"Fineness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his wife, had a surpassing conviction of the beauty of existence and in particular of his own good fortune—though the matter of his inheritance never once entered his mind. He gazed down at Eve's ingenuous features, and saw in them the fastidious fineness which had caused her to recoil so sensitively from her son's display at the Grand Babylon. Yes, women had a spiritual beauty to which men ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... nectarines, attain the highest degree of perfection, and exceed in size, beauty, and flavour, those raised in any other part of the province. Cider abounds at the table of the meanest peasant, and there is scarcely a farm that has not a fruitful orchard attached to it. This fineness of the fruit is one consequence of the amelioration of climate, which takes place in the vicinity of the Detroit river and Lake St. Clair. The seasons there are much milder and more serene than they are a few ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... "mint." The first recorded instance of the use of the word for precious metal as such in the mass is in an act of 1451. From the use of gold and silver as a medium of exchange, it followed that they should approximate in all nations to a common degree of fineness; and though this is not uniform even in coins, yet the proportion of alloy in silver, and of carats alloy to carats fine in gold, has been reduced to infinitesimal differences in the bullion of commerce, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... by closing the channels of cerebro-spinal fluid in neck, which fluid stands as one of, if not the most highly refined elements in animal bodies. Its fineness would indicate that it is a substance that must be delivered in full supply continually to keep health normal; if so, we will for experimental reasons look at the neck ligated, as found in measles, croup, colds and eruptive fevers. Supply is stopped from passing below atlas ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... girdled at the waist, its bosom a capacious pocket, the white and red striped cloak over the shoulders. She marked the material of which they were made, the shirt of selected Angora wool, the cloak of camel's hair, in its fineness iridescent and soft as velvet. She saw in the girdle an empty scabbard for a yatagan elaborately covered with brilliants. She saw on the head a kerchief of mixed silk and cotton, tasselled, heavily striated red and yellow, and secured by the usual cord; ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... generally surrounded with rocks of grey limestone or white marble. The colour and value of the nests depend on the quantity and quality of the insects caught, and perhaps also on the situation where they are built. Their value is chiefly ascertained by the uniform fineness and delicacy of their texture; those that are white and transparent being most esteemed, and fetching often in China their ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... to him and kissed him; but when Orpheus walked all round her, examining the fineness of the tissue and the artistic finish of the clasps, and even turned the snake above her round elbow, she sharply bid ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... exposure of current solecisms; along with which, however, the poet by no means forgets to ridicule the insipidly systematic Isocratean purism of words and phrases,(21) and even to reproach his friend Scipio in right earnest jest with the exclusive fineness of his language.(22) But the poet inculcates purity of morals in public and private life far more earnestly than he preaches pure and simple Latinity. For this his position gave him peculiar advantages. Although by descent, estate, and culture on a level with the genteel Romans of his time and possessor ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... religion become intelligible no less than its contradictions and practical disasters. Its object is the same as that of reason, but its method is to proceed by intuition and by unchecked poetical conceits. These are repeated and vulgarised in proportion to their original fineness and significance, till they pass for reports of objective truth and come to constitute a world of faith, superposed upon the world of experience and regarded as materially enveloping it, if not in space at least in time and in ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... falls noticeably, and nature seems to halt in expectation of the coming of something unusual. The decreasing portion of sun becomes more and more narrow, until at length it is reduced to a crescent-shaped strip of exceeding fineness. Strange, ill-defined, flickering shadows (known as "Shadow Bands") may at this moment be seen chasing each other across any white expanse such as a wall, a building, or a sheet stretched upon the ground. The western side of the sky has now assumed an appearance dark and lowering, as if a ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... Xemsi, latitude 36 degrees bordering up on the west of the province of Namking, near the city of Lucheu, the Island Ladrones, and Japan, and is called ' ChA.' Of this famous leaf there are divers sorts (though all one shape), some much better than others, the upper leaves excelling the others in fineness, a property almost in all plants; which leaves they gather every day, and drying them in the shade or in iron pans, over a gentle fire, till the humidity be exhausted, then put close up in leaden pots, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... exaggerated to an extreme degree of coarseness. The mouth was large and badly formed, the forehead low, the small eyes peered out snakelike from under heavy, puffy lids. The nose alone was cut with any measure of fineness, and that projected, wide-nostrilled, and aquiline as the beak of a bird of prey. It would have been difficult to imagine a face more gross and sensual in its lines, and the look of low admiration and eagerness which it now wore, was well calculated to bring out the sensuality in its most repulsive ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... is not, indeed, until he wrote his last play that he was a whole Etherege idealised, albeit a greater than Etherege in the meantime. The peculiar effect which Etherege achieved in Sir Fopling Flutter—at whom and with whom you laugh at once—was not sublimated (the fineness left, the faintness become firmness) until Congreve created Witwoud, the inimitable, in The Way of ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... fallen greatly short of the splendour of its opening. Jeffrey said however quite truly, claiming to be heard with authority as his "Critic-laureate," that of all his writings it was perhaps the most finished in diction, and that it equalled the best in the delicacy and fineness of its touches, "while it rises to higher and deeper passions, not resting, like most of the former, in sweet thoughtfulness, and thrilling and attractive tenderness, but boldly wielding all the lofty and terrible elements of tragedy, and bringing before us ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... wiping his blackened face, for he knew it meant dry weather. Heat, and the dust of the straw, the violent labour had darkened his face from brown almost to blackness—a more than swarthiness, a blackness. The stray cloud was spreading out in filaments, each thread drawn to a fineness that ended presently in disappearance. It was a sign to him of continued sunshine and the prosperity of increased wages. The sun from whose fiery brilliance I escaped into the shadow was to him a welcome friend; his neck was bare ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... of paper, perhaps three inches long by an inch wide, was of almost parchment-like fineness and bore a number of peculiar characters written in black ink. At the first glance it suggested a safe combination; but after a minute's intent examination, during which the girl could scarcely restrain her eager impatience, I was obliged ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... offended, my friends the poets, at being mentioned in the same paragraph with a Miss Nancy, until you discover the exact meaning of that effective term of opprobrium. A Miss Nancy is a poet without genius, one who has a talent for discovering the fineness of life, but who lacks the wit to keep his views from ridicule. It is not a step of the seven-league boots between the sublime and the ridiculous. Sometimes it is only an invisible ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... student boarders. Her pride was never lowered and her crepe was never laid aside. She sat up far into the night to darn the sleeves of her black silk gown, but the stitches were of such exquisite fineness that in the dim light of her drawing-room they seemed but ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... man, anyway, and a mighty tantalizing one at that. Well, he would show her! And