"Charm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a change in public taste, something in the development of the time leads and governs every trend of popular thought. It may be the attraction of new inventions, or the perfection of new processes, or even, and this is not uncommon, the charm and fascination of some rare personality, whose ruling is absolute in its own immediate vicinity, and whose example spreads like circles in water far and far beyond the immediate personal influence. We cannot trace this apparent dearth of the art to one particular cause, we only know ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... February, 1840, when John Ruskin came of age, it seemed as though all the gifts of fortune had been poured into his lap. What his father's wealth and influence could do for him had been supplemented by a personal charm, which found him friends among the best men of the best ranks. What his mother's care had done in fortifying his health and forming his character, native energy had turned to advantage. He had won a reputation already much wider and more appreciable, as an artist and student of science, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... various guests. Even the waxed floor seemed to take on new reverberations as the pianoforte sounded the sweet despair of the Pole. To her dismay Ermentrude caught herself drifting away from the moment's hazy charm to thoughts of her poet. It annoyed her, she sharply reminded herself, that she could not absolutely saturate herself with the music and the manifold souvenirs of the old hotel; perhaps this may have been the spell ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... half turned (his back had from the first been toward Racey Dawson), and Racey perceived the cold and Roman profile of a long-jawed head. Then the man turned full in his direction and behold, the hard features vanished, and the man displayed a good-looking countenance of singular charm. The chin was a thought too wide and heavy, a trait it shared in common with the mouth, but otherwise the stranger's full face would have found favour in the eyes of almost any ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... they were very civil and kind to the strangers, but refused passage into the country. At my suggestion, the effect of a musket-shot was shown on a goat: they thought it supernatural, looked up to the clouds, and offered to bring ivory to buy the charm that could draw lightning down. When it was afterwards attempted to force a path, they darted aside on seeing the Banyamwezi's followers putting the arrows into the bowstrings, but stood in mute amazement looking at the guns, which mowed ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... charm upon these animals, that they may neither neigh nor whinny till we come again, for if they do so we are lost. Now let us go, and—stay, bring the gun with you, for you know how ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... Wingfield, Sr. had turned in his chair. Distress was rising in his tone as he leaned toward Jack. His face under the rim of light of the lamp had a new charm, which was not that of the indulgent or flattering or winning smile, or the masterful set of his chin on an object. He seemed pallid and old, struggling against a phantom himself; almost pitiful, this man of strength, while his eyes looked into ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... in Acadia after its conquest by the British. A dramatic picture that lives and shines with the indefinable charm of poetic romance. ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... city by the Itchen is full of quiet charm, for life's ever-changing drama has but one and the same background. The actors come and go, but the stage remains much the same, and the devotions, the meditations, and the acts of men who lived centuries ago were ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... means to attempt to hasten it; otherwise the desired event will only be retarded. What has long been undermining the stamina of health, which is commonly the case with diseases, or what has violently shocked it by accident, can only be removed by slow degrees. Medicines will not operate like a charm; and even when they are most efficacious, time is required to recover from the languid state to which persons are always reduced, both by accident and by disease. When the period is arrived at which sick persons may be said to be out of danger, a great ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the young brother rulers held a little court which for intimate gayety and charm surpassed all others. Gallic in its love of beauty, loving life and all its loveliest expressions, it was a court of dance and song—the heart of hearts of Gruyere, itself the centre and the very definition of Romand Switzerland. Often intermarried, the Burgundian counts preserved in its perfection ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... a guess that he had before him, in fact, an inexperience of life underlying intimate acquaintance with grief and poverty which he would not have believed to be possible. And oh, sexually, how it redoubled her beauty and charm! Yes, he could not deny that so unnatural a combination attracted him, and yet it enraged him also. A few moments ago he had heard from this woman's lips a declaration that no help could come till half and half made up one whole ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... recourse to well-made beds; nor do they, O king, derive any pleasure from women, or the laudatory hymns of bards and eulogists. Such persons can never practise virtue. Happiness can never be theirs, in this world. Honours can never be theirs, and peace hath no charm for them. Counsels that are for their benefit please them not. They never acquire what they have not, nor succeed in retaining what they have. O king, there is no other end for such men save destruction. As milk is possible in kine, asceticism in Brahmanas, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Robinson, the Beauty of Buttermere, whom the swindler John Hatfield had married in October, 1802, under the false name of Hope. Mary was the daughter of the landlord of the Fish Inn at Buttermere, and was famous in the Lake Country for her charm. Coleridge sent to the Morning Post in October some letters on the imposture, and Mary's name became a household word. Hatfield was hanged in September, 1803. Funds were meanwhile raised for Mary, and she ultimately married ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Tom Davies brought him into the company of Dr. Johnson, who hated Wilkes' Radicalism, and would never willingly have consented to meet him? For a time Johnson refused to unbend, but at last he could hold out no longer, and fell a victim to the charm of Wilkes' talk. ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... leave the wigwam, he seated himself, with the woman who remained, on the ground in the centre, while the men of the party, together with those from other wigwams in the neighborhood, sat in a ring around. Mestigoit, the sorcerer's brother, then brought in the charm, consisting of a few small pieces of wood, some arrow-heads, a broken knife, and an iron hook, which he wrapped in a piece of hide. The woman next rose, and walked around the hut, behind the company. Mestigoit and the sorcerer ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... us into our shanty when the evening meal was ready. Our host wished to slaughter a lamb, but we deferred that till the morrow, and we ate what we had brought with us. It was, barring the smoke, a delightful experience, and its charm never diminished. That hour spent before turning in, after supper, when the tobacco tins circulate, and the shepherds crowd in from the neighbouring huts, made an impression which it will not ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... honour of their presence is to work miracles, and that every thing will go on rightly when they have said, "Let it be so," or, "I must have it so." Mad. de Fleury's visits were not of this dictatorial or cursory nature. Not minutes, but hours, she devoted to these children—she who could charm by the grace of her manners, and delight by the elegance of her conversation, the most polished circles[1] and the best-informed societies of Paris, preferred to the glory of being admired the pleasure ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... if we had chucked out a good customer from the Guelph that would have been the end of the place. But it only seemed to do MacFarland's good. I guess it gave just that touch to the place which made the nuts think that this was real Bohemia. Come to think of it, it does give a kind of charm to a place, if you feel that at any moment the feller at the next table to you may be gathered up by the slack of his trousers and ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... subterraneous beds of coal in a state of ignition. In whatever way this singular phenomenon may be accounted for, the existence of it appears to be well established. It remains one of the lingering mysteries of nature which throw something of a supernatural charm over her wild mountain solitudes; and we doubt whether the imaginative reader will not rather join with the poor Indian in attributing it to the thunderspirits, or the guardian genii of unseen treasures, than to any ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... ears, but she did see his teeth, as his lips parted over them in a frank and friendly smile. Unsmiling, his face was rather sad and absent in expression, not unlike the melancholy, inscrutable hero of Anne's own early dreams; but mirth and humor and charm lighted it up when he smiled. Certainly, on the outside, as Miss Cornelia said, Owen Ford was a ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... good boy, a nice boy. The strangest thing of all in Henry's case was that, despite their united and unceasing efforts, his three relatives had quite failed to spoil him. He was too self-possessed for his years, too prone to add the fanciful charm of his ideas to no matter what conversation might be proceeding in his presence; but spoiled ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... Watauga county, derives its name from a circumstance of the capture of Colonel Benjamin Cleaveland, during the Revolution, by a party of Tories headed by men of this name, and adds the charm of heroic association to the loveliness of it unrivaled scenery. Cleaveland had been a terror to the Tories. Two notorious characters of their band, (Jones and Coil) had been apprehended by him and hung. Cleaveland had ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... It is, however, much more probable that the custom was old Italian (as indeed the "medicine-bag" is world-wide), and that the Etruscan contribution to it was merely the case or capsule, which was of gold where the family could afford it—gold itself being supposed to have some potency as a charm.[121] The object within the case was, as Pliny tells us, a res turpicula as a rule,[122] and this may remind us that a fascinum was carried in the car of the triumphator as medicus invidiae, to use Pliny's ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... and Worthy Substitutes" is a consideration of the "so-called questionable amusements," and an outlook for those forms of social, domestic, and personal practices which charm the life, secure the present, and build for the future. To take away the bad is good; to give the good is better; but to take away the bad and to give the good in its stead is best of all. This we have tried to do, not in our own strength, but with the conscious presence ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... and the rumble of wheels was hushed to a soothing murmur. An old-world air pervaded the place, with its low ceiling and sawdust-sprinkled floor, its well-worn benches and tables and paneling. The engravings on the walls added to the charm, and the head waiter might have stepped from a page of Dickens. Savory smells abounded, and the kettle rested on the hob over the big fireplace, to the right of which Doctor Johnson's favorite seat spoke eloquently of the great ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... her tent, she hid the strange bit of jewelry, which, to its wearer, had doubtless been a charm, then waited the end of her watch to tell of the strange occurrence to her cousin. When Marian awoke Lucile told ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... transmitted by Mr. Randolph to the author, contains the following declarations among others of similar import. "I do not retain the smallest degree of that feeling which roused me fifteen years ago against some individuals. For the world contains no treasure, deception, or charm which can seduce me from the consolation of being in a state of good will towards all mankind; and I should not be mortified to ask pardon of any man with whom I have been at variance for any injury which I may have done him. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... would have gained a charm and been idealized into pleasures, if they contributed to the well-being of those dear to[repeated "to" removed] her; but, when performed for the one more ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... It may very well be so, and we seniors will not regret our choice, and the young men and maids will be pleased enough with theirs. Yet it is not impossible that the old really are better, and do not gain all their life and permanent charm merely from the unjaded memories and affections with which we came to them ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... lose its charm, Were there no babies to begin it; A doleful place this world would be, Were there no little people ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... loving anxiety to surround her dwelling with every charm for her husband's sake, had turned gardener, and the little corners of the rude court before the house were filled with many a delicate mountain-flower, transplanted more for its beauty than its rarity. The sweetbrier bush ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Patty. "When the time comes I'll think of a beautiful new excuse that will charm ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... spoken with the peoples who dwell in the woods and the hills, and turned their minds against the men from the land of the sun-rising. They will fight them if any man can discover a charm that will protect them from the thunder and lightning that springs ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... in the neighbourhood around their country home), were sisters of Captain Dene's mother. They were not really old at all, although Aunt Catharine's thick black hair was shaded by a lace cap, and in Auntie Alice's nut-brown waves there were streaks of silver that lent a chastened charm to her faded face. Firgrove was their birthplace, and there in his boyhood Captain Dene had ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... not yet been settled as to how far a woman ought to be educated and take her share in the world's work. But forget that and read it only for its light-hearted poetry. The Princess is in blank verse, but throughout there are scattered beautiful songs which add to the charm. Here is ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... know," said Kitty. She looked at her companion with those innocent, wide-open grey eyes, which were her greatest charm. ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... moon, as she walks in full-orbed brightness through the heavens; the soft witchery of the morning and the evening star; the imperial splendors of the firmament on a bright, unclouded night; the comet, whose streaming banner floats over half the sky,—these are objects which charm and astonish alike the philosopher and the peasant, the mathematician who weighs the masses and defines the orbits of the heavenly bodies, and the untutored observer who sees nothing beyond the ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... royally shalt thou be clad. Thou hast been a good daughter to me, and thus I reward thee. But remember carefully the charm. Only to the magic words, "For love's sweet sake," will the necklace give up its treasures. If thou shouldst forget, then must thou be doomed alway to bear thy gown ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... pleased as a child. Her dearest wish was gratified; but, singularly enough, she owed this gratification to the very man whom she felt the necessity of avoiding and forgetting. It was, however, to the mysterious charm of the approaching ceremonies that she looked for an effective means of diverting her thoughts from forbidden channels. Yet the fact remained that he himself had opened the way for her to this earnestly desired distraction, and to Blanka it seemed as if his influence over her was only ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... I have had a patient for two or three years whose case has interested me a good deal, and for whom I finally prescribed just as I have done for you. The thing worked like a charm, and she is now ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... steep descends, Whose building to the shining shore extends; Here Arundel's fam'd structure rear'd its frame, The street alone retains an empty name: Where Titian's glowing paint the canvas warm'd, And Raphael's fair design with judgment charm'd, Now hangs the bellman's song, and pasted here The colour'd prints of Overton appear; Where statues breath'd the work of Phidias' hands, A wooden pump or lonely watch-house stands; There Essex's stately pile ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... no interest in the tunnel, though he expressed the hope that Tom and his friends would be successful. But industrial pursuits had no charm for the scientist. He only lived to find the hidden city which ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... to find a way out of Schloss Szolnok. What if, in spite of all, the things that Leo Goritz had confessed were true! She doubted it and yet—if he loved her—! Here was a woman's revenge, to bait, to charm, to spurn; and then to outwit him! A test of the sincerity of his professions, and of her own feminine art—a dangerous game which she had once before thought of playing, until his cruelty ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... this plan was suggested. What girl of nine does not delight in such an experience as spending the night with a friend? The thought of two Thanksgiving dinners, though one might be rather a frugal one, had its charm, too. "I think that would be perfectly lovely," she said, then after a moment's thought, "but you must ask your mother ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... burning,—the arid Mojave with its blistering heat, the trees, the painted rocks,—ochre, copper, bronze, red, gray, and dim lilac in the distances,—the gracious shade, the little burro, half ludicrous, half pathetic in its stolid acceptance of circumstances,—all had a charm for him that soothed and satisfied ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... our literature lives. I have sometimes been asked if Wister's "Virginian" is not overdrawn; why, one of the men I have mentioned in this chapter was in all essentials the Virginian in real life, not only in his force but in his charm. Half of the men I worked with or played with and half of the men who soldiered with me afterwards in my regiment might have walked out of Wister's ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the north and east." It goes without saying that these active creatures would not be at all out of place in some of our English parks, and, along with the elegant deer, would lend them an additional attractiveness and charm. ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... a Harvard man, who met death in the air, was Victor Chapman of New York, a youth of unusual charm, high ideals, and indomitable courage. At the very outbreak of the war he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion—a rough entourage for a college-bred man. Into the Foreign Legion drifted everything ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... I left the ministry, in 1889, I took up, with a great deal of zeal, the study of the poet Browning. I had already yielded to the charm of Ruskin—whom I personally knew—and Carlyle, but Browning opened up a new world of elevated thought to me, in which I am still a happy dweller. In seeking a new vocation I naturally gravitated towards ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... to wait, ready equipped, during the winter nights, that they may be able to start forth at the first sound of the bell. There is sufficient dangerous adventure, and enough of thrilling incident, to give the occupation a charm in the eyes of the eager youth of the cities. They like it far better than playing at soldiers, and are popular in every city. As their gay and glittering processions pass along the streets, acclamations greet their progress, and enthusiastic ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... an ever fresh flow of thought, where, but for him, would have been a stagnant pool. My sad heart might have grown bitter, my nature too austere, particularly when advancement to high office brought with it an inevitable loneliness, had it not been for the interest and charm of his visits and missives; his constant gifts and kindness. There is about him a light-hearted gaiety, a whimsical humour, a joy in life, which cannot fail to wake responsive gladness in any heart ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... characters are much worse. They have their dreary vices, and their drearier virtues. The record of their lives is absolutely without interest. Who cares what happens to them? In literature we require distinction, charm, beauty and imaginative power. We don't want to be harrowed and disgusted with an account of the doings of the lower orders. M. Daudet is better. He has wit, a light touch and an amusing style. But he has lately committed literary suicide. Nobody can possibly care for Delobelle with ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... with great kindness and simplicity, as though she would do her utmost to provide anything she wished to have. This expression had a remarkable charm in a face otherwise much lined ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... intelligence. His contribution was merely "stories", and these stories in endless succession were told in a spirit of frank fun. They were not illustrative, admonitory, or hortatory. They were just amusing, and always fresh. This gift he acquired from his mother, who had that rare charm of mimicry without mockery, and caricature without malice. In all his own letters there is not an unkind comment or tinge of ill-nature, although in places, especially in later years, there is bitter indignation ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... work for there are only a few minutes left of study period. But this has been an occasion, hasn't it?" Miss Harding smiled, nodded, said a few words in an undertone to Miss Baxter, and left the room, leaving behind her a joy and charm that were always ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... Susan thought of the big Oriental liner, the awnings that shaded the decks, the exquisitely cool and orderly little cabins, the green water rushing alongside. And for her the languorous bright afternoon had lost its charm. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... the frank straightforward look of a school girl, mingled with a touch of matronly dignity she was trying to assume, which added to her charm; and she smiled her open smile of comradeship, such as she would have dispensed about the old red school house at home, upon boys and girls alike, leaving the clerk and type-setters in a most subjected state, and ready to do anything in the service of their ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... she could not dress well, but she was as unhappy as though she had really fallen from her proper station; since with women there is neither caste nor rank; and beauty, grace, and charm act instead of family and birth. Natural fineness, instinct for what is elegant, suppleness of wit, are the sole hierarchy, and make from women of the people the equals ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... of York is the daughter of one of the most popular of the English princesses, and is said to have inherited all her mother's amiability and charm of manner. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 44, September 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... slumbering. Not a breath of air played over its surface, but lay like the mirror bright and fair. Mayall in his excitement viewed it as one of the lovely dimples on the face of creation, which held him for a time like a charm, until his thoughts roamed over the forest hills to his loved ones at home. He then arose and retraced his steps to the Valley of the Otego, considering the past day and night one of the most charming incidents ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... their strange collections—mules, horses, even cattle, packed with old saddles and loaded with hams, bacon, bags of cornmeal, and poultry of every character and description. Although this foraging was attended with great danger and hard work, there seemed to be a charm about it that attracted the soldiers, and it was a privilege to be detailed on such a party. Daily they returned mounted on all sorts of beasts, which were at once taken from them and appropriated to the general use; but the next day ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... over again: "Six years ago that girl there ran off with Walter Brooke. Six years ago that apparently level-headed, sensible little person was dazzled by the pinchbeck graces of that epicure in sensations." Miles fully granted his charm, his gentle melancholy, his caressing manner; but with it all Miles felt that he was so plainly "a wrong-'un," so clearly second-rate and untrustworthy—and a nice girl ought to recognise ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... seemed to me to be preposterous. But then, while still under the conviction of this preposterousness, the story itself came to my hand and I began to read. Its preposterousness did not worry me any longer. It had, besides a plausibility more than sufficient, a narrative charm and a whimsical humour that would have justified any tale. The thing that links On Tiptoe with Stewart Edward White is the perfect picture of the redwoods—the feeling of all outdoors you get while under the ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... hearth, the soft glow of the candle, used for illumination in the seventeenth century, lent charm to the evening scene, as wanton shadows stood off in the room. Moreover, there was an elusive aroma from the candles, often made from the wax of berries, taken from the prolific growth of myrtle bushes ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... his metabolic growth,—but he usually invents them badly.[179] The savage sees the world almost exactly as the civilized child sees it, as the magnified image of himself and his own environment; but he sees it with an added poetic charm, a delightful and accomplished inventiveness which the child is incapable of. The myths and legends of primitive peoples—for instance, those of the British Columbian Indians, so carefully reproduced by Boas in German and Hill Tout in English—are one in their precision and their ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... The old charm had lost none of its power, for absence seemed to have gifted it with redoubled potency, the confirmation of that early hope to grace it with redoubled warmth. Sylvia let him keep her, feeling that he had earned that small ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... and meals are cooked and eaten al fresco as of old. But one can see these things elsewhere, and Santa Lucia was unique. It has become squalid. In the grey light of this sad billowy sky, only its ancient foulness is manifest; there needs the golden sunlight to bring out a suggestion of its ancient charm. ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... his century really believes the fable of Orpheus, and has not apparently heard either the beautiful music of Italy, or even that of France, which in truth does not charm snakes, but does ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... in the friendliest fashion. He is a fine looking man with great charm of manner. After a word or two to d'Amade and being introduced to Wemyss, Guepratte and Keyes, we sat down round a table and the Admiral began. His chief worry lies in the clever way the enemy are now handling ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... vagueness eludes definition. The interest which physical science has created for natural objects has something to do with it. Curiosity and the charm of novelty increase this interest. No towns, no cultivated tracts of Europe however beautiful, form such a contrast to our London life as Switzerland. Then there is the health and joy that comes from exercise in open air; the senses freshened by good ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... rushes bent gently towards its surface, and the trees overhung it as usual; but all lay in the soothing and sublime solitude of a wilderness. The scene was such as a poet or an artist would have delighted in, but it had no charm for Hurry Harry, who was burning with impatience to get a sight of his ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... his distinctive fitness for the tasks and burdens which fell upon him. This work, at once so accurate, so comprehensive, so discriminating and so well written, is one for all Americans, and particularly for younger readers. It has in it a charm possessed but by very few biographies, and a fascination that but few novels can surpass. To enjoy it and to profit by it, one need not always coincide with the author's judgments of men and measures, or his criticisms of military leaders ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... clung to the English Church, even after he describes himself on his "death-bed," no one can doubt. The charm of the Apologia is the perfect candour with which he records fluctuations which to many are inconceivable and unintelligible, the different and sometimes opposite and irreconcilable states of mind through which he passed, with no attempt to make one fit into another. It is clear, from what ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... articles of furniture which he was moving from his former house was at the door. I had just urged on him my theory that all those phenomena regarded as supermundane had emanated from a human brain; adducing the charm, or rather curse, we had found and destroyed in support of my philosophy. Mr J—— was observing in reply, "That even if mesmerism, or whatever analogous power it might be called, could really thus work in the ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Sometimes I wondered if he could be twenty-two, as he said; sometimes when he would swing himself on to the slide, where the bags of meal and flour were loaded on to the wagons. Well, Melody, it was a thing to charm a boy's heart; it makes mine beat a little quicker to think of it, even now; perhaps I was not much wiser than my friend, after all. This was a slide some three feet wide, and say seven or eight feet long, sloping just ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... beads are so called from an order of priests of that name among the western Tartars. The Lamas are extremely superstitious, and pretend to magic. Amber was in high repute as a charm during the plague of London, and was worn by prelates of the Church. John Baptist Van Helmont (Ternary of Paradoxes, London, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... what belief is—I could tell you what love is; you know no more the one than the other. But why should I? I doubt if you would understand. You think you couldn't be shocked. I should shock you. Let it be. I think I could charm you, ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... Scandinavia, a land so little known as to bear a prestige of strange mystery to many. Books of travel describing it are comparatively rare; it has not, like Germany or England, been 'done to death,' and the consequence is, that a good book describing it, like this of Taylor's, has a peculiar charm of freshness and of novelty. In it, as in every volume of his travels, Bayard Taylor gives us the impression that the country in question is his specialty and favorite, the result being a thoroughly genial account of all he saw. Readers ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that by his ill-fated coalition he had forfeited the confidence of the people. Under these circumstances, he resolved to seek the restoration of his popularity, and to consolidate his power, by producing some great measure, which should at once charm and profit the nation. India afforded him a fine field for legislating, and with the assistance of Burke he concocted a bill for its government. He gave notice on the day when parliament reassembled, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... excellent cook in her young days, and had not forgotten or lost her former skill in the preparation of toothsome dainties. She, too, came with offers of assistance, and the four were soon deep in the mysteries of pastry, sweetmeats, and confections. Novelty gave it an especial charm to the young ladies, and they grew very merry and talkative, while their ignorance of the business in hand, the odd mistakes they fell into in consequence, and the comical questions they asked, gave much secret amusement to the ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... as well over the covenant people as over the surrounding nations, were gloriously manifested, and their training for the future advent of the Messiah was steadily carried forward. Thus we have in these historical books a wonderful diversity of divine manifestations, which alike charm and instruct the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... the age who excel in what a critical friend has happily discriminated as ambitious writing? that is, writing on any topic, and not least strikingly on that of which they know least; men otherwise of fine taste, and who excel in every charm of composition. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... nature subject, ye abide Free, not constrain'd by that, which forms in you The reasoning mind uninfluenc'd of the stars. If then the present race of mankind err, Seek in yourselves the cause, and find it there. Herein thou shalt confess me no false spy. "Forth from his plastic hand, who charm'd beholds Her image ere she yet exist, the soul Comes like a babe, that wantons sportively Weeping and laughing in its wayward moods, As artless and as ignorant of aught, Save that her Maker being one who dwells With gladness ever, willingly she turns To whate'er yields her joy. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... entered the winning class. This time they won six games in succession. Then they lost a game. After this single defeat they won but three games. Their charm of games in blocks of nine had deserted them. They were beaten twice after winning three, and Pittsburgh ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... rule of compensation is manifested here: all the attractions are not bestowed upon any one class; brilliancy of feathers and sweetness of song do not go together. The torrid zone endows the native birds with brilliant plumage, while the colder North gives its feathered tribes the winning charm ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... York "The heroine has all the charm of Thackeray's Marchioness in New York surroundings."—New York Sun. "It would be hard to find a more charming, cheerful story."—New York Times. "Altogether delightful."—Buffalo Express. "The comedy is delicious." —Sacramento Union. "It is as wholesome and fresh ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... "I love it! But then, I love all the dear things—even those poor woolly-leaved little primroses that have almost less charm for me than any flowers I know. I'm so glad they are all doing so well. I can't bear to bring a plant into the house and then have it die. It seems almost like murder. But now I must run away. I have an appointment with my dentist at three. It is ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... of great antiquity. The Eashing bridges over the Wey near Godalming date from the time of King John and are of singular charm and beauty. Like many others they have been threatened, the Rural District Council having proposed to widen and strengthen them, and completely to alter their character and picturesqueness. Happily the bridges were private property, and by the action of the Old Guildford Society and the ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... Delarey seemed to express in the body—sympathy, enthusiasm, swiftness, courage. He was like a statue of her feelings, but a statue endowed with life. And the fact that her physique was a sort of contradiction of her inner self must make more powerful the charm of a Delarey for her. As Hermione looked round at him, turning her tall figure rather slowly in the chair, Artois made up his mind that she had been captured by the physique of this man. He could not be surprised, but he ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... romanticism as in San Francisco? Where do we find so many strange characters and happenings? All lending almost mystic charm to the environment surrounding queer little restaurants, where rare dishes are served, and where one feels that he is in foreign land, even though he be in the center of a high representative ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... Nattie glanced into the glass just over her head at the reflection of her face. A face whose expression was its charm; that never could be called pretty, but that nevertheless suggested a possibility—only a possibility, of being handsome. For there is a vast difference between pretty and handsome. Pretty people seldom know very much; but to be handsome, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... defying all regularity, with the nose thrust out like a wedge and the chin falling back from an affectionate sort of mouth, his tall straggling frame and far from athletic shoulders, challenged contrast with the compact, handsome, graciously shaped Montcalm. In Montcalm was all manner of things to charm—all save that which presently filled me with awe, and showed me wherein this sallow-featured, pain-racked Briton was greater than his rival beyond measure: in that searching, burning eye, which carried all the distinction and greatness ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... first put this uniform on, I said, as I looked in the glass, "It's one to a million That any civilian My figure and form will surpass. Gold lace has a charm for the fair, And I've plenty of that, and to spare, While a lover's professions, When uttered in Hessians, Are eloquent everywhere!" A fact that I counted upon, When I first ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... moist airs of Puget Sound can produce, a young woman sat in her drawing-room regarding a letter she had just read with a highly dissatisfied air. It was a pretty little room, not rich nor fussy, but expressing the charm of an individual woman no less than the clothes ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... forbidden to mention in vain, they would not mention at all. They substituted Adonai, &c., in its room, whenever it occurred to them in reading or speaking, or else simply and emphatically styled it the Name. Some of them attributed to a certain repetition of this name the virtue of a charm, and others have had the boldness to assert that our blessed Savior wrought all his miracles (for they do not deny them to be such) by that mystical use of this venerable name. See the Toldoth Jeschu, an infamously scurrilous life ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... work or the discussion of work precedence of everything else. He will go out on the verandah at a party, with some of his confreres, and discuss banking until he forgets the prettiest girl at the dance. He loves to flirt with his work at a distance; at close range it fascinates but does not charm. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... (with a covert sparkle in the eye where the daintiest indications of fun were given by the Reader) lent a charm of its own to the merest nothing, comparatively, in the whimsical dialogues he was reporting. Master Harry, for example, having confided to Cobbs one evening, when the latter was watering the flowers, that he was going on a visit to his grandmama at York—"'Are ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... the American national airs. The complaints of Mary Stuart and of Andre, all popular in America. Maria had taken a few lessons, and in that remote country passed for a virtuosa; her singing though, derived its charm from the quality of her voice, which was at once clear, fresh ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... now have dared to raise his hand against her. Perhaps the extraordinarily fine stature of the little girl contributed to this, and also that there was in her something of the nature of a flower and of a bird, and this charm even the savage and undeveloped souls of the Arabs could not resist. Often also, when at a resting place she stood by the fire fed by the roses of Jericho or thorns, rosy from the flame and silvery in the moonlight, the Sudanese as well as the Bedouins could not tear their eyes ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of the beauty, brilliancy, or charm of the South; but all the sterling assets and ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... all they were women first and queens afterwards, and therefore not devoid of curiosity. As they passed to their seats I saw both of them glance swiftly in our direction. I saw, too, that their eyes passed by me, seeing nothing to charm them in the person of an insignificant and grizzled old man. Then they looked with evident astonishment on the grim form of old Umslopogaas, who raised his axe in salutation. Attracted next by the splendour of Good's apparel, for a second their glance rested on him like ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... Hence the charm of a whole lot of persons not conspicuous for conversational powers: men who have lived much out-of-doors, with gun or rod; shy country neighbours, cross old scholars, simple motherly little housewives; and, if one get at their reality, peasants and even ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... ceased to belong to her; yet attachment to France subsisted there a long while, and her influence left numerous traces there. It is an honor and a source of strength to France that she acts powerfully on men through the charm and suavity of her intercourse; they who have belonged to France can never ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... passed from the service of Gomez to that of Philip, in 1572 Escovedo was appointed secretary to the nobly adventurous Don John of Austria. The Court believed that he was intended to play the part of spy on Don John, but he fell under the charm of that gallant heart, and readily accepted, if he did not inspire, the most daring projects of the victor of Lepanto, the Sword of Christendom. This was very inconvenient for the leaden-footed Philip, who never took time by the forelock, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... renders all inaccuracy and carelessness offensive. He who has been accustomed to read and admire the finest models of composition in various languages, and to dwell on those niceties of method and expression which form so large a part of the charm of literary works; acquires a critical delicacy of taste, which renders him fastidiously sensitive to those crudities and roughnesses of speech, which almost necessarily attend an extemporaneous style. He is apt to exaggerate their importance, ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... is not all and never has been all of the sort here indicated, but where it departs from this type we feel the peculiar charm somewhat lacking. The early Saxon hut, the Norman castle, have each their especial interest, and we feel that the home has culminated in the Elizabethan and Tudor mansions and the simpler homes of later days which are adjusted to the needs of the family and ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 01, No. 12, December 1895 - English Country Houses • Various
... farers at Wellses'. With no children of their own, the sweet holiday season would have lost its sweetest charm but that Jenny was again with them. They rigged up a lovely Christmas-tree for Mart's babies, and summoned in sundry little waifs from the neighborhood, and had games and romps and laughter and merry voices. Later in the week there was a dinner at which the Cranstons and some ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... had old Lizzie bewitched her own cow, item, suffered her own pig to die, if it was she that had made all the disturbance in the village, and could really charm?—R. She did not know; but belike there was some one (and here she looked at the sheriff) who paid her double ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... strictly accurate, I must explain that the house in Hermione Street did not really belong to him. It belonged to his grown-up children—a daughter and a son. The girl, a fine figure, was by no means vulgarly pretty. To more personal charm than mere youth could account for, she added the seductive appearance of enthusiasm, of independence, of courageous thought. I suppose she put on these appearances as she put on her picturesque dresses and for the same reason: to assert her individuality at any cost. You ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... passionately fond of children, not only because they were innocent, but because they were young: and he loved to romp with them—anticipating by nearly seven centuries the simple discovery of their charm, and he would coax half words of wondrous wit from their little stammering lips. They made close friends with him at once, just as did the mesenges or blue tits who used to come from woods and orchards of Thornholm, ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... read to him, and in which, when it saw the light, we found hardly anything that he had quoted from it.... He who was one of the most enlightened men of the century, was also one of the most amiable; and in everything that touched moral goodness, when he spoke of it freely, I cannot express the charm of his eloquence. His whole soul was in his eyes and on his lips; never did a countenance better depict the goodness of the heart."[11] Morellet is equally loud in praise, not only of Diderot's conversation, its brilliance, its vivacity, its fertility, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... longer knows what those articles are for, and it confounds the ephod of gold with the ephod of linen, the plated image with the priestly robe; but the dim recollections of these serve to enhance the magical charm of Aaron's majestic adornment. He alone may enter into the holy of holies and there offer incense; the way at other times inaccessible (Nehemiah vi. 10, 11) is open to him on the great day of atonement. Only in him, at a single point and in a single moment, has Israel immediate contact ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... a story which never lost its charm for Elsie; a story which the one never wearied of telling, nor the other of hearing. Elsie would sit listening, with her mother's miniature in her hand, gazing at it with tearful eyes, then press it to her lips, murmuring, "My own mamma; poor, ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... even more conspicuous considered as a church discipline. There is a charm as of apostolic simplicity and beauty in its unassuming hierarchy of weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings, corresponding by epistles and by the visits of traveling evangelists, which realizes the type of the primitive church presented in "The Teaching ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Grand Master, "our brother Brian be under the influence of a charm or a spell—we speak but for the sake of precaution, for to the arm of none of our holy Order would we more willingly confide this or a ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... shall lightly say that fame Is nothing but an empty name? Whilst in that sound there is a charm The nerves to brace, the heart to warm, As, thinking of the mighty dead, The young from slothful couch will start, And vow, with lifted hands outspread, Like them ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... during the Commonwealth. So long as Ambrose continued at Preston he was favoured with the warm friendship of the Hoghton family, their ancestral woods and the tower near Blackburn affording him sequestered places for those devout meditations and "experiences'' that give such a charm to his diary, portions of which are quoted in his Prima Media and Ultima (1650, 1659). The immense auditory of his sermon (Redeeming the Time) at the funeral of Lady Hoghton was long a living tradition all over the county. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in order of time a few of the passages recorded by Boswell, which may serve for various reasons to afford the best illustration of his character. Yet it may be worth while once more to repeat the warning that such fragments moved from their context must lose most of their charm. ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... come between him and her features, and her face was obscured for him in a mysterious radiance. Her features taken in themselves were plain, he supposed, certainly they were not beautiful, yet of her whole appearance his memory held only the fervent charm of her expression. It was a face with a soul in it, he though—all the mystery of flame and of shadow was in her smile, so what mattered the mere surface modelling or the tinting of the skin which was less ivory than pale amber. An hour ago he had been absolutely indifferent, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... never planned,—made surprises for her of effects that were not her own. There is much ridicule of mere tapestry and broidery work, as a business for women's fingers; but I think the secret, uninterpreted charm of it, to the silliest sorters of colors and counters of stitches, is beyond the fact, as the beauty of children's plays is the parable they cannot help having in them. Patient and careful doing, after a law and rule,—and the gradual apparition ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... has a charm for loyal Americans; and the Negro, too, may gaze upon its enduring magnificence. It commemorates the deeds, not of any particular soldier, but all who stood true to the principles of equal rights and free government on that memorable ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... The original of this heathen charm is in the Old High German dialect; but it is quoted here as a good specimen of the early form of alliterative verse. A similar charm undoubtedly existed in Anglo-Saxon, though no copy of it has come down to our days, as we possess a modernised and Christianised English version, in which ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... of NIGHT, and SILENCE, balmy SLEEP, Shed thy soft poppies on my aching brow! And charm to rest the thoughts of whence, or how Vanish'd that priz'd AFFECTION, wont to keep Each grief of mine from rankling into woe. Then stern Misfortune from her bended bow Loos'd the dire strings;—and Care, and anxious Dread From my cheer'd heart, on sullen pinion, fled. But now, the spell dissolv'd, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... relieve the oppressed, did not walk soberly, did not mortify sinful lusts, &c. Alas, we deceive ourselves with the noise of a covenant,(285) and a cause of God; we cry it up as an antidote against all evils, use it as a charm, even as the Jews did their temple; and, in the mean time, we do not care how we walk before God, or with our neighbours: well, thus saith the Lord, "Trust ye not in lying words," &c. Jer. vii. 4, 5, 6. If drunkenness reign among you, if filthiness, swearing, oppression, cruelty reign ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... of which I have been speaking (the persistent care for the individual and personal, as distinguished from the universal and general) while it is the secret of his finest achievements, and rightly his special charm, is of all things the most alien to the ordinary conceptions of poetry, and the usual preferences for it. The popularity of rare and delicate poetry, which condescends to no cheap bids for it, poetry like Tennyson's, for instance, is largely due to the very quality which Browning's finest characteristic ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the merry notes of fiddles and wind instruments. Up! to the dance, to the dance! to jollity and pleasure! that was their invitation. Such music it was, that horses, carriages, trees, and houses would have danced, if they had known how. The charm of intoxicating delight filled the bosom of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... too, art worthy of all praise, whose pen, "In thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," did shed, A noontide glory over Milton's head— He, "Prince of Poets"—thou, the prince of men— Blessings on thee, and on the honored dead. How dost thou charm for us the touching story Of the lost children in the gloomy wood; Haunting dim memory with the early glory, That in youth's golden years our hearts imbued. From the fine world of olden Poetry, Life-like and fresh, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... this, and the cold—no, out of this came the warm water, and out of the other the cold. The cheerfulness and comfort of the whole arrangement were intended to give to the bathing-day—which was almost as religiously observed in this family as the Sunday—a double charm. In a room adjoining that which was appropriated to dressing, the old cleanly Brigitta had already her fixed residence. Here was she and the great linen-press to grow old together. Here ticked her clock, and purred her cat; ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... delay, Mounier does arrive at last, and the hard-earned Acceptance with him; which now, alas, is of small value. Fancy Mounier's surprise to find his Senate, whom he hoped to charm by the Acceptance pure and simple,—all gone; and in its stead a Senate of Menads! For as Erasmus's Ape mimicked, say with wooden splint, Erasmus shaving, so do these Amazons hold, in mock majesty, some confused parody of National Assembly. They make motions; deliver ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of a strange and subtle charm in this intoxicating circle,—a charm full of temptations which made him secretly uneasy. There passed before his eyes visions of other days, he beheld the phantoms of gay dresses, the apparitions of spring ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... disinclined to be present. All day I had walked hand in hand with memory, turning again and again to clasp her closely and to feel the throbbing of her sad heart upon my own. The dear presence still enthralled me, and I could imagine no counter-charm in the laughing face and airy ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... the "Little Black Boy," with its matchless, sweet child-sadness. Indeed, scarcely one of these early poems—all written between the ages of eleven and twenty—is without its peculiar, and often its peerless charm. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... has at last given "The Story of Siegfried" in the way in which it most appeals to the boy-reader,—simply and strongly told, with all its fire and action, yet without losing any of that strange charm of the myth, and that heroic pathos, which every previous attempt at a version, even for adult readers, ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... the margin covered with her notes and marks of approval. Dean Stanley and Buckle's "History of Civilization" were favorites with her also. Cowper's "Task" and Young's "Night Thoughts," which had been her text-books at "Nine Partners," never lost their charm for her. She could repeat pages of them. In her last days she read "The Light of Asia" with intense pleasure. When she had already passed her eighty-seventh year, Susan B. Anthony visiting her, says: "She read aloud to us from that charming ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of politeness, of grace and amiability, which completed his education. Beside her natural tenderness, her pride was so much at stake that you may judge what care, what studied pains, she used in giving her children, on their entrance into society, all the charm that she could develop in them, or bestow upon them. Thence came that rare politeness, that exquisite taste, that moderation in speech and jest, that graceful carriage, in short that combination which characterized ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... fell a little as he met the intensely hostile gaze, but in a moment he recovered himself and began to pay compliments to Willet and the Iroquois. Robert felt the charm of his manner and saw why he was so strong with a great body of the French in New France. Then his eyes wandered to the others who stood near like courtiers around a king, and he noticed that foremost among them was a man of mean appearance and presuming manner, none other, ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... a distinguished rank among the engravers of his country; he established a more important epoch in this art than any other master. He was indebted entirely to his own genius for the invention of a process which has thrown an indescribable charm over his plates. They are partly etched, frequently much assisted by the dry point, and occasionally, though rarely, finished with the graver; evincing the most extraordinary facility of hand, and displaying the most consummate ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... final, at least as far as this probation was concerned, greatly depressed Denas. "Never more, never more," was the monotonous refrain that sprang from her soul to her lips. But it is a wise provision of the Merciful One that the past, in a healthy mind, very soon loses its charm, and the things that are present take ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... be pleasing to the prospective wooer. That which is desirable in young girls means, naturally, that which is desirable to men. Of all cultivated accomplishments the first is "innocence." Beauty may or may not be forthcoming; but "innocence" is "the chief charm of girlhood." ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... liberties of his country, and the honour of his God! that all the other virtues of his character, embalmed as it were by that precious stream, might diffuse around a more extensive fragrance, and be transmitted to the most remote posterity with that peculiar charm which they cannot but derive from their connection with so gallant a fall—an event (as that blessed apostle, of whose spirit he so deeply drank, has expressed it) "according to his earnest expectation, and his hope that ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... their account in perpetual junketings. Social excitement was as the breath in Gilly's nostrils; notorious for profuse expenditure even when he was penniless, he was now absolutely reckless with money that was plentiful and moreover not his own. Nor was the constant whirl of gaieties without its charm for Phillipa; it deadened conscience, and consoled in some measure for the neglect and indifference she soon encountered at her husband's hands. But the most potent reason was that it fooled Mrs. Purling to the top of ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... The other two were named Virgilia and Orinthia, and I can't say that these horrific labels did them any injustice. As for the story of "their lives," as VIOLET HUNT tells it, there is really nothing very much to charm in a history of three disagreeable children developing into detestable young women. Perhaps it may have some value as a study of feminine adolescence, but I defy anyone to call the result attractive. Its chief incident, which is (not to mince matters) ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... gladness. 'Go, fool,' he cried, 'here comes one better than thee;' and with that he lent my father a kick that might have sent him across the valley, at a moderate calculation, had he not remembered an old witch charm which he mumbled as he fell. How long he lay there, and what happened the while, he did not know, but when he awoke, he saw the heap was in its place again, the moon looking down bright and beautiful as ever, as ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Her little white hand clung to his like a baby's. There was a sweet hollow under her chin, above her fine lace collar. Her soft, fair curls smelt in his face of roses and lavender. The utter daintiness of this maiden Dorothy Fair was a separate charm and a fascination full of subtle and innocent earthiness to the senses of a lover. She appealed to his selfish delight like a sweet-scented flower, like ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his hand three books with worn black covers and a faded red napkin. "I ran and got these when I saw they were destroying our cabin," she told him. "I knew you had kept them long; that they were dear to you as the gods of our people are to us—like a charm, maybe, to keep death away. And perhaps, when the white men come again, you will want to have them on ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... and opium-eater. Born at Bristol, in 1770. Died near London in 1834. He was a weak man of genius, whose reputation, formerly immense, has declined since he has been better known. But "Christabel" and the "Ancient Mariner," will charm many generations of readers yet unborn. Most of the epigrams which appear in his works are ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... barber was heard to say, that as the magic mirror had now lost its virtue, who could tell but what this charm might be restored ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... from the wide invading foot of the newly rich. These build themselves mansions after their kind in the Park, or in the broad flat highways leading into the suburbs. They have no sense for the dim undecorated charm of ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... charm of Sherwood Forest one must stray from the highroad, lose one's path, and wander in happy patience until a broad avenue is reached, or above the treetops one sees the slender and graceful spire of some stately church. The formal ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... lofty a height, the indignation of my heart would not be so violent. I, the daughter of the Thunderer, mother of the love-inspiring god; I, the sweetest yearning of heaven and earth, who received birth only to charm; I, who have seen everything that hath breath utter so many vows at my shrines, and by immortal rights have held the sovereign sway of beauty in all ages; I, whose eyes have forced two mighty gods to yield me the prize of beauty—I see my rights and ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... Treasurer Pitman, of Leatherby, "never could see," and never will, why either Birmingham I or Leamington, or any other Corps, should be more favoured, or more burdened, than his own. Even should his words at times seem rough, or few, he will charm you, almost without exception, if you get out of his wife or the Captain, or somebody, all he does and suffers for Christ's sake. Nobody will ever know how often it was the Treasurer who gave half the "twopence to make up a shilling" in the street-corner collection that, perhaps, made the impression ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... so many women, indubitably more than he had confessed to her; and she wished now to possess him. He was so quiet, so clever, so resolute: she wanted his quietness, his cleverness, his resoluteness. She wanted everything he had, his charm, his magic, his power over men, all that he displayed and ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... redeem herself from obscurity and commonness; and who not only makes up for her deficiencies, but elevates herself into a prominence and importance which mere personal attractions could never have given her. Charlotte Cushman, without a charm of form or face, climbed to the very top of her profession. How many young men, stung by consciousness of physical deformity or mental deficiencies, have, by a strong persistent exercise of will-power, raised themselves from mediocrity and ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... letter reached him, announcing that his sister had died at that very hour. On receiving the tidings, he uttered a shriek, and the shock was so great as to burst a blood-vessel in his brain. Life had no charm potent enough to stanch and heal the cruel laceration left in his already failing frame by this sundering blow. The web of torn fibrils bled invisibly. He soon faded away, and followed his sister to a world of finer melody, fitted for natures ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Not the least charm of these letters is the insight they afford into the characters of the principal persons concerned in them; and the slightest passages that assist us to a nearer view of men who occupied so large a space in their own times, and whose actions enter into the history of ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... that Cinyras sprung, who, if he had been without issue, might have been reckoned among the happy. Of horrible events shall I {now} sing. Daughters, be far hence; far hence be parents, {too}; or, if my verse shall charm your minds, let credit not be given to me in this part {of my song}, and do not believe that it happened; or, if you will believe, believe as well in the punishment ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... quotational the critics were, the better. For himself the speaker said that he liked that old custom of printing the very finest things in italics when it came to citing corroborative passages. It had not only the charm of the rococo, the pathos of a bygone fashion, but it was of the greatest use. No one is the worse for having a great beauty pointed out in the author one is reading or reading from. Sometimes one does not see the given beauty at first, and then he has the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Cross-references from text to illustrations increase their helpfulness. But even these abundant illustration can do little more than suggest how far the artistic achievement is the finest yet seen in America. No book can adequately represent this World's Fair. Its spell is the charm of color and the grandeur of noble proportion, harmonizing great architectural units; its lesson is the compelling value, demonstrated on a vast scale, of exquisite taste. It must ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... their purport. His paraphrase, "When in doubt, tell the truth," is of this sort. "Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it," he once said to the writer, apropos of a little girl's remark. His daily speech was full of such things. The secret of his great charm was his great humanity and the gentle quaintness and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whose ancient rites he provided suitable accommodation in a greenhouse), nobles and abbes flying from revolutionary France, poets, painters, and peers; no one of whom ever long remained a stranger to his charm. Burke flung himself into farming with all the enthusiasm of his nature. His letters to Arthur Young on the subject of carrots still tremble with emotion. You all know Burke's Thoughts on the Present Discontents. You remember—it ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... Having reached the mature age of eighteen, the lovely Frances had been brought by her mother, the Countess of Suffolk, to Court. Highest in the King's favour, and so, with his remarkably good looks, his charm, and the elegant taste in attire and personal appointment which his new wealth allowed him lavishly to indulge, Rochester was by far the most brilliant figure there. Frances fell in love with the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... even for them awhile no cares encumber Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken, The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... of the birth and ministry of Christ there are the flutter and flash of angel wings, and this story would lose much of its music and charm if it were stripped of its angel ministration. The Bible is full of angels. They appear to Zacharias the mother of John the Baptist, and they find Mary the virgin mother, as a beam of morning light finds a white-leafed flower, and reveal the mystery that has come upon her. ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden |
