear, no striking illustrations to charm the imagination; but there is undoubtedly something in his commanding figure and strange, wild countenance, his vehemence, and above all the astonishing power of his voice, its compass, intonation, and variety, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... new curiosity comes to us staggering under the unwieldy name of Hippo-potamus. He is a comely gentleman, fair and beauteous to look upon; and the strange loveliness of his countenance cannot fail to captivate the crowd. His youth, too, gives him a special claim to the consideration of the ladies, for he is a little darling of only three years—a very baby of a hippopotamus in fact, who, only a few months ago, daily sucked his ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... her as the dowager stepped in between them. There is nothing so flattering to the vanity of a man as the discovery of emotions in a young woman excited by himself, and which the party evidently wishes to conceal; there is nothing so touching, so sure to captivate; or, if it seem to be affected, so ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... officers have been in her head. She has been doing everything in her power by thinking and talking on the subject, to give greater—what shall I call it? susceptibility to her feelings; which are naturally lively enough. And we all know that Wickham has every charm of person and address that can captivate a woman." ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the children, with satisfaction at obtaining twice as much as she had hoped; but the frustration of her vengeance upon Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss had renewed all her hatred, and she had no scruple in abusing "the burgher-woman" to the whole household for her artful desire to captivate another nobleman. She, no doubt, expected that degenerate fool of a Wildschlosser to come wooing after her; "if he did he should meet his deserts." It was the favourite reproach whenever she chose to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hour enjoyment more intense, Shall captivate each ravish'd sense, Than thou could'st compass in the bound Of the whole year's unvarying round; And what the dainty spirits sing, The lovely images they bring, Are no fantastic sorcery. Rich odours shall regale your smell, On choicest ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... jackanapes, with zebras' manes tied over their heads, would advance with long tubes like monster bassoons, blowing with all their might, contorting their faces and bodies, and going through the most obscene and ridiculous motions to captivate their simple admirers. This, however, was only the feast; the ball then began, for the pots were no sooner emptied than five drums at once, of different sizes and tones, suspended in a line from a long horizontal bar, were beaten with fury, and all the men, women, and children, singing and ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... those arts only which involve the exercise of the mind as a controlling factor. One may be a great orator, according to the usual acceptation of the term "great," and yet be only a declaimer and a rhetorician. That is to say, he may be able to captivate audiences by his superior action, as Demosthenes defines oratory to be, and at the same time his elocution and rhetoric may be unexceptionable, yet he maybe in fact totally lacking in every element which goes to ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... joyous glances roll To cheer the heart and charm the soul; Whose graceful locks, that flow behind, Engage and captivate mankind! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various
... most admirable publicity agent. And never was publicity agent secured at a lower cost. Those literary influences have continued to our own day to perpetuate the legend of Frederick. Nearly a hundred years after Rossbach Frederick had the strange good fortune to captivate the wayward genius of Carlyle. It is difficult to understand how Carlyle, who all through life hesitated between the Christian Puritanism of John Knox and the Olympian paganism of Goethe, could have been fascinated by the Potsdam ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... charge of the visit, and she expected with trembling impatience, inspired by a vague hope that he might again prove her deliverer, to see a man who had before rescued her from oppression. He entered with an animation of countenance, formed to captivate an enthusiast; and, hastily turned his eyes from her to the apartment, which he surveyed with apparent emotions of compassionate indignation. Sympathy illuminated his eye, and, taking her hand, he respectfully bowed on it, exclaiming—"This is extraordinary!—again ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... every sun around its centre sun—the sun of suns—which informs all with the rays of the spirit, with the light of thought—is generated that perfect harmony of colours, sounds, forms, which strike the sight and captivate and enthrall the intellect. That which in the heavens is harmony becomes, in the individual, morality, and in companies of human beings, law. That which is light in the spheres becomes intelligence and science in the world of the spirit and in humanity. We must ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... icy glance I am again seized by a mortal fear. I have a presentiment that this man can enchain her, captivate her, subjugate her, and I feel inferior in contrast with his savage masculinity; I am filled with envy, ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... passional— the last as distinct from either of the other two as oil from spirits or water. To the last belongs love, which, I repeat again, has no sympathy with the moral feelings of our nature, but, alas! as one might almost believe, with their opposite. Even a plain but wicked coquette will captivate more hearts than a beautiful saint, and the brilliant murderess ere now has made conquests at the very foot ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... grain of musk?[125] And where those eyes soft as the gazelle's? Where those ruby lips? And where those curling ringlets? In what bright hues is now thy form adorned? And through the love of whom does now thy lamp consume? To whose fond eyes are now thy charms displayed? And whom to captivate do now thy tresses wave? Beside the margin of what stream is now that cypress seen? And in what bower is now the banquet spread? Ah, can such as thou have felt the pangs of death, and be reclined within this narrow cave?[126] But o'er thy cell I mourn, as ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... convert the gentiles. We therefore told them that they did well to shun them, because their intention was, not to teach, but to secure gain and dominion; and that they strive by various means first to captivate men's minds (animi), and afterwards to subject them to themselves as slaves: moreover, that they did well in not suffering their idea concerning God to be disturbed by such spirits. They said further, ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... prosperity. For tribulation having nothing in itself that is lovable, save that it is God's gift, it is much easier to go by it straight to the will of God, and to unite ourselves to His good pleasure. Easier, I say, than by prosperity, which has attractions of its own that captivate our senses, and, like Dalila, lull them to sleep, working in us a subtle change, so that we begin insensibly to love for its own sake the prosperity which God sends us, instead of bestowing all our grateful love on God Who sends it, ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... that charm us by their wit or their sweetness, others that surprise and captivate us by their strength: books that refresh us when weary: books that comfort us when afflicted: books that stimulate us by their robust health: books that exalt and refine our natures, as it were, to a finer mould: books that rouse us like the ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... all his mien, Which would so captivate, I ween, Wisdom's own goddess Pallas; That she'd discard her fav'rite owl, And take for pet a brother fowl, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... the Divine Master left to accomplish the noblest work ever achieved under the canopy of the vaulted skies; and that time is fast approaching, when the picture of the true woman will shine from its frame of glory, to captivate, to win back, to restore, and to call into being once more, THE OBJECT OF ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... expatiates in those in-all-ways-sloping fields of metaphysical investigation which perplex whilst they captivate, and bewilder whilst they allure, cannot evitate the perception of perception's fallibility, nor avoid the conclusion (if that can be called a conclusion to which, it may be said, there are no premises extant) that the external ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... began to find highly attractive. Their extraordinary beauty, their genuine and unflagging gayety, their thorough enjoyment of existence, and the variety of resources with which they made life amusing and graceful, all contributed to captivate him. They had, too, a great love and knowledge both of art and nature, and insensibly they weaned Lothair from that habit of introspection which, though natural to him, he had too much indulged, and taught him to ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... will in the breasts of the incautious Negroes, the Europeans have, by their bad example, led them into excess of drunkenness, debauchery, and avarice; whereby every passion of corrupt nature being inflamed, they have been easily prevailed upon to make war, and captivate one another; as well to furnish means for the excesses they had been habituated to, as to satisfy the greedy desire of gain in their profligate employers, who to this intent have furnished them with prodigious quantities ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... birds pair? Of course it is both her intention and resolution to marry when she finds a suitable match, and no one is better aware than herself of the sort of impression she is capable of producing; no one likes better to captivate in a quiet way. I am mistaken if she will not yet leave the print of her stealing steps on ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... derelict for nearly three weeks when we two ocean waifs fell in with and took possession of her. The "notions" of which her cargo consisted seemed, according to the manifest, to comprise more or less of nearly everything that could possibly captivate a savage's fancy; but in addition to these multitudinous articles there were—somewhere in the ship—a few bales of goods—mostly linen, fine muslins, silks, and ready-made clothing— consigned to a firm in Valparaiso, which I believed would be of the utmost value ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... gentle a barrier in his advances; and passion was stimulated, by uncertainty not merely, but by the calm grace and indefinable sweetness which he did not remember in Eleanor, well as he had loved her before. He loved her better now. That charm of manner was the very thing to captivate Mr. Carlisle; he valued it highly; and did not appreciate it the less ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... though by no means exclusively, in favour of this portion of the empire that is to be. These sums are expended in erecting showy churches and colleges, and in sustaining priests and emissaries. Everything is done to captivate, and to liberalise in appearance, a system essentially despotic. The sagacity of the effort is discovered, in avoiding to attack and shock the prejudices of the adult, that they may direct the education ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... a Christian man—an orthodox Churchman (if you require that shibboleth). Was I so very wrong? What was there in the idea of religion which was represented to me at home to captivate me? What was the use of a child's hearing of "God's great love manifested in the scheme of redemption," when he heard, in the same breath, that the effects of that redemption were practically confined only ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... all existing rules, I succeeded in inflaming the heart of one single individual. And I will also add, who can say that what causes durable emotion is unorthodox? It may be at variance with some rules and in harmony with others; and those which move hearts and captivate intellects do not appear to me to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... fancies of the Arab's mind, for they vividly set forth the love and hate, the craft and hypocrisy, the courage and revenge of his race. Moreover, they portray in a truly dramatic manner the innermost life and thought of the Moslem, while they captivate the senses by a magnificent panorama of exquisite banquets, lovely characters, ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... immense (riesengross), only Field could perhaps in this respect be compared to him. A manly energy gave to appropriate passages overpowering effect— energy without roughness (Rohheit); but, on the other hand, he knew how by delicacy—delicacy without affectation—to captivate the hearer. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... came the small-pox siege, and after Anna had recovered partially she was obliged to take a rest, leaving her small school in Louisa's charge. There were twenty scholars, and it was a great responsibility for the girl of seventeen, but she took up the work with such enthusiasm that she managed to captivate her pupils, whose attention she held by illustrating many of their lessons with original stories, telling them in a way they would never forget. When Anna came back the school was so flourishing that Louisa continued to help with the teaching, and it ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of Fun, Folly and Frolic, when the innocent license of the mask shall have no let, when the places of festivity shall offer a night of pleasure to all our people, and when the pageant of the Mystick Krewe of Comus shall dazzle the eye and captivate the reason by the wonders of art ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Gauttier, also a purse full of money, fine silken hose, a velvet doublet, fringed with gold, and an embroidered mantle, which garments set off his figure so well, and showed up his beauties, that the Venetian was certain he would captivate all the ladies. The servants received orders to obey this Gauttier as they would himself, so that they fancied their master had been fishing, and had caught this Frenchman. Then the two friends made their entry into Palermo at the hour when the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... finish of diction, when even ideas fail, words come to his aid—arranging themselves, as it were, so completely, that they not only captivate, but often deceive us for ideas; and hence the vacuum that would necessarily occur in the address of an ordinary speaker is filled up, presenting the same beautiful harmony as do the lights and ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... russia—which had been bespoke of M. Artaria by some Bavarian Count: and which must have cost that Count very little short of 120 guineas. The shelves of the front repository were almost wholly filled with English books, in the choicest bindings; and dressed out to catch and captivate the susceptible bibliomaniac, in a manner the most adroit imaginable. To the left, on entrance, were two rooms filled with choice paintings; many of them just purchased at the Frankfort fair. Some delicious Flemish pictures, among ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of them writes thus: 'He was a venerable, smiling old man, with long Persian robes and a spotlessly white turban. As we had travelled along, the Persian ladies had laughingly spoken of a beautiful young man, who, they were sure, would captivate me. They would make a match between ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... person to captivate him, and you mustn't bring yourself into competition with her, Lucy. She can out-shine you in conversation, and I know that she is playing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... hers was a different style of beauty from that of Rose, whose ripe, sensuous charms were fitted to captivate the admiration of the voluptuary, while Sabine was of the most refined and ethereal character. Rose fettered the body with earthly trammels, while Sabine drew the soul heavenward. Her beauty was not of the kind that dazzles, for the air ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... strains fire us even to madness: how has the shore of Greece echoed with the wildest sounds; the delicious warblings of the Lyre charmed and astonished every ear. The blaze of rhetoric then burst forth; the ancients sought not by false thoughts, and glittering diction, to captivate the ear, but by manly and energetic modes of expression, to rule the heart and sway ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... it had become almost necessary to our existence. Pleasant were those days of my early boyhood; and a melancholy pleasure steals over me as I recall them. Those were stirring times of which I am speaking, and there was much passing around me calculated to captivate the imagination. The dreadful struggle which so long convulsed Europe, and in which England bore so prominent a part, was then at its hottest; we were at war, and determination and enthusiasm shone in every face; man, woman and child were ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... with which they are to be taken, they gorge the bait nevertheless—they must come to it—they must swallow it—and are presently struck and landed gasping. Rawdon saw there was a manifest intention on Mrs. Bute's part to captivate him with Rebecca. He was not very wise; but he was a man about town, and had seen several seasons. A light dawned upon his dusky soul, as he thought, through a speech ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... captivate the imagination, but it must be carefully distinguished from the truths of astronomy, properly so called. Remote posterity may perhaps obtain evidence on the subject which to us is inaccessible: our knowledge of nebulae is too recent. There has not yet been time enough to detect any appreciable ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... stretch, to enliven him. You must never give way to the dangerous feeling of security, for in fact King Henry's wife is never safe. The axe always hangs over her head, and you must ever consider your husband as only a fickle lover, whom you must every day captivate anew." ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... received the news of his son's arrival with the greatest joy. He sat out the next day in his own carriage, drawn by two noble bay horses, and arrived without "let or hindrance" in Boston. He expected to find Isabella a girl possessed of some considerable beauty, just sufficient to captivate a seaman who for months had seen no women more attractive than the squaws of the North-West Coast or South Sea Islands; and sailors, under such circumstances, are exceedingly susceptible, me ipso testi; he had ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Lamont, 'it is most advisable for me not to attempt to defend what I have said; should I have reason on my side, while you have humanity on yours, I should make but a bad figure in the argument. What advantage could I expect from applying to the understanding, while your amiable disposition would captivate even reason itself? But still I am puzzled; what we behold is certainly an inclosure, how can that be without a confinement to ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... force of a powerful will and a depth and subtlety of intellect that made men fear, if they could not love him. Yet when he chose—and it was his usual mood—to exercise his blandishments on men, he rarely failed to captivate them, while his pleasant wit, courtly ways, and natural gallantry towards women, exercised with the polished seductiveness he had learned in the Court of Louis XV., made Francois Bigot the most plausible and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... hair, in colour gold, in texture soft as silk. A band of gold forms the girdle of her ruby-coloured velvet robe, which descends to the wrist, and there reveals the small white hand and tapering fingers of patrician beauty. All this may captivate the fastidious noble; but, to men less artificial in their tastes and habits, could such a woman be better than a statue—and could love, the strongest of human passions, be ever more to her than a short-lived ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... God most dear, The same to 'stablish with consent of conscience stand in fear. Thou art yet free, Philologus; all torments thou may'st 'scape, Only the pleasures of the world thou shalt awhile forbear. Renounce thy crime, and sue for grace, and do not captivate Thy conscience unto mortal sin: the yoke of Christ do bear. Shut up these words within thy breast, which sound so in thine ear: The outward man hath caused thee this enterprise to take; Beware lest wickedness of spirit the same do ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... ring, and began to sing the "Suwanee River" in a manner which he intended should captivate his audience; but he had neglected to give the band any orders, and the consequence was that, when he commenced to sing, Leander began to play "Old Dog Tray," a proceeding which mixed the ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... restricted to civilized man and his ideas and works, people felt free to speculate about uncivilized races (generally grouped together indiscriminately as "savages") according to any a priori whim that might happen to captivate their fancy. But the discoveries of the last half-century have opened such stupendous vistas of the past that the age of Abraham seems but as yesterday. The state of society described in the book of Genesis had five entire ethnical periods, and the greater part of a sixth, behind it; and ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... anything, he did not confide the execution of his design to the languid and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will; which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul before the understanding is ready either to join with them, or to oppose them. It is by a long deduction, and much study, that we discover the adorable wisdom of God in his works: when we discover it, the effect is very different, not only in the manner of acquiring ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... very well that this was begging the question; that the question was how to be artistic, graceful, charming, and whatever else they said he himself was. If he was aware of not being all that, he was aware also of having tried to be it; of having sought from the beginning to captivate the reader's fancy as well as convince his reason. He had never been satisfied with being plain and direct; he had constantly wished to amuse as well as edify, and following the line of beauty, as that of the least resistance, had been his practice ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... to his prince, and was beholden to his bounty for many fair estates, and great honors; but neither the favors of so good and gracious a king, nor the allurements of power, riches, and pleasures, were of force to captivate his heart, who could see nothing in them but dangers, and snares so much the more to be dreaded, as fraught with the power of charming. At the age therefore of twenty-five, an age that affords the greatest relish for pleasure, he bid adieu to the world, made a journey ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... desires to be beautiful, and it is the duty of every woman to be as attractive as possible. All may enhance their charms and be lovely by following the directions of this book. Few persons know how to improve their natural looks so as to captivate, charm, and win the admiration of those whom they meet. This book tells the wonderful secret—all the ancients ever knew, and all that has been discovered since. It teaches how to wonderfully improve the person in loveliness. The real secret of changing an ordinary looking person ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... granda litero. Capital (of a column) kapitelo. Capitalist kapitalisto. Capitulate kapitulaci. Capitulation kapitulaco. Capon kapono. Caprice kaprico. Capsize renversigxi. Captain (ship) sxipestro. Captain (milit.) kapitano. Captive malliberulo. Captive mallibera. Captivate (charm) cxarmegi. Captivity mallibereco. Capture preno. Capuche kapucxo. Car cxaro. Car (of balloon) korbego. Carabine karabeno. Carafe karafo. Carat karato. Caravan karavano. Carbon karbono. Carbuncle karbunkolo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... secret societies in the sixteenth century. A more atrocious confederacy than this the human mind could hardly have conceived. It was, however, peculiarly calculated to captivate the multitude in those days of darkness and blood. Though at first formed and extended secretly, it spread like wildfire through all the cities and provinces of France. Princes, lords, gentlemen, artisans, and peasants rushed into its impious inclosures. The benighted populace, enthralled by ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... back; it was as if the contact of her arm and the satisfaction of knowing that he had given her pleasure had quieted him; but he followed all her movements with the pleasure one feels in seeing the persons or things that captivate and intoxicate our eyes. When she returned, with a large cluster of flowers, he drew a deep breath, seeking unconsciously to inhale something of her, a little of her breath or the warmth of her skin in the air stirred by her running. He looked at her, enraptured, as one watches the dawn, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... enjoyment more intense Shall captivate each ravish'd sense, Than thou could'st compass in the bound Of the whole year's unvarying round; And what the dainty spirits sing, The lovely images they bring, Are no fantastic sorcery. Rich odors ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... west, with cattle ranches as a setting, related in such a style as to captivate the hearts ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... multitude of Protestant sects is due in a great degree to this superiority of lay preaching over clerical. The most brilliant orators of the Christian pulpit are bad converters; their eloquent appeals may captivate the imagination and lead a few men of the world to the foot of the altar, but these results are not more brilliant than ephemeral. But let a peasant or a workingman speak to those whom he meets a few simple words going directly to the conscience, and the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... and science really meet on common ground, and it is important to examine objectively whether it is wise and beneficial to encourage the spreading of this tempting enterprise. The movement has reached the large cities between the Atlantic and the Pacific and is beginning to captivate the ministers of the small towns and villages. It seems as if an epoch has come for the church—the church which too long has ministered only to the spiritual needs of the community will at last remember again that Christ healed the sick, that mind and body are one, that the personality must be ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... at all in these days; but there is an imperishable element in his humour. And though the circle of his readers may have no tendency to increase, one can hardly suppose that a charm, which those who still feel it feel so keenly, will ever entirely cease to captivate; or that time can have any power over a perfume which so wonderfully retains the pungent freshness of its fragrance after the lapse of ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... this serious work came the play of Carnival, in which there was much less interest felt than usual, but enough to dazzle and captivate a stranger. One thing, however, has been omitted in the description of the Roman Carnival; i.e. that it rains every day. Almost every day came on violent rain, just as the tide of gay masks was fairly engaged in the Corso. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... him spirits for the task, and his performance exceeded any thing the company had ever witnessed before. On laying down the instrument, he approached the place where the friends were sitting, with an exultation in his eyes that was inferior only to modesty in the power to captivate. ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... Queen, as you do, most excessively, and for her sake, I hope that a due respect will be paid to the K., and while he and she were grudged every luxury in the world, by those mean wretches Burke, Gilbert,(238) and Lansdown, all kind of profusion is not thought of to captivate his R(oyal) H(ighness).(239) In short, I shall be glad, if his Majesty has lost his head, to hear that the P. has found it. I have given him as yet more credit than I would own, for I will not be accused of paying my court to him while, I say, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... index nor sharper test of national or individual character than the sort of 'heroes' they worship. Vox populi has not been very much refined since Saul's day. Athletes and soldiers still captivate the crowd, and a mere prophet like Samuel has no chance beside the man of broad shoulders and well-developed biceps. And very often communities, especially democratic ones, get the 'king' they desire, the leader, statesman or the like, who comes near their ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... cares of the statesman; through a period likewise chequered with domestic afflictions and fatal commotions in the Republic. As a philosopher, his mind appears to have been clear, capacious, penetrating, and insatiable of knowledge. As a writer, he was endowed with every talent that could captivate either the judgment or taste. His researches were continually employed on subjects of the greatest utility to mankind, and those often such as extended beyond the narrow bounds of temporal existence. The being of a God, the immortality of the soul, a future state of rewards and punishments, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... amusing, those parties; indeed, it's very good of you to go to them!" said Mme. Verdurin, who regarded the President of the Republic only as a 'bore' to be especially dreaded, since he had at his disposal means of seduction, and even of compulsion, which, if employed to captivate her 'faithful,' might easily make them 'fail.' "It seems, he's as deaf as a post; and eats with ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the shrine of vision and revelation, with a complete scheme of reconciliation, with correlated catalogues of Shint[o] and Buddhist gods, with liturgies, with lists of old popular festivals newly named, with the apparatus of art to captivate the senses, K[o]b[o] forthwith baptized each native Shint[o] deity with a new Chinese-Buddhistic name. For every Shint[o] festival he arranged a corresponding Buddhist's saints' day or gala ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... always in the same places. The first thing I noticed, the other evening, was that the Tutor was sitting between the two Annexes, and the Counsellor was next to Number Five. Something ought to come of this arrangement. One of those two young ladies must certainly captivate and perhaps capture the Tutor. They are just the age to be falling in love and to be fallen in love with. The Tutor is good looking, intellectual, suspected of writing poetry, but a little shy, it appears to me. I am glad to see him between ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... this can no man do on earth—lead, captivate the soul and body of a gracious and innocent girl, teach her the miracle of love in motherhood, and then desert her for a ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... truth in the shape of eggs and larvae of insects, preeminently a New England bird, clad in black and ashen gray, with a note the most cheering and reassuring to be heard in our January woods,—I know of none other of our birds so well calculated to captivate the Emersonian muse. ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... while the academical credentials of the tutors were unimpeachable, perhaps not one among them all could show a commission from the Spirit. No one then at Cambridge seems to have been in the least degree capable of arousing enthusiasm. It might not indeed have been easy for a Newman or a Green to captivate the independent soul of Milton, even at this susceptible period of his life; failing any approach to such external influence, he would be likely to leave Cambridge the same man as he entered it. Ere, indeed, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... these will elevate a man under any circumstances. But Fenwick had no decided points in his character. He had limited intelligence, and no energy arising from clear perceptions and strong resolutions. He was a man fit to captivate a young and innocent girl, but not to hold the ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... fact that Mr. Crowley with a little added restraint and dignity of expression, is capable of producing excellent work. "List to the Sea", by Winifred V. Jordan, is a delightfully musical lyric, whose dancing dactyls and facile triple rhymes captivate alike the fancy and the ear. "The Wind and the Beggar", by Maude K. Barton, is sombre and powerful. "Ambition", by William de Ryee, is regular in metre and commendable in sentiment, yet not exactly novel or striking in inspiration. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... and I wrought her a bracelet and laid it aside. But when she returned and I brought her out the bracelet, she put forth her hand and I clasped the bracelet on her wrist; and I wondered at the whiteness of her hand and the beauty of her wrist, which would captivate any beholder; and I recalled what ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... love for Ernesto, Norina consents to play the part assigned to her and the charming simplicity of her manners, her modesty and loveliness so captivate the old man, that he falls into the trap and makes her an offer of his {61} hand. The marriage takes place, and one witness failing to appear, Ernesto, who happens to be near, and who is aware of the plot, is requested to take his ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... appeared, "that nations should contend for the possession of so much beauty?" This beauty, indeed, was possessed by different lovers; a subject on which the modern hero had many refinements, and seemed to soar in the clouds. He adored at a respectful distance, and employed his valour to captivate the admiration, not to gain the possession of his mistress. A cold and unconquerable chastity was set up, as an idol to be worshipped, in the toils, the sufferings, and the combats of the hero ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... displeased with the taste—want of taste she called it—shown by Mr. Arabin in paying so much attention to Madame Neroni. It was as infallible that Madeline should displease and irritate the women as that she should charm and captivate the men. The one result followed naturally on the other. It was quite true that Mr. Arabin had been charmed. He thought her a very clever and a very handsome woman; he thought also that her peculiar affliction entitled her to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... a native relish for poetry, and a genuine sensibility to its intrinsic charm. The greater and more distinguished poets of our country have so much else in them to gratify other tastes and propensities, that they are pretty sure to captivate and amuse those to whom their poetry is but an hindrance and obstruction, as well as those to whom it constitutes their chief attraction. The interest of the stories they tell—the vivacity of the characters they delineate—the weight and force of the maxims and sentiments in ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... low carriage, or in the larger carriage with Clifton and Mr Maxwell, or her father, she saw, and professed herself delighted with it. She admired the farm-houses and the farmers, and the farmers' wives and daughters, and laid herself out to captivate them in a way that Clifton declared to be wonderful. To Elizabeth it ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... females, neighbours and friends, were tried some years since in England for the murder of their husbands. It appeared that they were in love with the same individual, and had conjointly, at various times, paid sums of money to a Gipsy woman to work charms to captivate his affection. Whatever little effect the charm might produce, they were successful in their principal object, for the person in question carried on for some time a criminal intercourse with both. The ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... intertaine you, your fill, and peradventure stumble as little and as seldome against the rules of his tongue, as the best Master of arts in France. He hath no skill in Rhetoricke, nor can he with a preface fore-stall and captivate the Gentle Readers good will: nor careth he greatly to know it. In good sooth, all this garish painting is easilie defaced, by the lustre of an in-bred and simple truth; for these dainties and quaint devices serve but ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Moore was to improve his time, not knowing how long his precarious power might last, for bettering his low and indigent circumstances. It appeared to him, that the traffic in Indians was the shortest way to riches. He therefore granted commissions to several persons, to assault, trepan and captivate as many Indians as they could, and resolved to turn the profits of such trade to his own private emolument. Not contented with this cruel method of acquiring wealth, he formed a design for engrossing the whole advantages arising to the colony from ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... consider Maulevrier's presence at Fellside an unmitigated advantage, or, indeed, his presence anywhere. Those two were not sympathetic. Maulevrier made fun of his elder sister's perfections, chaffed her intolerably about the great man she was going to captivate, in her first season, the great houses in which she was going to reign. Lesbia despised him for that neglect of all his opportunities of culture which had left him, after the most orthodox and costly curriculum, almost as ignorant as a ploughboy. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... journey's end, almost! after a thousand difficulties! at the moment when I shall see and captivate this enchantress, Blue Beard," cried the chevalier. "You have lost your wits. Come on, comrade, what you do, I ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... a birch-bark canoe in summer, skating in winter, or gliding over the frozen snow like a Laplander in his sledge, wrapped up to the eyes in furs, and travelling at the rate of twelve miles an hour to the sound of an harmonious peal of bells. What a felicitous life to captivate the mind of a boy of fourteen, just let loose from ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... hand, wishing to attract only an elegant and opulent class, was anxious to captivate persons of refinement by ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... put forth all their charms and powers of fascination to captivate the attention, and, if possible, the heart of their sovereign, who is, after all, but human. That is why Emperor William deserves so much credit for having remained true to his wife, and why Emperor Francis-Joseph ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... confusing pepper of a shower had passed away and left the water calm. Then softly and deftly we propelled our bark across to the Ayboljockameegus. We tossed to the fish humbugs of wool, silk, and feathers, gauds such as captivate the greedy or the guileless. Again the "gobemouches" trout, the fellows on the look-out for novelty, dashed up and swallowed disappointing juiceless morsels, and with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... BRINVILLIERS.—The singular atrocity of this woman gives her a sort of infamous claim to notice. She was born in Paris in 1651; being daughter of D'Aubrai, lieutenant- civil of Paris, who married her to the Marquis of Brinvilliers. Although possessed of attractions to captivate lovers, she was for some time much attached to her husband, but at length became madly in love with a Gascon officer. Her father imprisoned the officer in the Bastille; and, while there, he learned the art of compounding subtle and most mortal poisons; ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... strain every energy at the Bar, to carve or force my own way to fortune; and if I arrived at independence, then,—what then? Why, the right to speak of love and aim at power. This was not the view of Ellinor Compton. The law seemed to her a tedious, needless drudgery; there was nothing in it to captivate her imagination. She listened to me with that charm which she yet retains, and by which she seems to identify herself with those who speak to her. She would turn to me with a pleading look when her father 'dilated on the brilliant ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... overcome, carry; bring round to one's senses, bring to one's senses; draw over, win over, gain over, come over, talk over; procure, enlist, engage; invite, court. tempt, seduce, overpersuade[obs3], entice, allure, captivate, fascinate, bewitch, carry away, charm, conciliate, wheedle, coax, lure; inveigle; tantalize; cajole &c. (deceive) 545. tamper with, bribe, suborn, grease the palm, bait with a silver hook, gild the pill, make things pleasant, put a sop into the pan, throw a sop to, bait the hook. enforce, force; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... all these particulars be required, cast your eye a little upon the Armies pretended Plea, which came lately a birding to beat the way before them, charm the ears of the Vulgar, and captivate the people; That after all its pseudo-politicks and irreligious principles, is at last constrained to acknowledg your open and prodigious violations, strange and illegal Actions, (as in termes it confesses) of taking up ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... the price of our merchandise. But I do not rest my hopes upon this department of my labours only. I propose also to have a corresponding shop for Sentiment, and Dialogues, and Disquisition, which may captivate the fancy of those who have no relish, as the established phrase goes, for pure antiquity—a sort of greengrocer's stall erected in front of my ironmongery wares, garlanding the rusty memorials of ancient times with cresses, cabbages, leeks, and ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... where that girl lives," she resolved. "Her conduct with Percy de Brabazon is positively disgraceful. She is evidently doing her best to captivate him. I feel that it is due to Mrs. Leighton, who would be shocked at the thought of her nephew's making a low alliance, to find out all I can, and ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... travelers always gather to look at the marble statue of the Empress Josephine, which is called the greatest work of art in the West Indies. That is not fatuous praise, perhaps, but the figure needed the hand of no master sculptor to hold the eye and captivate the imagination. It is mounted on a huge pedestal and is of heroic size, the white glitter of its marble enhanced by its truly magnificent setting, a circle of towering royal palms. There she stands, ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Love chose to captivate again Zeokinizul, after such an Interval of boasted Liberty. The chief Inhabitants of Kofir, who are a distinct Body from the Nobility, the Magistracy, and the Citizens, had decorated in the most superb Manner the Sessions House for a Ball, to which they invited the King and royal Pair. ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... wrecked. I have ceased to please because I am not thirty-six years old. In the eyes of some men youth is thought an inferiority. There is nothing to imagine on an innocent face. I laugh frankly, and that is wrong; to captivate I ought to play off the melancholy half-smile of the fallen angel, who wants to hide her yellowing teeth. A fresh complexion is monotonous; some men prefer their doll's wax made of rouge and spermaceti and cold cream. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... is supposed the fiends entertain for Holy Writ depended, not on the meaning of the words, but the arrangement of the page, and the type in which they were printed. This singular species of flattery was designed to captivate the clergyman through his professional opinions; others were more strictly personal. The afflicted damsel seems to have been somewhat of the humour of the Inamorata of Messrs. Smack, Pluck, Catch, and Company, and had, like her, merry as well as melancholy fits. She often imagined that her attendant ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... desire to play the part of man, she made her appearance before Napoleon in the most absurd, tasteless attire. This woman of genius and folly lacked the wisdom of gauging the taste of Bonaparte, whom she desired to captivate with her sluttish appearance and ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... treasure of divine beauty, which Proserpina has entrusted to me for Venus, contains charms which I can make mine own, and their lustre must be extreme, since beauty herself, Venus, requires them to adorn herself. Would it be a great crime to snatch a few? To captivate a god, who has been my lover, to recover his affection, and put an end to my torture, can anything that I may do be unlawful? Let me open it. What vapours cloud my brain? and what do I behold issuing from this open casket? Love, unless thy compassion forbids my death, ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... before Miss O'Neill's Juliet came to captivate London, another idol of the stage was led to the altar by William, first Earl of Craven. Louisa Brunton, for that was the name of Craven's Countess, was cradled, like her successor, on the stage; for her father was well known at every town on the Norwich Circuit as manager of a popular company of ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... many other readers do the same, as it greatly tends to make our hearts ache by putting us in mind of what our posteriors have suffered for us at school. We shall therefore content ourselves by saying, this lady had charms sufficient to captivate the heart of any man not unsusceptible of love; and they made so deep an impression upon our hero, that they wholly effaced every object which before had created any desire in him, and never permitted any other to raise them afterwards; and, wonderful to tell, we have after about thirty years ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... "if in the Danae the forms were to be seen front-wise, here was occasion to look at them from a contrary direction—a pleasant variety for the ornament of a Camerino." Our worldly-wise painter evidently knew that material allurements as well as supreme art were necessary to captivate Philip. It cannot be alleged, all the same, that this purely sensuous mode of conception was not perfectly in consonance with his own temperament, with his own point of view, at this particular stage in his ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... it seemed by this reply to enter into a more general conversation, Mr Swiveller plainly laid himself out to captivate our attention. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... is it? Clear as crystal: not deep, but clear. But this face"—as Lucrece came before her—"is deep enough. Not deep like a river, but like a snake. I could do well enough with your plain, honest sister; but I love you not, Mistress Lucrece. Enville. Your graceful ways do not captivate me. Ah! it takes a woman to know a woman. And the men, poor silly things! fancy they know us better than ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... another style which does not captivate me. I recognize an attempt at the grand manner now and then, in persons who are well enough in their way, but of no particular importance, socially or otherwise. Some family tradition of wealth or distinction is apt to be at the bottom of it, and it survives all the advantages that used to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... doubtless foreseen by Russia, soon proved disastrous. Draga, having achieved her ambition and mounted the throne, showed none of the ability of Theodora. Clever enough to captivate the feeble-minded Alexander, she was too stupid to realize that her only chance lay in gaining the popularity of the people who were none too well disposed. With incredible folly, before in any way consolidating her position, she formed a plot worthy only of a second-rate cinematograph, pretended ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... he trots, as if he told the steps, With gentle majesty and modest pride; Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps, As who should say, 'Lo! thus my strength is tried; And this I do to captivate the eye 281 Of the fair breeder that ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... another: she had grossly insulted him in several proclamations, and he had returned the complement in his bulletins. Their meeting, however, did not display their mutual hatred; Napoleon was respectful and attentive, the queen gracious in her attempts to captivate her former enemy; attempts made all the more determinedly as she was not unaware that the peace treaty created—under the name of the kingdom of Westphalia—a new state, whose territory was to be provided by the electorate of Hesse, and by ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Rome, waiting the arrival of Corinne. At every instant he heard her name accompanied with some anecdote concerning her, which implied the possession of all those talents that captivate the imagination. One said that her voice was the most touching in Italy; another, that nobody played tragedy like her; somebody else, that she danced like a nymph, and designed with as much taste as invention: all said that ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... sentimental exaltation in us, which is the poetry of love. Nothing intellectual, no intoxication of thought or feeling is mingled with that sensual intoxication which those charming nonentities excite in us. Nevertheless, they captivate us like the others do, but in a different fashion, which is less tenacious, and, at the same time, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Manutius; and being not only welcomed with open arms by his literary friends in that city, but also appointed secretary of the great Venetian Academy "Della Fama," with a handsome salary, he sent for his son, took a house in a good situation, and resolved to settle down in the place. There was much to captivate the imagination of the youthful Torquato in this wonderful city of the sea, then in the zenith of its fame, surpassing all the capitals of transalpine Europe in the extent of its commerce, in refinement of manners, and in the cultivation ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... men's falls, he labours all he can to bring them into the same pit of perdition with him. For [1221]"men's miseries, calamities, and ruins are the devil's banqueting dishes." By many temptations and several engines, he seeks to captivate our souls. The Lord of Lies, saith [1222]Austin, "as he was deceived himself, he seeks to deceive others," the ringleader to all naughtiness, as he did by Eve and Cain, Sodom and Gomorrah, so would he do by all the world. Sometimes ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... persons. I do not imitate the Pythagoreans, who close their gates; for I perceive that truth never ought to be a sealed fountain; but I cannot go into the Prytanaeum, the agoras, and the workshops, and jest, like Socrates, to captivate the attention of young men. When I thus seek to impart hidden treasures, I lose without receiving; and few perceive the value of what is offered. I feel the breath of life taken away from me by the multitude. Their praises cause me to fear, lest, ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... don't mind a bit o' aching, and I'm ready for any game you like. What do you say, sir, to trying to captivate the ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... Mr. Weller drew a long puff of smoke, and detecting himself in the very act of smiling on the housekeeper, put a sudden constraint upon his countenance and looked sternly at the candle, with a determination not to captivate, himself, or encourage thoughts of captivation in others. From this iron frame of mind he was roused by the ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... live long enough to watch over her daughter's happiness, yet to live true to her own heart. Then she made up her mind. She would struggle with her rival. She would shine once more in society. She would feign the love which she could no longer feel, she would captivate her husband's fancy; and when she had lured him into her power, she would coquet with him like a capricious mistress who takes delight in tormenting a lover. This hateful strategy was the only possible ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... They are more than the luxurious fancies of the Arab's mind, for they vividly set forth the love and hate, the craft and hypocrisy, the courage and revenge of his race. Moreover, they portray in a truly dramatic manner the innermost life and thought of the Moslem, while they captivate the senses by a magnificent panorama of exquisite banquets, lovely characters, charming gardens, ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... give rise to conflicting impressions. Historians, taking a bird's-eye view of their subject, portray its most general characteristics; they bring out only the prominent features, and sacrificing all the rest, draw pictures whose precision and simplicity captivate our minds. We finally get into the habit of seeing an epoch as they have painted it, and cannot imagine there was anything in it besides the qualities they specify. But when we read letters relating, without alteration or selection, events as they took place, the opinions of men and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... forgotten British playwrights, Daudet was influenced rather by the virile dramas of Dumas fils and Augier. But in "Fromont and Risler," not only is the plot a trifle stagy, but the heroine herself seems almost a refugee of the footlights; exquisitely presented as Sidonie is, she fails quite to captivate or convince, perhaps because her sisters have been seen so often before in this play and in that. And now and again even in his later novels we discover that Daudet has needlessly achieved the adroit arrangement of events so ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... [1220] Lactantius thinks, with other men's falls, he labours all he can to bring them into the same pit of perdition with him. For [1221]"men's miseries, calamities, and ruins are the devil's banqueting dishes." By many temptations and several engines, he seeks to captivate our souls. The Lord of Lies, saith [1222]Austin, "as he was deceived himself, he seeks to deceive others," the ringleader to all naughtiness, as he did by Eve and Cain, Sodom and Gomorrah, so would he do by all the world. Sometimes he tempts ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... of his majesty to the Germanic confederation, as Elector of Hanover, would give mortal offence to the Emperor Joseph, and would indispose him to an alliance with Great Britain in the event of a future war. He argued, that it was our interest to conciliate and captivate Austria, as the only power in Europe able to keep France in awe. Fox next adverted to a favourable opportunity for an alliance with Russia, which had been lost, and then condemned a commercial treaty, which government ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... These objects which captivate us are what we were, what we must be again some day. We were nature as they are; and culture, following the way of reason and of liberty, must bring us back to nature. Accordingly, these objects are an ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... advantage of his leisure. His natural love for children had scope for expression, and children themselves had an instinctive confidence in the power and sympathy that irradiated his face and gave his square, rugged features the beauty of wisdom and kindliness. He could captivate them alike by lively fun and excellent nonsense, and by lucid explanations of the wonders of the world about which children love to hear. He fired one small granddaughter with a love of astronomy, and one day a visitor, entering unexpectedly, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... orders of monks became a kind of regular troops or garrisons of the Romish church; and though the temporal interests of society, still more the cause of true piety, were hurt, by their various devices to captivate the populace, they proved the chief supports of that mighty fabric of superstition, and till the revival of true learning, secured ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... profession she had a mysterious vision, in which the world was represented to her under the symbol of a vast enclosure, abounding in all the delights which here below are wont to fascinate and captivate the hearts of men. She noticed that all who permitted themselves to be attracted too closely by the false glare were at once hopelessly entangled, as if a net had been cast around them, and among the unhappy victims she even recognised an acquaintance of her own. What terrified her most ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... Mrs Merdle, reposing easily among her cushions, 'to captivate people. I don't want you to take any trouble upon yourself, or to try to be fascinating. I simply request you to care about nothing—or seem to care ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... perhaps might be saved. Lastly, it would be a service to Lord Warburton, who evidently pleased himself greatly with the charming girl. It was a little "weird" he should—being what he was; but there was no accounting for such impressions. Pansy might captivate any one—any one at least but Lord Warburton. Isabel would have thought her too small, too slight, perhaps even too artificial for that. There was always a little of the doll about her, and that was not what he had been looking for. Still, who could say what men ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... pupil by an appeal to simple utilitarian motives. On the other hand there clings to literature, and particularly to poetry, which is the quintessence of literature, an air of pleasure-seeking, of holiday, of irresponsibility and detachment from the work-a-day world, which must captivate the student, or else the study itself will seem very poor fooling compared with football or hockey. If the attitude of the teacher reflects the old question of the Latin Grammar "Why should I teach you letters?" he would better turn to some other subject which his pupils will ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... of Seraphita is its hybridity, not to speak of its pretentious psychology. It is neither flesh nor fowl; and, exception made for some fine passages, more at the beginning than in the rest of the book, it jars and irks, and amazes, but does not captivate or persuade. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... only which involve the exercise of the mind as a controlling factor. One may be a great orator, according to the usual acceptation of the term "great," and yet be only a declaimer and a rhetorician. That is to say, he may be able to captivate audiences by his superior action, as Demosthenes defines oratory to be, and at the same time his elocution and rhetoric may be unexceptionable, yet he maybe in fact totally lacking in every element which goes to make up ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... spread abroad, and the princes of the neighbouring kingdoms made many attempts to captivate her. Almost all asked her in marriage. But she found none with enough sense, and so she listened to all ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was initiated and pressed by him:" of Rufus Choate, who combined in more majestic and graceful proportions than any other American lawyer, the ripe scholar and the successful advocate; who with the beauty and power of his language could captivate a jury, a popular audience, or the American Congress with equal facility; who gave to English literature some of its most brilliant gems, and who in his immortal eulogy upon Webster, in the opinion of competent ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... us in the refrigerate larder at hand. We waited until the confusing pepper of a shower had passed away and left the water calm. Then softly and deftly we propelled our bark across to the Ayboljockameegus. We tossed to the fish humbugs of wool, silk, and feathers, gauds such as captivate the greedy or the guileless. Again the "gobemouches" trout, the fellows on the look-out for novelty, dashed up and swallowed disappointing juiceless morsels, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... Greek and Roman women, specially the girdle of Aphrodite, so emblazoned with symbols of the joys of love that no susceptible soul could resist the power of it; it was borrowed by Hera to captivate Zeus. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the splendour of his nature, and become its type. More smoothness in his fortunes would have shorn them of their tragic picturesqueness. Failure itself was needed to colour all with the tints which surprise and captivate. He was not a martyr to forgive his persecutors. He was not a hero to endure in silence, and without an effort at escape. His character had many earthy streaks. His self-love was enormous. He could be shifty, wheedling, whining. His extraordinary and indomitable ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... there have been very many pleasanter companions than she will make thee, for she is excessively irritable and passionate. Withal she is so fond of admiration, that I have no doubt she would give chace to the ugliest toad that ever devoured a worm, so she could captivate him. She ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... orator; and the importance of the subject, for awhile, superseded by the admiration of his talents. With what strength of argument, with what powers of the fancy, with what emotions of the heart, does he assault and subjugate the whole man; and, at once, captivate his reason, his imagination, and his passions! To effect this must be the utmost effort of the most improved state of human nature,—not a faculty that he possesses is here unemployed; not a faculty that ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Joconde so much dismay'd; His spirits droop'd, his lilies 'gan to fade; No more he look'd the charmer he had been; And when the court's gay dames his face had seen; They cried, Is this the beauty, we were told, Would captivate each heart, or young or old? Why, he's the jaundice; ev'ry view displays The mien ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... people ... to secure, if not the allegiance, at least the passive, the generous acquiescence of the general mass of the population." To make his meaning perfectly clear, Mr. Pal instanced the rural reforms, the agricultural banks and other things which had been done in Lord Curzon's time, "to captivate the mind of the teeming masses," and he added that "he is a foolish politician in India who allows the Government to capture the mind of the masses to the exclusion of his own influence and his own countrymen." Mr. Pal is from his point ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... pathetic. Senator Douglas was the most brilliant figure in the political life of the day. Winning in personality, fearless as an advocate, magnetic in eloquence, shrewd in political manoeuvring, he had every quality to captivate the public. His resources had never failed him. From his entrance into Illinois politics in 1834, he had been the recipient of every political honor his party had to bestow. For the past eleven years ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... terpsichorean art, living in this far away Mexican town? Such talent could not remain in obscurity for long. Another great Spanish dancer was about to burst unheralded upon the world. It only remained for her to dance into it—to captivate and conquer it. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... his audience by the noticeable force and the exhaustiveness of his mental labor. He has improved with practice, and the description of him given in 1866 is no longer quite fair—'No charm of voice, no sonorous phrases, nothing to captivate an audience. His voice while clear and distinct, is dry and unsympathetic. He speaks monotonously, with many pauses, at times he almost stutters, as if an obstinate tongue refused to obey orders, and as if he had to wrestle for the adequate expression ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... graces, you that inhabit the heavenly mansions of Seraphina's countenance, what were the weapons used to captivate the heart of Mr. Jones. First, from two lovely blue eyes, whose bright orbs flashed lightning at their discharge, flew off two pointed ogles; but, happily for our hero, hit only a vast piece of beef, which he was then conveying into ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... breeches, the black silk clocked hose with gold buckles at ankle and knee, and a silver-hilted dress-sword in a green shagreen sheath, complete my picture. I wish you to see him as I saw him, that in a measure you may comprehend why his mere personal charms were such as to attract and captivate women. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... this, and never sought to obtain ascendency over the people by pandering to their brutality, but by appealing to their reason; and the fanatical tone of his speeches possessed at least that decency that attends great ideas—he ruled by respect, and scorned to captivate them by familiarity. The more he gained the confidence of the lower classes, the more did he affect the philosophical tone and austere demeanour of the statesman. It was plainly perceptible in his most radical propositions, that however he might wish to renew social order he would not corrupt ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the desirable young men had borne Miss Greeb to the altar, so that when her mother died the fair Julia almost despaired of attaining to the dignity of wifehood. Nevertheless, she continued to keep boarders, and to make attempts to captivate the hearts of such bachelors as she ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... C. Jones led the van of stump orators in Tennessee, Ben Hardin, John J. Crittenden and John C. Breckenridge in Kentucky. Tradition still has stories to tell of their exploits and prowess, their wit and eloquence, even their commonplace sayings and doings. They were marked men who never failed to captivate their audiences. The system of stump oratory had many advantages as a public force and was both edifying and educational. There were a few conspicuous writers for the press, such as Ritchie, Greeley and Prentice. But the day of personal journalism ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... obeyed readily, for new clothes were rare events in her simple life. This natty little "Christmas frock" was white, with scarlet trimmings, and quite sufficiently in contrast with the plain blue flannel ones of everyday use to captivate her fancy and make her patient under the tedious process of "fitting." Yet she was glad to return to her table and her letter to Ninian Sharp, which she found no difficulty in composing, since she was free to ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... bracelet and laid it aside. But when she returned and I brought her out the bracelet, she put forth her hand and I clasped the bracelet on her wrist; and I wondered at the whiteness of her hand and the beauty of her wrist, which would captivate any beholder; and I recalled ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... shown that he is neither a scientist nor a strictly correct and systematic scholar, for the first time we approach the question: Is Strauss a capable writer? Perhaps the task he set himself was not so much to scare people away from the old faith as to captivate them by a picturesque and graceful description of what life would be with the new. If he regarded scholars and educated men as his most probable audience, experience ought certainly to have told ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the taste of the foreign liquor, and their eyes were not insensible to the charms of coined gold, of which they had before seen but little. The epaulettes also and stars and ribands were such baubles as were well adapted to captivate the fancy of semi-civilized chieftains; and the Russian fabrics were a temptation to all, especially to the women; but to the honor of the Circassians, the tribes with few exceptions disdained to sell their birthright of independence for a ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... fear he never would smell right again in all his life, which was a great grief to me; for truly Peter's nose is, as I may say, the staff of my life, my defence, and my succour: truly thee don't know the value of little Peter's nose. And, moreover, the savour of the dead horse did somewhat captivate his attention; for truly little Peter is but a dog, and he loves horse-flesh. Well, friend, this was a thing that perplexed me; until, by and by, having brought little Peter to reason in the matter of ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Constantinople; and, having, it is said, a vision of her future, suddenly took to a pretension of virtue and plain sewing; contrived to gain the notice of Justinian, to inflame his passions as she did those of all the world besides, to captivate him into first an alliance, and at length a marriage. The emperor raised her to an equal seat with himself on his throne; and she was worshiped as empress in that city where she had been admired as harlot. And on the throne she was a wise ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... herself to captivate Jove, her zone is fringed with a hundred tassels, and her ear-rings are described in terms corresponding exactly to the triple leaves ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... as if he told the steps, With gentle majesty and modest pride; Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps, As who should say, 'Lo! thus my strength is tried; And this I do to captivate the eye 281 Of the fair breeder that ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... however inexplicable a nature, and nothing which even the imagination may anticipate, which is not, and will not be, easily attributable to these unseen angels. They are lying spirits; for the fundamental principle on which they are acting is a lie; but they tell enough truth to sway and captivate the minds of men. It matters not how sacred the field in which they tread, nor how hallowed the associations which they invade, they press into every spot where it is possible, by spinning another thread, to strengthen their ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... of women, however, who as a rule are likely to become fretful and ill-tempered as they grow in years: girls who are allowed to grow up with uninformed judgments, who are taught that the chief end and aim of woman is to captivate and please the opposite sex, who are taught to think a pretty face and delicate figure of more importance than good sense or a thorough education. And yet it is a fact worthy of notice, that those who most eloquently ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... pine-tree, and diligent searcher after truth in the shape of eggs and larvae of insects, preeminently a New England bird, clad in black and ashen gray, with a note the most cheering and reassuring to be heard in our January woods,—I know of none other of our birds so well calculated to captivate the Emersonian muse. ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Stephen's-on-the-Hill; and the circumstance that, because he had singled her out approvingly, she was expected to worm herself into his favour, seemed to her of a monstrous injustice. But, all the same, had she possessed the power to captivate him, she would cheerfully have put her pride in her pocket. For, having once seen him close at hand, she knew how desirable he was. Having been the object of glances from those liquid eyes, of smiles ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... be placed in a conspicuous place in the store, office, or home of the person receiving them. Railway, insurance, and other corporations have vied with each other in the elegance and attractiveness of their charts, etc., until they have gone into the fine arts, and spared no expense to captivate ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Fellside an unmitigated advantage, or, indeed, his presence anywhere. Those two were not sympathetic. Maulevrier made fun of his elder sister's perfections, chaffed her intolerably about the great man she was going to captivate, in her first season, the great houses in which she was going to reign. Lesbia despised him for that neglect of all his opportunities of culture which had left him, after the most orthodox and costly ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... that it is God's gift, it is much easier to go by it straight to the will of God, and to unite ourselves to His good pleasure. Easier, I say, than by prosperity, which has attractions of its own that captivate our senses, and, like Dalila, lull them to sleep, working in us a subtle change, so that we begin insensibly to love for its own sake the prosperity which God sends us, instead of bestowing all our grateful love on God Who sends it, and to Whom all thanks ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... She had seen England, being "coached" by Crabb-Robinson and others, so as to give some substance to the vague philosophe-Anglomane flimsiness of her earlier fancy. She had seen Republicanism turn to actual Tyranny, and had made exceedingly unsuccessful attempts to captivate the tyrant. She had seen Germany, and had got something of its then not by any means poisonous, if somewhat windy, "culture"; a little romance of a kind, though she was never a real Romantic; some aesthetics; some very exoteric philosophy, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... some ground for the seaman's perplexity, for the closet in which he stood, apart from the fact of its being only ten feet long by six broad, had been arranged by the tasteful sisters after the manner of a lady's boudoir, with a view to captivate some poor sister of very limited means, or, perhaps, some humble-minded and possibly undersized young clerk from the country. The bed, besides being rather small, and covered with a snow-white counterpane, was canopied with white muslin curtains lined ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... object of a British expedition. The "march to Paris" had been proclaimed by orators, exhibited in theatres, and chanted in street ballads. All before us was conquest, and distinctions of every kind that can captivate the untried soldier, glittered in all eyes. I was young, ardent, and active. My name was one known to the table at which I seated myself on my introduction to the Guards, and I was immediately on the best footing with the gallant young men of a corps which has never suffered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... glance I am again seized by a mortal fear. I have a presentiment that this man can enchain her, captivate her, subjugate her, and I feel inferior in contrast with his savage masculinity; I am filled with envy, ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... who remained rather unfamiliar with it, she made it her whole desire to be of good service to him in the society in which she had been called upon to live with him. "I hadn't a word to say in society," she writes; "I didn't even know its language. Obliged, as a woman, to captivate people's minds, I was ignorant how many shades there are of self-love, and I offended it when I thought I was flattering it. Always striking wrong notes and never hitting it off, I saw that my old ideas would never accord with those I ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... refugees, or a detachment from the royal army, that they were to assail, they were profoundly ignorant; but they knew that the officer in advance was distinguished for courage and personal prowess; and these are virtues that are sure to captivate the thoughtless soldiery. On arriving near the gates of the Locusts, the trooper halted his party, and made his arrangements for the assault. Dismounting, he ordered eight of his men to follow his example, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... a dying father was graven upon the heart of a young girl both timid and sensitive. She never forgot it; and it needed the fierce, inexplicable passion which took possession of her soul to captivate her and carry her ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... revere All learning, and all thought. The painter's fame Is thine, whate'er thy lot, who honorest grace. And need enough in this low time, when they, Who seek to captivate the fleeting notes Of heaven's sweet beauty, must despair almost, So heavy and obdurate show the hearts Of their companions. Honor kindly then Those who bear up in their so generous arms The beautiful ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... soon cast aside the toy which had taught them so great a lesson and served them so well, carrying them so far in the direction they wished to go. And no sooner had they cast it aside than a fresh toy, another piece of mechanism, came on the scene to captivate their hearts, and instead of a help, to form a hindrance. The motor not only carried them back over all the ground they had covered on the bicycle, but further still, almost back to the times of chairs and fans and smelling-salts and sprained ankles at Lyme ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... acquainted with the whole neighborhood, and keeps us in a state of perpetual mirth and excitement. What do you think she has done? She has actually made Mr. Regulus escort her on horseback into the country, and says she is resolved to captivate him." ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... with outward lips thy Lord and God most dear, The same to 'stablish with consent of conscience stand in fear. Thou art yet free, Philologus; all torments thou may'st 'scape, Only the pleasures of the world thou shalt awhile forbear. Renounce thy crime, and sue for grace, and do not captivate Thy conscience unto mortal sin: the yoke of Christ do bear. Shut up these words within thy breast, which sound so in thine ear: The outward man hath caused thee this enterprise to take; Beware lest wickedness of spirit the same do ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... are very fond of gold. Now, how is it that you don't barter your virtue for gold sometimes? I am a philosopher, Ursula, and like to know everything. You must be every now and then exposed to great temptation, Ursula: for you are of a beauty calculated to captivate all hearts. Come, sit down and tell me how you are enabled to resist such temptation as gold ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... whom she abandoned to the conduct of his mother, whose province it undoubtedly was to manage the nurture of her own child; while she herself resumed her operations upon the commodore, whom she was resoled at any rate to captivate and enslave. And it must be owned that Mrs. Grizzle's knowledge of the human heart never shone so conspicuous as in the methods she pursued for the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... beauty does not inspire love; some please the sight without captivating the affections. If all beauties were to enamour and captivate, the hearts of mankind would be in a continual state of perplexity and confusion—for beautiful objects being infinite, the sentiments they inspire should ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... dear, you who, between ourselves, were admitted among the big girls while I still gamboled among the little ones, you whose only sin was pride, you,—at the age of twenty-seven, and with a dowry of two hundred thousand francs,—capture and captivate a truly great man, one of the wittiest men in Paris, one of the two talented men that our village has ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... of writing. It is probable that nearly the same emotions, but much weaker and far less complex, are felt by birds when the male pours forth his full volume of song, in rivalry with other males, to captivate the female. Love is still the commonest theme of our songs. As Herbert Spencer remarks, "music arouses dormant sentiments of which we had not conceived the possibility, and do not know the meaning; or, as Richter says, tells us of things we have not seen and ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Juliet came to captivate London, another idol of the stage was led to the altar by William, first Earl of Craven. Louisa Brunton, for that was the name of Craven's Countess, was cradled, like her successor, on the stage; ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... question; that the question was how to be artistic, graceful, charming, and whatever else they said he himself was. If he was aware of not being all that, he was aware also of having tried to be it; of having sought from the beginning to captivate the reader's fancy as well as convince his reason. He had never been satisfied with being plain and direct; he had constantly wished to amuse as well as edify, and following the line of beauty, as that of the least resistance, had been his practice if not ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... was so elegant, so graceful, and so thoroughly finished in every part, that Conrad could not help coveting it. He was not very much to be blamed, for it was one that would captivate the fancy of any boy who was fond of ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... the next day in his own carriage, drawn by two noble bay horses, and arrived without "let or hindrance" in Boston. He expected to find Isabella a girl possessed of some considerable beauty, just sufficient to captivate a seaman who for months had seen no women more attractive than the squaws of the North-West Coast or South Sea Islands; and sailors, under such circumstances, are exceedingly susceptible, me ipso testi; he had made up his mind, too, that she could be no other than ignorant and ill-bred ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... point:—Two females, neighbours and friends, were tried some years since in England for the murder of their husbands. It appeared that they were in love with the same individual, and had conjointly, at various times, paid sums of money to a Gipsy woman to work charms to captivate his affection. Whatever little effect the charm might produce, they were successful in their principal object, for the person in question carried on for some time a criminal intercourse with both. The matter came to the knowledge of the husbands, who, taking ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the languid and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will; which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul before the understanding is ready either to join with them, or to oppose them. It is by a long deduction, and much study, that we discover the adorable wisdom of God in his works: when ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... they have the best opportunity of judging, and that they are slow in forming a judgment. The good opinion and confidence of the members of the same profession, like the King's name on the field of battle, is "a tower of strength;" it is the title of legitimacy. The ambition to please the people, to captivate jurors, spectators, and loungers about the court room, may mislead a young man into pertness, flippancy, and impudence, things which often pass current for eloquence and ability with the masses; but the ambition to please the Bar can never mislead him. Their ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... graceful mien, That she, thereby, became a queen. For thus (may ever truth prevail) We draw our moral from this tale. This quality, fair ladies, know Prevails much more (you'll find it so) T'ingage and captivate a heart, Than a fine head dress'd up with art. The fairies' gift of greatest worth Is grace of bearing, not high birth; Without this gift we'll miss the prize; Possession gives us ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... however rude and original, which bubble up from the heart freighted with its feelings, rush with electrical force and velocity to the heart, and stir to the extent of its capacities. Oratory, however finished, is from the brain, and is an art; it may convince the mind and captivate the imagination, but never touches the heart or stirs the soul. To awaken feelings in others, we must feel ourselves. Eloquence is the volume of flame, oratory the shaft of polished ice; the one fires to madness, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the same Scriptures from the Bible, as if the awe which it is supposed the fiends entertain for Holy Writ depended, not on the meaning of the words, but the arrangement of the page, and the type in which they were printed. This singular species of flattery was designed to captivate the clergyman through his professional opinions; others were more strictly personal. The afflicted damsel seems to have been somewhat of the humour of the Inamorata of Messrs. Smack, Pluck, Catch, and Company, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... silent, for she did not particularly care to hear about her early days, when she had been an operative in the cotton mills of Southbridge. She had possessed just enough beauty to captivate the son of the proprietor, who was fresh from college, and after a few weeks' acquaintance they were married. Fortunately her husband was a man of good sense, and restrained her from the commission of many foolish acts. Thus when she insisted upon sending for Rose ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... existence. Pleasant were these days of my early boyhood; and a melancholy pleasure steals over me as I recall them. Those were stirring times of which I am speaking, and there was much passing around me calculated to captivate the imagination. The dreadful struggle which so long convulsed Europe, and in which England bore so prominent a part, was then at its hottest; we were at war, and determination and enthusiasm shone in every face; man, woman, and child were ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... I didn't always think thought was free, may I never be an interesting young widow, and captivate ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... greater, perhaps often only, pleasures from it. It is easy to imagine how the more evident and real beauties of the inferior schools, for we do not hesitate to speak of the Italian as the higher, more easily captivate, especially, the incipient lovers of art. They begin by collecting the Dutch; but as they advance in taste and knowledge, and acquire the legitimate feeling for art, they are sure to end with the Italian. The uninitiated may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... had very lately been, a beauty of the very first rank, and must be supposed to have still retained charms to captivate a barbarian of the north; if, indeed, he himself was not careful to maintain an heedful recollection of the immeasurable distance between them. Indeed, even this recollection might hardly have saved Hereward from the charms of this enchantress, bold, free-born, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of spiders. The stage associates of Mile. Guimard called her "L'araignee," and Sophie Arnould christened her "the little silkworm," for the sake of the joke about "la feuille." But such spiteful raillery did not prevent her charming men to her feet whom greater beauties had failed to captivate. Houdon the sculptor molded her foot, and the great painters vied for the privilege of decorating the walls of her hotel. When she broke her arm, mass was said in church for her recovery, and she was one of the reigning ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... here!" said the Countess. "But why such an elaborate toilette? Whom do you intend to captivate? What sort of weather is it? It ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... hive swarms, it is customary to take the shovel from the grate, and the key from the door, and to produce therewith a species of music which is supposed to captivate and soothe the winged tribe. If the bees do not settle on any neighbouring tree where they may have the full benefit of the inharmonious music, they are generally assailed with stones. This is a strange sort of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... Lucrece came before her—"is deep enough. Not deep like a river, but like a snake. I could do well enough with your plain, honest sister; but I love you not, Mistress Lucrece. Enville. Your graceful ways do not captivate me. Ah! it takes a woman to know a woman. And the men, poor silly things! fancy they know us better ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... string, and the whole apparatus with which they are to be taken, they gorge the bait nevertheless—they must come to it—they must swallow it—and are presently struck and landed gasping. Rawdon saw there was a manifest intention on Mrs. Bute's part to captivate him with Rebecca. He was not very wise; but he was a man about town, and had seen several seasons. A light dawned upon his dusky soul, as he thought, through a speech of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... genuine human heart. One of the reasons why he detested what he called stump oratory was because he believed it to be a great school of insincerity. Its end was not truth, but plausibility. It was the effort of interested men to throw opinions into such forms as might most captivate uninstructed men; to keep back every unpopular side; to magnify everything in them that was seductive. He once said to me that two great curses seemed to him eating away the heart and worth of the English people. One was drink. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... pampered as if earth had no thorn for their feet, and heaven not a wind to visit their young cheeks too roughly. The mother had been extremely handsome; and though the first bloom of youth was now gone, she had still the beauty that might captivate new love—an easier task than to retain the old. Both her sons, though differing from each other, resembled her; she had the features of the younger; and probably any one who had seen her in her own earlier youth would have recognized in that child's ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Music completes the charm by the most exquisite strains, by the harmony of the choir. These powerful incentives are repeated in a hundred different places; the metropolises, parishes, the numerous religious houses, the simple oratories, sparkle with emulation to captivate all the powers of the religious and devout mind. Thus a taste for the arts becomes general by means of so potent a lever, and artists increase in number and rivalry. Under this influence the celebrated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... a worthy, and, in their rank of life, a respectable middle-aged couple. The husband kept a little shop, and was a shoemaker, with whom Coleridge had become intimate. The wife, also, had been kind and attentive to him, and this was sufficient to captivate his affectionate nature, which had existed from earliest childhood, and strongly endeared him to all around him. Coleridge became exceedingly desirous of being apprenticed to this man, to learn the art of shoemaking; and in due time, when some of ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... all, contemplated all, and everything won his heart. The first to captivate and take his fancy were the pots, out of which he would have very gladly helped himself to a moderate pipkinful; then the wine skins secured his affections; and lastly, the produce of the frying-pans, if, indeed, such imposing cauldrons may be called frying-pans; and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... slim young fellow, with an olive, Velasquez-like face, and dark, tender eyes. I have seldom seen a man who was more likely to excite a woman's interest, or to captivate her imagination. His expression was, as a rule, dreamy, and even languid; but if in conversation a subject arose which interested him he would be all animation in a moment. On such occasions his colour would heighten, his eyes gleam, and he could speak with an eloquence which would carry his audience ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... exclusively, in favour of this portion of the empire that is to be. These sums are expended in erecting showy churches and colleges, and in sustaining priests and emissaries. Everything is done to captivate, and to liberalise in appearance, a system essentially despotic. The sagacity of the effort is discovered, in avoiding to attack and shock the prejudices of the adult, that they may direct the education of the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... at her toilet, and was decorating her head with all the grace she could devise to captivate Matta, at the moment he was denied admittance: she knew nothing of the matter; but her husband knew every particular. He had taken it in dudgeon that the first visit was not paid to him, and as he was resolved that it should not be paid to his wife, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... every people and kindred by signs; no other discourse, indeed, being needful, than such as the mackerel-fisher holds with his finned quarry, who, if other bait be wanting, can by a bare bit of white rag at the end of a string captivate those foolish fishes. Such piscatorial oratory is Satan cunning in. Before one he trails a hat and feather, or a bare feather without a hat; before another, a Presidential chair, or a tidewaiter's stool, or a pulpit ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... has the shore of Greece echoed with the wildest sounds; the delicious warblings of the Lyre charmed and astonished every ear. The blaze of rhetoric then burst forth; the ancients sought not by false thoughts, and glittering diction, to captivate the ear, but by manly and energetic modes of expression, to rule the heart ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... were in your possession, and should sue me for the money so as to get me into prison by means of them, if I persisted in claiming an account from you of my property. Now you reproach me for having a weakness for that lady when you yourself incited her to captivate me! She told me so to my face.... She told me the story and laughed at you.... You wanted to put me in prison because you are jealous of me with her, because you'd begun to force your attentions upon her; and I know all about that, too; she laughed at you for that as well—you ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... us a verdant specimen," she said, as she at last bade him good-by, and turned her attention to Mark Ray, her brother's partner, who had been with them at Newport, and whom she was bending all her energies to captivate. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... ought this Gospel to be received by the guilty, perishing creatures, for whose rescue from perdition it is designed. How should this display of divine compassion melt and captivate the hearts of those, whose sins have been thus expiated, and for whom an offer of free pardon and endless blessedness has ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... the French and English the Greek. When they do appear, they are generally disposed of at a high price. [Sidenote: GEORGIAN SLAVE.] This beautiful captive, who proved to be a Georgian, was neither bashful nor timid. She saluted us with smiles, severing her raven locks, and trying to captivate the spectators, by making her beauty appear to the greatest advantage. However, it did not seem to possess any power over the Turks; and as to the Christians, they are not allowed to purchase slaves publicly, though sometimes it is done ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... means to get any advantage out of the lazy and childish Filipinos, who have no needs; and that the cura has infinite advantages over the governor, for his buffets do not offend, his requests oblige, and his love to the village and his disinterestedness captivate and interest these people, and make them as wax. Thus indeed can it be said that the cura is the soul of the village. In any province where its ruler is united with the curas, where the latter honor the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... to the gaze of angels, with the rainbow of emerald about his throne, with the sea of crystal, the tree of life, or the gates of precious stones, also soothes the sublimity of mountains with gentle traits of scenery and soft gradations of color which give enjoyment more passive than awe, and rather captivate than overpower the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... are all treeless, and our great heave of masonry comes up to the very edge of our green oases. Even the smaller parks which fill but a block or two, when twilight enfolds them, blurring the harsher outlines and conjuring out the shadows, can captivate the senses. If you chance to wander in Brooklyn—which no self-respecting inhabitant of Manhattan permits himself to do except under compulsing!—you may come upon Fort Greene Park when the evening shadows are stealing down the streets to meet you, and the Martyrs' Monument strangely ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... be suitable to the body that I represent, to the cause which I sustain, or to my own individual disposition, upon such an occasion. My Lords, we know very well what these fallacious blandishments too frequently are. We know that they are used to captivate the benevolence of the court, and to conciliate the affections of the tribunal rather to the person than to the cause. We know that they are used to stifle the remonstrances of conscience in the judge, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the intercourse you are obliged to have with men, they are quite proper under such circumstances. But when it comes to gallantry, you will have to change all such virtues for an equal number of charming traits; those that captivate, it is the only coin that passes current in this country; it is the only merit, and you must be on your guard against calling it spurious money. It may be that true merit consists less in real perfection than in that which the world ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... air of romance and mystery that was well adapted to captivate the imagination of a young, ardent, and solitary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the slave be, as I have already observed to your majesty, there is no king on earth can tyrannize over her will. When indeed you speak of a slave mistress of charms sufficient to captivate a monarch, and induce him to love her; if she be of a rank infinitely below him, I am of your opinion, she ought to think herself happy in her misfortunes: still what happiness can it be, when she considers herself only ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... have attained it by a different route. The innovation for which they claimed credit is a matter of method, of technique. Their deliberate purpose is to surprise us by the fidelity of their studies, to captivate and convince us by an accumulation of exact minutiae: in a word, to prove that truth is more interesting than fiction. So history should be written, and so they wrote it. First and last, whatever form they chose, they remained historians. Alleging the example set by Plutarch and ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... been foolish in my suspicions and apprehensions, and hated myself for it. Her sweet devotedness to me was sufficient proof of her honesty. I was not wealthy by any means, and I knew that if she chose she could, with her notable beauty, captivate a rich husband without much difficulty. Husbands are only unattainable by the blue-stocking, the flirt and ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... liberties some unmarried girls might with impunity allow themselves, the married state had always been held sacred and unspotted at Otaheite. But such was the force of the temptation, that a chief actually offered his wife to Captain Cook, and the lady, by her husband's order, attempted to captivate him, by an artful display of her charms, seemingly in such a careless manner, as many a woman would be at a loss to imitate. I was sorry, for the sake of human nature, that this proposal came from a man, whose general character was in other respects very fair. It was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... of beauty. Endowed with mind, she is its living and marvellous personation. If a beautiful woman wishes to please, she will always succeed. The fascinations of beauty in such a case never fail to captivate, whatever man may do to resist them. There is a spot in every ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... and poverty is so essentially opposed to the spirit that creates the energy and enthusiasm of industry, that their continued coexistence may be regarded as impossible." But such a fatal mistake could not long captivate the mind, or cause men to forget Benedict and his industrial ideal. The blessings of wealth rightly administered, and the dignity of labor without which wealth is impossible, came to be recognized as necessary factors in ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... possibly fussy, perhaps slightly comic to a younger generation—was still considerably younger than James. With her rich figure, her excellent complexion, her carefully-cherished hair, and her apparel, she was a woman to captivate a man of sixty, whose practical experience of the ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... Without having any seeds sown in their understanding, or the affections of the heart set to work, they were brought out of their nursery, or the place they were secluded in, to prevent their faces being common; like blazing stars, to captivate Lords. ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... lurking in ambush, went afloat to wreak mischief, and the records of the First Church of Salem contain this quaint entry under date of July 25, 1677: "The Lord having given a Commission to the Indians to take no less than 13 of the Fishing Ketches of Salem and Captivate the men... it struck a great consternation into all the people here. The Pastor moved on the Lord's Day, and the whole people readily consented, to keep the Lecture Day following as a Fast Day, which was accordingly done.... The Lord was pleased ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... and if I arrived at independence, then,—what then? Why, the right to speak of love and aim at power. This was not the view of Ellinor Compton. The law seemed to her a tedious, needless drudgery; there was nothing in it to captivate her imagination. She listened to me with that charm which she yet retains, and by which she seems to identify herself with those who speak to her. She would turn to me with a pleading look when her father 'dilated on the brilliant prospects ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was the impulse and fancy of the moment, was at once the charm and the danger of my aunt's character. She could not resist the temptation of initiating me, perhaps too early, into those studies which captivate the imagination and excite the feelings. German and Italian we studied together. The most romantic parts of history—all that was most interesting and bewitching in poetry, furnished materials for those hours which we devoted to reading. Reading! that most powerful instrument ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... not, and for Admiration to infer Love, and Love Praise, and Praise the use especially of such things as are set off with high and lofty expressions, it necessarily follows that such persons will cry up, and make use of, those that by these means captivate their understandings, especially their credits being ingaged also; but above all, if they proceed from meaner persons, of whom they are most credulous, having in suspition wiser men, believing the former are not able, and that the wiser are able; and therefore will deceive them. All which appears ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... Bhaer sat looking about him with the air of a traveler who knocks at a strange door, and when it opens, finds himself at home. The children went to him like bees to a honeypot, and establishing themselves on each knee, proceeded to captivate him by rifling his pockets, pulling his beard, and investigating his watch, with juvenile audacity. The women telegraphed their approval to one another, and Mr. March, feeling that he had got a kindred ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... expression to his comely countenance, but rather the expression which might have suited the hero of courts and tournaments, than the chief of a brigand's camp. The aspect, manner, and bearing, of the Provencal were those which captivate rather than awe,—blending, as they did, a certain military frankness with the easy and graceful dignity of one conscious of gentle birth, and accustomed to mix, on equal terms, with the great and noble. His form happily contrasted and elevated the character of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... trice Of widow Clicquot or Moet A blessed bottle, placed in ice, For the young poet they display. Like Hippocrene it scatters light, Its ebullition foaming white (Like other things I could relate) My heart of old would captivate. The last poor obol I was worth— Was it not so?—for thee I gave, And thy inebriating wave Full many a foolish prank brought forth; And oh! what verses, what delights, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... from heaven, that omer, which was every man's daily portion of manna, is computed to have been more than might have well sufficed the heartiest feeder thrice as many meals. For those actions which enter into a man, rather than issue out of him, and therefore defile not, God uses not to captivate under a perpetual childhood of prescription, but trusts him with the gift of reason to be his own chooser; there were but little work left for preaching, if law and compulsion should grow so fast upon those things which heretofore ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... him to a disquisition on the nature of government and the "beauty" of nullification, striving to make a lasting impression on his intellect. Clay would rise, extend his hand with that winning grace of his, and instantly captivate him by his all-conquering courtesy. He would call him by name, inquire respecting his health, the town whence he came, how long he had been in Washington, and send him away pleased with himself and enchanted with Henry Clay. And what was his delight to receive ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... thee? This treasure of divine beauty, which Proserpina has entrusted to me for Venus, contains charms which I can make mine own, and their lustre must be extreme, since beauty herself, Venus, requires them to adorn herself. Would it be a great crime to snatch a few? To captivate a god, who has been my lover, to recover his affection, and put an end to my torture, can anything that I may do be unlawful? Let me open it. What vapours cloud my brain? and what do I behold issuing from this open casket? Love, unless thy compassion forbids my death, ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... examine objectively whether it is wise and beneficial to encourage the spreading of this tempting enterprise. The movement has reached the large cities between the Atlantic and the Pacific and is beginning to captivate the ministers of the small towns and villages. It seems as if an epoch has come for the church—the church which too long has ministered only to the spiritual needs of the community will at last remember again that Christ ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... had looked at Draupadi, the God of Desire invaded their hearts and continued to crush all their senses. As the lavishing beauty of Panchali who had been modelled by the Creator himself, was superior to that of all other women on earth, it could captivate the heart of every creature. And Yudhishthira, the son of Kunti, beholding his younger brothers, understood what was passing in their minds. And that bull among men immediately recollected the words of Krishna-Dwaipayana. And the king, then, from fear of a division amongst the brothers, addressing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... we are absolutely satisfied. I have before me on the mantelpiece yonder a portrait of a painting which represents Queen Mary's Bothwell. Take it down and look at it. Mark the big head, fit to conceive large schemes; the strong animal face, made to captivate a sensitive, feminine woman; the brutally forceful features—the mouth with a suggestion of wild boars' tusks behind it, the beard which could bristle with fury: the whole man and his life-history are revealed in that picture. I wonder if Scott had ever seen the original which hangs ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on! say what you please: I will not hate anything yet. Why have you torn up by the root all these little mountain ash-trees? This is the season of their beauty: come, Ternissa, let us make ourselves necklaces and armlets, such as may captivate old Sylvanus and Pan; you shall have your choice. But why have you torn ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... clever, and delightful book. The pictures of the dressed-up animals will captivate little ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... executed before; the pure spirituality of the conception, the elegance and force of the language, the harmony and variety of the numbers, were all executed with a felicity which none before or since have reached. That these poems did not at once captivate the public attention cannot be accounted for by any cause hitherto assigned. We may not wonder that the multitude did not at once perceive their full beauties; but that, among readers of taste and learning, there should not have been found a sufficient number to set the example ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... her carriage to contemplate it. The King said that it made him ridiculous, and desired her to retire to her own estate. The Duchesse de Roquelaure, of the house of Laval, was also suspected of wishing to captivate the King; but his Majesty was not so severe with her as with La Ferte. There was great talk in the scandalous circles about this intrigue; but I did not thrust my ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
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