he would show Billy, too, whoever Billy was! A girl like that! Why,—A girl like that with a face like that would grace any gathering, any home! He had the fineness of taste to realize that after he got done playing around with Opal and women like her, this would be a lady any one would be proud to settle down to. And why not? If he chose to fall in love with a country nobody, why could'nt ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... been touched. Obliged to stop here as Maitland has not overtaken us; he stayed behind at the camp for some purpose or other and did not afterwards come up; I am afraid he has missed the tracks as it is stony and rocky. This large hill is composed of sandstone of various degrees of fineness, quartz, pebbles, etc., principally; distance travelled six miles direct. Here the creek or river is timbered across with the narrow-leafed papery-barked tree; some short distance up the stream from here this description of timber nearly gives place to gums. I have no doubt but ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... be dismissed as "immoral," for his life was one of singular self-sacrifice in spite of much temptation. His face was strongly sensual, his look and bearing denoted almost savage power; he led a free life in a country which allowed much freedom; and yet his story is almost mystic in its fineness of thought, and in its detachment, which was often that of ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Colonel with profound ceremony, and talked of the fineness of the evening, which had summoned him forth of the Lodge, to take a turn in the Park, and enjoy the favourable weather. He then took Everard by the arm, and walked back with him towards the Lodge, Wildrake and Tomkins following close behind and leading the horses. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... We have divers curious clocks, and other like motions of return: and some perpetual motions. We imitate also motions of living creatures, by images, of men, beasts, birds, fishes, and serpents. We have also a great number of other various motions, strange for equality, fineness, ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... the massacre, were placed in safe custody, to be hereafter divided. In the city of Caxamalca, the troops also found magazines stored with goods, both cotton and woollen, far superior to any they had seen, for fineness of texture, and the skill with which the various colors were blended. They were piled from the floors to the very roofs of the buildings, and in such quantity, that, after every soldier had provided himself ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... for these strange mistakes? La Fontaine, who in most of his fables charms us with his exquisite fineness of observation, has here been ill-inspired. His earlier subjects he knew down to the ground: the Fox, the Wolf, the Cat, the Stag, the Crow, the Rat, the Ferret, and so many others, whose actions and manners he describes with a delightful precision of detail. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... comprise the extent of their agricultural operations. Sheep-raising is the most profitable of their pursuits. The climate appears to be more congenial to the growth of wool than of cereal productions. The Faroese sheep are noted for the fineness and luxuriance of their fleece, and it always commands a high price in market. A considerable portion of it is manufactured by the inhabitants, who are quite skillful in weaving and knitting. They make a kind of thick woolen shirt, something like ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... of August found us once more housed under the neat roof of our farmer host at the Keene Flats, and not only Elsie and myself, but also sundry friends, drawn thither by our praise of the beauty of the land and the fineness of the air. There were the brilliant M. W. C., learned in all philosophical lore, and with feeling and imagination sufficient to furnish out half a dozen poets; the staid but energetic M. T., whose portrait in our gallery occupies, a conspicuous place in the small niche devoted to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... seemed to be the center of the family: always busy at service, or at home, or berry-picking; a little nervous and inclined to scold, like her mother, yet faithful, too, like her father. She had about her a certain fineness, the shadow of an unconscious moral heroism that would willingly give all of life to make life broader, deeper, and fuller for her ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... distaff. The thread is not fine, but well twisted, and makes a very durable cloth. A woman, with common diligence, will spin from six to nine garments of this cloth in one year; which, according to its fineness, will sell for a minkalli and a half, or two minkallies each.[19] The weaving is performed by the men. The loom is made exactly upon the same principle as that of Europe; but so small and narrow, that the web is seldom more than four inches broad. The shuttle is of the common construction; ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... great moral conceptions are securely established, and the only possible improvement in them must come from the increased fineness and ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... her free in her reality? Anne would have rejoiced to see her lie go up in one purifying flame of revelation. But to go safe in her lie, hiding her reality, and yet defenceless under the sting of Maisie's loving, was more than she could bear. She had brought all her truth and all her fineness to this passion which Maisie's innocence made a sin, and she was punished where she had sinned, wounded by the subtle God in her fineness and her truth. If only Jerrold could have escaped, but he was vulnerable, too; there was fineness ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... Drummond applies with equal truth to Crashaw; while of our own poets, somehow or other, he reminds me of Shelley, in the silvery shine and bell-like melody both of his verse and his imagery; and in one of his poems, Music's Duel, the fineness of his phrase reminds me of Keats. But I must not forget that it is only with his sacred, his best poems too, that I ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... The fineness and variety of the machinery are so amazing, so beautiful,—there is such an exquisite combination of form and movement,—such sensitive teeth and fingers and wheels and points of steel,—such fairy knives of sapphire, with which King Oberon the first might have been beheaded, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... early in May that Martha first began to notice the white lisle socks marked E.G. She picked them from among the great heap at her work table because of the exquisite fineness of the darning that adorned them. It wasn't merely darning. It was embroidery. It was weaving. It was cobweb tapestry. It blended in with the original fabric so intimately that it required an expert eye to mark where darning finished and cloth began. Martha regarded ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... the party, this man came to the front; and when I asked the servant to send off the half-vagrant boys and girls who stood gazing at us, this man came up and said to me in a confidential tone, 'They do not understand the sacredness of the occasion, and the fineness of the conditions.' There was something regal in his audacity, but he was none ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... felt by the French to be one of the first Germans whom they understood. It was not merely that his clear reason appealed to the French, but that they saw in him one endowed as with a sixth sense. He has a fineness of observation, especially for the ridiculous sides of humanity, together with a tenderness of spirit, that was new in German literature as such men as Sainte-Beuve and Gautier saw it. The soul at war with itself, uncovering its most secret thoughts, the "malheur d'etre ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... born of experience, corresponded to a like period in the life of her worldly knowledge. The prize-bred Jersey cows grazed peacefully in the park grounds. Now and again, she would encounter an assiduous bee, which was taking advantage of the fineness of the day to pick up any odds and ends of honey which had been overlooked by his less painstaking brethren. Mavis, with heavy heart, visited stables, dairies, poultry-runs. These last were well at the back of the house; beyond them, the fields were tipped up at all angles; ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... fine and scarcely visible even under lens. Color pale dull brown or grayish brown. Wood light, soft, not strong, straight-grained, fairly easy to work. Cottonwood can be separated from other light and soft woods by the fineness of its rays, which is equaled only by willow, which it rather closely resembles. The wood is largely used for boxes, general ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... many little escapes and corner-holes does the sensibility, the fineness, (that of which refinement is but a counterfeit, at best but a reflex,) the geniality of nature appear in this 'son of thunder!' O for a Luther in the present age! Why, Charles! [3] with the very handcuffs of his prejudices he ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a certain way, of course, but not in the highest way. Now, for instance, if he felt all her fineness as—as we do, I don't believe he'd be willing to appear before her just like that." The father of the gods wore a damask tablecloth of a pale golden hue and a classic pattern; his arms were bare, and rather absurdly white; on his feet a pair of lawn- tennis shoes had a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... unbelievable ways. This he was going to explain to Dick, if he could manage it, while he set forth also his need of retreating from the active scene and leaving some of his formerly accepted duties on Dick's shoulders. As he sat there, gaunt, long, lean man, with a thin brown face and the eagle's look, a fineness of aquiline curve that made him significant in a dominant type, he fitted his room as the room fitted him. The house was old; nothing had been changed in it since the year when, in his first-won prosperity, he persuaded his mother up from the country and let her furnish ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the worldly and secular side of American character, and he illustrates the development of the New England Englishman into the modern Yankee. Clear rather than subtle, without ideality or romance or fineness of emotion or poetic lift, intensely practical and utilitarian, broad-minded, inventive, shrewd, versatile, Franklin's sturdy figure became typical of his time and his people. He was the first and the only man of letters in ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... to the Marsh for a week, he went with her for once to church. In the tiny place, with its mere dozen pews, he sat not far from the stranger. There was a fineness about her, a poignancy about the way she sat and held her head lifted. She was strange, from far off, yet so intimate. She was from far away, a presence, so close to his soul. She was not really there, sitting ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... is a beautifully soft, fine Wool fabric, containing no size or balsam. From the fineness of the yarn and of the individual fibres I have no doubt that the wool has been imported from India, or, more likely, that the cloth was made in Cashmere. The texture is a plain weave, has a selvedge edge, the warp yarns are doubled, while the weft is single yarn. It is much to be regretted that ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... his childhood, and he held her memory in great reverence. In the preface of a reprint of The Pioneers Cooper took occasion to deny a statement that in the character of the heroine of his romance he had delineated his sister, a suggestion in which he seemed to find a serious reflection upon his fineness of feeling. "Circumstances rendered this sister singularly dear to the author," he wrote. "After a lapse of half a century, he is writing this paragraph with a pain that would induce him to cancel it, were it not still more painful to have it believed that one whom he regarded with a reverence ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... the fruit. His method was largely the sceptical method of Montaigne. His result, too, was much the same result as his master's. But the pupil surpassed the master in the quality of his work. There is a fineness, an exquisiteness, in the literary form of La Rochefoucauld, which Montaigne might indeed have disdained to seek, but which he could never, even with seeking, have attained. Each maxim of La Rochefoucauld is a "gem of purest ray serene," wrought to the last degree of perfection in form ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... incident (of royal favour) bringeth in all others and holdeth them together. He that performeth ablutions winneth these ten, viz., strength, beauty, a clear voice, capacity to utter all the alphabetical sounds, delicacy of touch, fineness of scent, cleanliness, gracefulness, delicacy of limbs, and beautiful women. He that eateth sparingly winneth these six, viz., health, long life, and ease; his progeny also becometh healthy, and nobody reproacheth him for gluttony. One should not give shelter to these in his house, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... be desired of science is a false hand, or a spectral arm, that shall reach miraculously about,—not a fruit-picker or a carpet-sweeper, but something working with the fineness of an elephant's trunk,—thus to end the discomfort of those orange-seeds spilled on the far side of the room, while, lying inactive, one reaches, reaches, with a patient power which, if transformed into the practical, would push an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... thereabouts, but slight as a boy, and nervous, and dark as Englishmen are dark; jaw and chin shaven; his mouth hidden by the straight droop of his moustache. From the eyes downwards the outlines of his face and features were of an extreme regularity and a fineness undestroyed by the work of the strained nerves on the sallow, delicate texture. But his eyes, dark like an animal's, were the eyes of a terrified thing, a thing hunted and on the watch, a thing that listened continually for the soft feet of ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... something I had hoped to watch—always—all my life," he said. "I don't know how it is between most fathers and sons, but I admired Hugh. I found exquisite things in him. I doubt if other people saw them. He was quiet. He seemed clumsy. But he had an extraordinary fineness. He was a creature of the most delicate and rapid responses.... These aren't my fond delusions. It was so.... You know, when he was only a few days old, he would start suddenly at any strange sound. He was alive like an ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... thousand elephants, and commonly marches in the rainy season, because his elephants cannot move at any other time, as they are unable to bear thirst. His army is said commonly to contain from ten to fifteen thousand tents. In this country they make cotton garments of such extraordinary fineness and perfection, as is to be seen nowhere else. These garments are mostly round, and are wove so extremely fine, that they may be drawn through a moderately sized ring. Shells are current in this country as small money; and they have abundance of gold and silver, aloes wood, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... statuettes of merit were at the same time produced in abundance. The "Saitie art", as that of the revival under the Psamatiks has been called, is characterized by an extreme neatness of manipulation in the drawings and lines, the fineness of which often reminds us of the performances of a seal-engraver, by grace, softness, tenderness, and elegance. It is not the broad, but somewhat realistic style of the Memphitic period, much less the highly ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... imaginable circumstances can you say: "Yes, this idea is fine, but the style is not fine"? The sole medium of communication between you and the author has been the form of words. The fine idea has reached you. How? In the words, by the words. Hence the fineness must be in the words. You may say, superiorly: "He has expressed himself clumsily, but I can *see* what he means." By what light? By something in the words, in the style. That something is fine. Moreover, if the style is clumsy, are you ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... him to meet and pass off such a serious thing in that untroubled way. As she served the table, there being griddle-cakes of cornmeal that morning to flank the one egg and fragments of rusty bacon each, she studied the boy's face carefully. She noted the high, clear forehead, the large nose, the fineness of the heavy, black hair which lay shaggy upon his temples. She studied the long hands, the grave line of his mouth, and caught a quick glimpse now and then of ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... equability of her humour. It is said, that there is nothing marvellous in the colours of those Egyptian monuments which have been the admiration of ages; the secret of their duration is supposed to depend simply on the fineness of the climate and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... tongue were loosened as they had never been before. His woman, too (as we say in those parts, Melody; wife is the more genteel expression, but I never heard Ham use it. My father, on the other hand, never said anything else; a difference in the fineness of ear, my dear, I have always supposed),—his woman, I say, or wife, had not "turned up her toes," but recovered, and as he was a faithful and affectionate man, his heart was enlarged by this also. However it was, he talked more in those weeks, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... face, golden-brown eyes, and hair black as pitch; her large white teeth gleamed between full red lips. She had on a white dress; a blue shawl, pinned close round her throat with a gold brooch, half hid her slender, beautiful arms, in which one could see the fineness of her race. She took two steps with the bashful awkwardness of some wild creature, stood ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... that one day, tempted by the fineness of the weather up the road that led from the suburb farther into the country, Fanny was stopped by a gentleman in a carriage, who accosted her, as she said, very kindly: and after several questions, which ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... indicate your fineness or coarseness of culture, your breeding or lack of it, so quickly as your conversation. It will tell your whole life's story. What you say, and how you say it, will betray all your secrets, will give ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... with the same quantity and sort of earth in the most effective manner by reducing the whole to a tolerable degree of fineness and rubbing them well together on a cloth. In each of these divisions were planted three grains of wheat, 3 of oats, and as many of barley, all of equal distances in Rows and of equal depth done by a machine made for the purpose. The wheat rows are next the numbered side, the oats ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... word hosiery is used improperly to include the large class of woollen articles knitted by the Shetland women. The fineness of the wool of the Shetland sheep probably gave a very early impulse to this industry. It is recorded that in the seventeenth century a great fair for the sale of hosiery, properly so called, was held each year, on the occasion of the visit of the Dutch fishing fleet to ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... gloried in the whole therefore, breathing through it a larger air of faith and hope, and confident fortitude. The kindred qualities of her own heart and intelligence, the flush of her fine enthusiasm, sprang to meet and join with the fineness of it, its richness of promise ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... be of any value," the Colonel remarked in a low tone to some of his officers, "I could give you some interesting information about that scout," looking towards Annette, "and this other one as well," meaning Julie. "These boys, trust my word, are no more Crees than I am. Note the fineness of their features, and the well-bred air and the grace of the one on horseback." The remarks of the Colonel were brought to an end by the appearance of Browninge, who saluted, and announced that he ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... of his Youth in Labours and Fatigues, had been inur'd to nothing else but Hardships and Adventures, we see him receive the Recompence of his Merit, and become the Favourite of his Prince: And here we may perceive all the Fineness of the Gentleman, mixt with all the Resolution and Courage of the Warriour; We may behold him as ready to oblige the Ladies with a Dance, as he was to draw his Sword ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... precise individual meaning might be given in an English or German word; whereas in Latin we must too often be contented with a mere general and inclusive term. How indeed can it be otherwise, when we attempt to render the most copious language of the world, the most admirable for the fineness of its distinctions, into one of the poorest and most vague languages? Especially when we reflect on the comparative number of the works, still extant, written while the Greek and Latin were living languages. Were I asked what I deemed the greatest and most unmixed ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the French Cook do for such a man? He ate with rapidity, almost with indiscriminate violence: his object not quality but quantity. He drank too, but did not get drunk: at the Doctor's order he could abstain; and had in later years abstained. Pollnitz praises his fineness of complexion, the originally eminent whiteness of his skin, which he had tanned and bronzed by hard riding and hunting, and otherwise worse discolored by his manner of feeding and digesting: alas, at last his waistcoat came to measure, I am afraid to say how ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... The plastic character of Middleton was perhaps a variety of American nature only presenting itself under an individual form; he could throw off the man of our day, and put on a ruder nature, but then it was with a certain fineness, that made this only [a] distinction between it and the central truth. He found less variety of form in the English character than he had been accustomed to see at home; but perhaps this was in consequence of the external nature of his acquaintance ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the Black Sea add a new district to the commercial world, which, in course of time, must greatly increase the demand for such articles, as a civilized people consume. The fineness of the climate and of the country will enable the inhabitants to gratify the taste which civilization will bring ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... and cracked his neighbours' heads with the precision and fineness of touch which only manual craftsmanship can give. The housewives who flatly refused to cook the hot dinner knew how much or how little, cold meat there was in the house. The sailor who defied discipline by mutinying at the Nore did not defy discipline in the sense ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... all. Presently he sat down in George's vacated seat beside another man, who said something to him with a coarse chuckle. The man growled in response, and continued to scowl furtively at George, who stood talking to Maria. He said something about the fineness of the day, and Maria responded rather gratefully. She was conscious of an inward tumult which alarmed her, and made her defiant both at the young man and herself, but she could not help responding to the sense of protection which she got from his presence. She had ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... institutions than of any superiority of race or greater purity of blood. I am far, however, from underrating the influence of blood. That there are species of the same race superior in mental as well as in physical formation is certainly true. The peculiar organization of the brain, its fineness of texture in some, distinguish them as mentally superior to others, as the greater development of bone and muscle marks the superiority of physical power. Very frequently this difference is seen in brothers, and sometimes ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the fineness and goodness of the Ore, by which the Mine is wont to be estimated? And what are the marks and {339} characters, that distinguish ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... the Table is the same, I shall only take notice of such as are of the large Dunghill kind, or of the Hamburgh sort, of the Game kind, and of the small Dutch kind; which last is admired by some for the fineness of their Flesh, and for being great Layers, especially in the Winter: But it is certain that the larger sort sell the best at Market, and lay the largest Eggs, and therefore should be the most cultivated about a Farm. As for the Game Breed, some fancy that their Flesh is more white and tender than ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... passed unnoticed, namely, the continued fineness and beauty of the weather. No rain had fallen for upwards of three weeks. The sky was bright and cloudless; the atmosphere, apparently, pure and innoxious; while the heat was as great as is generally experienced in the middle of summer. But instead of producing its usual enlivening effect on the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... must represent the smoke of artillery mingling in the air with the dust and tossed up by the movement of horses and the combatants. And this mixture you must express thus: The dust, being a thing of earth, has weight; and although from its fineness it is easily tossed up and mingles with the air, it nevertheless readily falls again. It is the finest part that rises highest; hence that part will be least seen and will look almost of the same colour as the air. The higher the smoke mixed with the dust-laden air rises towards a certain ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... taste which I am glad to see. I had a young friend who set up housekeeping with six sheets, but she had finger bowls for company and that satisfied her," said Mrs. March, patting the damask tablecloths, with a truly feminine appreciation of their fineness. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... of this road, however, is this, that each one keeps lock-step with a certain One who leads the way. This One is remarkable in appearance. His face combines all the strength and resolution of the strongest man's with all the fineness and gentleness of the finest woman's. But He bears peculiar marks as though He had been through some terrible experience. His face has a number of small scars as though it had been torn by thorns and cut by thongs. ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... ornament of that fine city. The night was serene, the air blew fresh and flower-breathing from the walks, the stars shone in their lustre, and I felt all the power of nature to soothe the troubled spirit. Some of the fashionable inhabitants of the surrounding houses had been induced by the fineness of the night to prolong their promenade; and the light laugh, and the sound of pleasant voices, added to the touching and simple charm of the scene. A group had stopped round a player on the guitar, with which we made ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Not in vain had he been Scott Brenton's senior warden, all these months; not in vain Kathryn's medical adviser and unwilling confidant, during the recent weeks of her approach to motherhood. He had learned to know the fineness of the man, the reverent housing he gave to his ideals, the care he lavished on their betterment; and just so surely he also knew the sordid selfishness of the woman, her lack of any ideals beyond the petty ones concerning food and raiment and mere personal advancement, her ruthless disregard ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... eighteen Corinthian columns, and probably covered by domical roofs with gilded bronze tiles. The Corinthian order appears here complete with its modillion cornice, but the crispness of the detail and the fineness of the execution are Greek and not Roman. These temples date from about 72 B.C., though the one at Rome was probably rebuilt in the first century ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... not like to see this tendency increase beyond a certain point, or continue too long. From the first shock of her bereavement Mrs. Hilland's mind has not been exactly in a normal condition. There are phases of her trouble difficult to account for and difficult to treat. The very fineness of her organization made the terrible shock more serious in its injury. I do not say this to discourage you—far from it—but in sincerity I must call your attention to the fact that every new phase of her grief has tended to some extreme ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... advantage. The hardness of the first had not wholly disappeared, but it was much modified, while the bones no longer showed through her dress. Her blonde hair had become abundant, and, being of peculiar fineness and sheen, lent an attractiveness to features that only a slightly tigerish fulness of cheeks prevented from being almost classical. This feline expression of jaws became more marked when she smiled, when a rather large mouth displayed two rows of formidable teeth. The ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... But there are gradations of matter of which man knows nothing; the grosser impelling the finer, the finer pervading the grosser. The atmosphere, for example, impels the electric principle, while the electric principle permeates the atmosphere. These gradations of matter increase in rarity or fineness, until we arrive at a matter unparticled—without particles—indivisible—one and here the law of impulsion and permeation is modified. The ultimate, or unparticled matter, not only permeates all things but impels all things—and thus is all things within itself. This matter is God. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as means of progress. They study books in order that they may better understand what others have thought concerning the mystery of existence; they discipline their minds in order that they may the better serve their fellow-men; they seek fineness of manner and beauty of expression to the end that their utterance of truth may be more persuasive and convincing. Culture and the discipline of life are identical. Consequently, the wise man chooses to put himself where he will ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... of wool or cotton when worked[275] are increased by ten palas; if the thread be of middling fineness, the increase is five palas; ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... India ink is jet black, flows easily, lies close to, does not stand upon or sink into the paper, and has an even lustre, the latter being an indication of fineness. The more perfect the incorporation of the lamp-black with the water the easier the ink will flow, the less liable it is to clog the instruments, the more even and sharp the edges of the lines, and the finer the lines that ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... second function only be directed to the perfecting of ethical state, it being our usual impression that they are often destructive of morality. But it is impossible to direct fine art to an immoral end, except by giving it characters unconnected with its fineness, or by addressing it to persons who cannot perceive it to be fine. Whosoever recognises it is exalted by it. On the other hand, it has been commonly thought that art was a most fitting means for the enforcement of religious ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... lion. There is no villainy he would not do if necessary, and yet I should hesitate to call him a blackguard. Ay, you may look surprised at me, you two pragmatical Scotsmen; but I have, so to speak, lived with the man for months, and there's fineness and nobility in him. He would be a terrible enemy, but a just one. He has the heart of a poet and a king, and it is God's curse that he has been born among the children of Ham. I hope to shoot him like a dog in a day or two, but I am glad to bear ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... suit was made. A few Merino sheep had been imported from France, and Scholfield, obtaining the wool, and mixing it with the coarse wool of the native sheep, produced what at that time was regarded as cloth of superior fineness. The spinning was wholly ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... then!" And, preceded by the dog Balthasar, they ascended through the field. The sun was almost level in their faces now, and he could see, not only those silver threads, but little lines, just deep enough to stamp her beauty with a coin-like fineness—the special look of life unshared with others. "I'll take her in by the terrace," he thought: "I won't make ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... medium of that Shakespearean character the actress poured forth that strange, thrilling, indescribable power which more than anything else in the world vindicates by its existence the spiritual grandeur and destiny of the human soul. Neither the accuracy of her ideals nor the fineness of her execution would have accomplished the result that attended her labours and crowned her fame. There was an influence back of these—a spark of the divine fire—a consecration of the individual life—as eloquent ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... debts and obligations were calculated in pounds Scots or merks, dollars supplied the currency for household and other payments, just as pounds do at the present day. They were foreign coins of various denominations and various intrinsic value, but of inferior fineness to the Scots standard of silver money, which was eleven penny fine—eleven parts silver to one part alloy. They passed current for more than their intrinsic value, and the native silver money was withdrawn from the country. All ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... jealous, and said things that disgusted me; never did anything for anybody; and though she hunted religious ideas most, never seemed to imagine they could have anything to do with her life. It was only the fineness of a good thought even that she seemed to prize. She would startle you any moment by an exclamation of delight at some religious fancy or sentimentality, and down it most go in her book, but it went no ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... formation of a seed bed is a prime prerequisite to successful cropping. After the land is manured and plowed it should be gone over in all directions with a disk and smoothing harrow, until it is of a dustlike fineness. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... of a lighthouse. The other, a narrower man, with a keen, fair face and eyes that had an habitual smile, wore another uniform—that of society. He was well dressed, and, what is rarer carried his fine clothes with such assurance that their fineness seemed ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... features, and among his principal associates excited no little appreciative comment upon this tendency. In some of his portraits of women of that period, wherein he evidently attempted to present the superior fineness and sensibility of the feminine nature, this effort toward ideality is quite strongly indicated; they are painted with a more hesitating and lingering touch than his portraits of men, and with a certain seeming lack of confidence, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... material substance is likewise so composed of vibrations of energy; then one is on the road to the discovery of the real state of affairs. Then he begins to realize that instead of the planes of being rising one above the other in the scale of their fineness, they are graded according to their degree of vibratory energy, and each may actually occupy the same space as all the others. In short, the "planes" are not strata or layers of "matter" at all, but are simply different ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... they talked to him of the fineness of a farmer's life, but he would not agree with them. A farmer's life was too hard and too dull. He was set on joining his brother ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... belongs so essentially to our own sex, that I do not know whether I ought to allow this generous stranger so unjustly to rob us of it, or—not content with possessing eminently that valour to which we must make no pretension—to try to be as modest when he is spoken to of the fineness of his actions as reasonable women ought to be when they are praised for their beauty. For my part," she added, looking at Artamene, "I confess I find your proceeding a little unfair. And I do not think that I ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... food for imparting nourishment to the system consists in proper mastication, or chewing. Food should be thoroughly masticated before it is taken into the stomach. This is necessary in order to break it up and reduce it to a sufficient degree of fineness for the efficient action of the gastric juice. Besides, the action of chewing and the presence of nutrient food constitute a healthful stimulus to the salivary glands, situated in the mouth. By this means, also, the food not only ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... taken up her watchful rest, till in darkness she may glide up to her brood—the sire is somewhere sitting within her view among the rocks—a sentinel whose eye, and ear, and nostril are true, in exquisite fineness of sense, to their trust, and on whom rarely, and as if by a miracle, can steal the adventurous shepherd or huntsman, to wreak vengeance with his rifle on the spoiler ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Robert Greene's plays, especially 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,' reveal, like his novels, some real, though not very elaborate, power of characterization. They are especially important in developing the theme of romantic love with real fineness of feeling and thus helping to prepare the way for Shakspere in a very important particular. In marked contrast to these men is Thomas Kyd, who about the year 1590 attained a meteoric reputation with crude ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... her figure," thought Anthony; "that superb, tall, pliant figure,—the flow of it, the spring of it,—the lines it takes when she moves, when she walks,—its extraordinary union of strength with fineness." ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... midst of these powers and nations, emulous or jealous, it is impossible for the citizens of our Republic, however superior their manufactures may be in quality and fineness, to resist a rivalry so universal; especially considering the dearness of labour, caused by that of the means of subsistence; which, in its turn, is a necessary consequence of the taxes and imposts which the inhabitants of this State pay in a greater number, ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... Petticoat Company. She had married just a month after her employers, and Emma, from the fulness of her own brimming cup of happiness, had made Hortense happy with a gift of linens and lingerie and lace of a fineness that Hortense's beauty-loving, feminine heart could never ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... employed in obtaining flax. The hemp, when pulled up, is tied in bundles, and for a time submitted to the action of water. It is then dried and broken, and afterwards "scutched," and rendered still cleaner and finer by a process called "hackling." It makes no difference in the fineness of the fibre whether the stalks be small or large, since the great coarse stems of the Italian and Indian hemp produce a staple equally as fine as the small kinds ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... was what he magniloquently calls the great robbery of an express car. Here, too, he proved the fineness of his craft. He left nothing to chance, and he foresaw, with the coolness of a practised hand, every step which his adversaries would take. His first care was to obtain the assistance of the messenger who travelled on the car ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... She was at his side before he knew it. It was the girl whom he had met on his way to the Manse the first day of his arrival. Jess's experience as a maid to her ladyship has stood her in good stead. She had a fineness of build which even the housework of a farm could not coarsen. Besides, Winsome considered Jess delicate, and did not allow her to lift anything really heavy. So it happened that when Ralph Peden came Jess was putting the fresh flowers in the great bowls of ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... and see if it was Margaret coming. And now that Margaret was there, and had taken a chair by her, Bessy lay back silent, and content to look at Margaret's face, and touch her articles of dress, with a childish admiration of their fineness of texture. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the hackling or hetcheling, and the fineness of the flax depended upon the number of hacklings, the fineness of the various hackles or hetchels or combs, and the dexterity of the operator. In the hands of a poor hackler the best of flax would be converted into tow. The flax was slightly wetted, taken hold of at one ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... a background. What she saw was a tall man, slender, and about him there was to Linda a strong appeal. As she looked into his eyes, she could feel the double hurt that Fate had dealt him. She thought she could fathom the fineness in his nature that had led him to made home-building his chosen occupation. Instantly she liked him. With only one look deep into his eyes she was on his side. She stretched out both her ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... I think, a very ornamental part of the human frame, both from the fineness of its texture, and the variety and ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... sheet of paper on a drawing-board, then that of sharpening a lead pencil, following it up by tracing the outlines of the subject in the lithograph. Then followed in similar pantomime the choosing of a water-color pencil, noting carefully the necessary fineness of the point, and then the washing-in of a drawing, broadly. Miss A. seemed much amused by all this, but as she knew nothing of drawing she understood nothing of it. Then with the pencil and her pocket handkerchief she began taking out the lights, "rubbing-out," ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... same origin, the same development and the same pattern, yet no two are alike. Each has a distinct and different equipment from any of the others. The size of the body, real and potential; the size and fineness of the brain; the delicacy and sensitiveness of the nervous system; the innate instincts upon which conduct mainly rests; the emotions which control action and which flow from the structure—in short, the degree of perfection and imperfection of the machine is all hidden in the original ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... these fine Watches the Company have devoted all the science and skill in the art at their command, and confidently claim that, for fineness and beauty, no less than for the greater excellences of mechanical and scientific correctness of design and execution, these ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... solid substances and of separating the powders of various degrees of fineness, is common in the arts: and as the best graduated sifting fails in effecting this separation with sufficient delicacy, recourse is had to suspension in a fluid medium. The substance when reduced by grinding to the finest powder is agitated in water which is then drawn off: the coarsest portion ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... said, "at the fineness of the wool. See the serrations in each thread of it. See the density of it. Look at the way his legs and belly are clothed—he's wool all over, that ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... once had) when she would find strength to take it altogether back if she thought she were doing it for his own good. But with a conception of marriage so uncomplicated and incurious as hers such a crisis could be brought about only by something visibly outrageous in his own conduct; and the fineness of her feeling for him made that unthinkable. Whatever happened, he knew, she would always be loyal, gallant and unresentful; and that pledged him to the practice ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... could not have been heard; for the peddler, burying his body in the pack, brought forth a quantity of lace of exquisite fineness, and, holding it up to view, he required the admiration of the young lady. Miss Peyton dropped the cup she was engaged in washing, from her hand; and Frances exhibited the whole of that lovely face, which had hitherto only suffered ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... no jewels, but on her neck, arm, and knee were the usual torques of gold, in this instance fashioned like a snake; and her dress was of pure white linen of excessive fineness, plentifully embroidered with gold and with the familiar symbols of ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... goat is perhaps the most celebrated of the tribe; its celebrity arising from the fineness of its wool, out of which are manufactured the costly Cashmere shawls. An attempt was made to introduce this variety into England; but it has not been successful, though the cause of its failure has not been communicated to the public. We can easily find a very good reason ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... of proportion, then, is that fineness of susceptibility by which we appreciate in a given object, person, force, or mood, serviceableness in regard to reason's work; in other words, by which we estimate the capacity to transform the Universe in such a way that men may ultimately be enabled to give ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... her patient forming of the clay face. She built no barriers up between herself and this handsome stranger, as she had in the beginning with Overton. What she had to say was uttered with all freedom—her likes, her thoughts, her ambitions. At first the fineness and perfection of his apparel had been as grandeur and insolence when contrasted with her own weather-stained, coarse skirt of wool, and her boy's blouse belted with a strap of leather. Even the blue ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... rather inclined to quarrel with him for having been so long in making his call; and this feeling, perhaps, induced her to dawdle a little over the last touches of her toilet. She had put on a thin, black dress, which tamed the exuberance of her face and hair, and set off the brilliance and fineness of her skin where the open blouse displayed it. The beautiful throat was sunburnt, indeed, but not unbecomingly so; and she was about to fasten round it a slender gold chain, when she suddenly dropped the chain. Some association had passed through ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... underhung, and when he laughed, two white buck-teeth protruded themselves and glistened savagely in the midst of the grin. He had been dining with royal personages, and wore his garter and ribbon. A short man was his Lordship, broad-chested and bow-legged, but proud of the fineness of his foot and ankle, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hardwood board, a paddle, a set of small, well pointed sticks, a thin-bladed knife, and squares of white muslin of various degrees of fineness. She talked and modelled, and we listening watched the fascinating process; saw her take the plastic substance, fashion a duck with ducklings on a pond, a lamb curled up asleep, and a couched lion ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... The fineness of that summer brought forth the fruits of the earth in great luxuriance, and it really seemed as if at last the Scotch settlers were going to reap some reward for all their prolonged perseverance and industry. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... more than two miles when we were overtaken by Major Sanford, who very politely asked leave to join our party. Miss Lawrence very readily consented; and we had a very sociable ride. The fineness of the day induced me to protract the enjoyment of it abroad; but Miss Lawrence declined riding so far as I proposed, as she had engaged company to dine. We therefore parted till the evening, when we are to meet again." "What, another engagement!" said Mrs. Richman. ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... all spontaneity, in company above his social or intellectual level. Such a man's danger was obvious; he might, in default of congenial associates, decline upon inferiors; all the more that a softness of heart, a fineness of humanity, ever disposed him to feel and show special kindness for the poor, the distressed, the unfortunate. Sherwood's acquaintances had little attraction for him; they were mostly people who lived ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... is more complex than the most elaborate ornamentation of dress or speech or manner. Susan and Freddie lingered until the departure of the last couple—a plainly dressed man whose clothes on inspection revealed marvels of fineness and harmonious color; a quietly dressed woman whose costume from tip of plume to tip of suede slipper was a revelation of how fine a fine art the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... His brother had that fineness of mind that can even set aside a contemplated hospitality. "It's your evening, dear old boy," he said. "We'll try to get into the mass meeting at ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... the fineness of the weather, the beauty of the spectacle, and the dresses of the ladies, a full account appeared in the papers of the day, of which it would be useless here to give a repetition, and shameful to steal or seem to steal a description. We shall record ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... substitute for a needle, and with the aid of the old file he sharpened the point of the rusty nail, so that he was enabled, with a little trouble, to drill a hole in a bone needle, for his cousin Catharine's use. After several attempts, he succeeded in making some of tolerable fineness, hardening them by exposure to a slow steady degree of heat, till she was able to work with them, and even mend her clothes with tolerable expertness. By degrees, Catharine contrived to cover the whole outer ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... story depends upon the reporter's style. When we try to write human interest stories we are no longer interested in facts, as much as in words. Our readers are not following us to be informed, but to be entertained. And we can please them only by our style and the fineness of our perception. Although we have been told to write news stories in the common every-day words of conversation, we are not so limited in the human interest story. The elegance of our style depends very largely upon the size of our vocabulary, and elegance is not out of place ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... more closely. For the first time I realized that she was beautiful. Her hair, which she wore falling over her shoulders, was not so much curly as it was gently waving. Her features were of remarkable fineness: the nose very straight, a small mouth with delicate lips, a strong chin. She was not black, but copper colored. Her slender graceful body had nothing in common with the disgusting thick sausages which the carefully cared for bodies of the ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... life and works. They have recently placed in a tiny oratory, scooped by Guidobaldo II. from the thickness of the wall, a cast of Raphael's skull, which will be studied with interest and veneration. It has the fineness of modelling combined with shapeliness of form and smallness of scale which is said to have ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... sand and silt, not only in size of particles, but also in properties and formation. It is said that clay particles reach a degree of fineness equal to 1/2500 of an inch. Clay itself, when wet and kneaded, becomes plastic and adhesive and is thus easily distinguished from sand. Because of these properties, clay is of great value in holding together the larger ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... wish, but if I chain you down you sacrifice the fineness of your virtue. You make ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... the pleasant town of Xerez, and lodged the next night at Lebrija; and the next night at Utrera, where we saw the ruins of a brave town, nothing remaining extraordinary, but the fineness of the situation. We were met there by Don Lope de Mendoca, who was sent with his troop of horse from Seville, by command of the Asistente of that city, [Footnote: The Asistencia of Seville is a high municipal office, peculiar to that city. Dic. de la Acad: Espan.] the Conde de Molina. There ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... this basis Chopin builds, or let us rather say, on this rocking harmonic fluid he sets afloat a charming melody, which is soon joined by a self-willed second part. Afterwards, this melody is dissolved into all kinds of fioriture, colorature, and other trickeries, and they are of such fineness, subtlety, loveliness, and gracefulness, that one is reminded of Queen Mab, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... matter which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh its web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... commencing, and many of them are already rather slackening their operations to keep their stocks down. The unexpected procrastination in the commencement of the fall trade is reasonably accounted for by the fineness of the weather. ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... hat and a vast feather, which was displayed at that entertaining little annual exhibition of the "Mirlitons," in the Place Vendome. With the exquisite modelling of its face (no one better than Mr. Sargent understands the beauty that resides in exceeding fineness), this head remains in my mind as a masterly rendering of the look of experience—such experience as may be attributed to a woman slightly faded and eminently distinguished. Subject and treatment in this valuable piece are of an equal interest, and in the latter ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... presently broken by the approach of an old man laden with pickaxe and shovel. He remarked upon the fineness of the day, and took up his position at a short distance from the stile, where the turf had been cleared away in a long-shaped patch. Here, with great deliberation he began his task. The sound of his steady strokes fell on the stillness. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Hamilton Hayne is characterized by a singular delicacy of sentiment and expression. There is an utter absence of what is gross or commonplace. His poetry, as a whole, carries with it an atmosphere of high-bred refinement. We recognize at once fineness of fiber and of culture. It could not well be otherwise; for the poet traced the line of his ancestors to the cultured nobility of England, and, surrounded by wealth, was brought up in the home of ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... contrary, it means that they had in them an element of exceptional vigour, which resulted in a peculiar intensifying of all pigments, transmuting red into black and carrying with it an unusual vigour of growth and fineness of texture, producing, in short, the world-famed Silver Fox, the lightest, softest, thickest, warmest, and most lustrous of furs, the fur worth many times its weight in gold, and with this single fault, that it does not ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... impart to it a quality which is priceless. No man can measure what a single hour with Nature may have contributed to the moulding of his mind. The influence is self-renewing, and if for a long time it baffles expression by reason of its fineness, so much the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... precept—Be perfect in regard to what is here and now: the precept of "culture," as it is called, or of a complete education—might at least save him from the vulgarity and heaviness [146] of a generation, certainly of no general fineness of temper, though with a material well-being abundant enough. Conceded that what is secure in our existence is but the sharp apex of the present moment between two hypothetical eternities, and all that is real in our experience but a ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... have thus been used, and still are used, in a variety of conditions, such as in the raw or green state, bruised, boiled, steamed, fermented, burned, dissolved, and broken or ground into various states of fineness, to which the names of 1/2-inch, 1/4-inch bones, bone-meal, bone-dust, and floated bones are given. We shall now proceed to discuss the composition of bones, and investigate more exactly the nature of ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... fluctuates with the value of silver; in 1870 it was worth about 6s. 8d., in 1907 it was worth 3s. 3d.[48] The name given in China to uncoined silver in current use is "sycee." It is cast for convenience sake into ingots weighing one to 50 taels. Its average fineness is 916.66 per 1000. When foreign silver is imported, say into Shanghai, it can be converted into currency by a very simple process. The bars of silver are sent to a quasi-public office termed the "Kung K'u," or public valuers, and by them melted down and cast into ingots of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... invincible obscurity of his origins clung to him like a shadowy garment. He had handled millions without ever enjoying anything of what is counted as precious in the community of men, because he had neither the brutality of temperament nor the fineness of mind to make him desire them with the will ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... dealings with Mr. Brann I found him a person of almost feminine fineness. It was amusing to meet him after some particularly atrocious issue of the ICONOCLAST, either personally or by letter, and have him "roar as gently as a sucking dove." In such moods he revealed a character that was really sweet—though I must apologize ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... fineness of feeling in this coarse man. He wanted to spare her not only pain, but the necessity of watchful eyes on her every moment. Lucy did not like to promise not to try to escape, if opportunity presented. Still, she reasoned, ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... machinery, worked by electricity, for beating gold to that degree of fineness that it could not be seen except through a powerful microscope, and there was the powerful microscope for seeing it through, ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... bark thoroughly before it is removed from the wood. It is then split to the desired thickness, after which it is beaten with wooden or bone mallets (gikai), which are generally grooved transversely (Fig. 18). The cloth produced is soft and pliable, but is not of the fineness of tapa, and it is always in comparatively narrow pieces. In no instance was the operator seen to beat two strips together to gain greater breadth ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... the tree—unity in the trunk, infinity in the foliage—any one is able to understand it. We perceive that all things grow as a tree grows, from unity to multiplicity, from simplicity and strength to beauty and fineness. The generation of the line from the point, the plane from the line, and from the plane, the solid, is a matter, again, which chiefly interests the geometrician, but the inevitable sequence stands revealed ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... trouble is this: you had a plan mapped out at which Mickey was to jump. Mickey happened to have preconceived ideas on the subject, so he didn't jump. You wanted to be the king on the throne and stretch out a royal hand," laughed Leslie. "You wanted to lift Mickey to your level, and with the inherent fineness in him, have him feel eternal love and gratitude ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... variety. Woodcock, snipe, hares, and venison are cheap, and all of excellent quality. The beef and mutton are also good, as are the vegetables. Turnips, radishes and carrots are enormous, owing, I suppose to the depth and fineness of the soil. Vandy measured some of each, and reports: "Radishes, eighteen inches, and beautifully white; carrots, twenty inches, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... blooming as his most florid fancies, and with a soul as fervent and imperious as his own. As is usual in such cases, she was the apple of his eye, and was loved by him above all humanity. Among his courtiers was a young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens. This royal maiden was well satisfied with her lover, for he was handsome and brave to a degree unsurpassed in all this kingdom, and she loved him with an ardor that ...
— The Lady, or the Tiger? • Frank R. Stockton
... Abysm." As the wind sweepingly rushes to a howling apex so came the propulsive crash of the climax. The tone rapidly subsided and receded; for the composer had so cunningly scored it that groups of instruments were withdrawn without losing the thread of the musical tale. The tone, spun to a needle fineness, rushed up the fingerboard of the fiddles accompanied by the harp in a billowing glissando and—then on ragged rims of wide thunder a gust of air seemed to melt lights, men, instruments into a darkness that froze the eyeballs. With a scorching whiff of sulphur ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker |
