"Massiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... justify the most extravagant tales of pioneer and huntsman. His hind-quarters were trim and fine-lined, built apparently for speed, smooth-haired, and of a grayish lion-color. But his fore-shoulders, mounting to an enormous hump, were of an elephantine massiveness, and clothed in a dense, curling, golden-brown growth of matted hair. His mighty head was carried low, almost to the level of his knees, on a neck of colossal strength, which was draped, together ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... enormous windows, the iron cages fastened to the lower ones. Part of the brooding expression of these great houses comes, even when they have not fallen into decay, from their look of having outlived their original use. Their extraordinary largeness and massiveness are a satire on their present fate. They weren't built with such a thickness of wall and depth of embrasure, such a solidity of staircase and superfluity of stone, simply to afford an economical winter residence to English and American families. I don't know whether it was ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... at her will through the garden. Moving from enclosure to enclosure of box, she came, before she knew it, to the house itself. It loomed up before her a pale massiveness, with no lights in any of the windows, but on the back porch sat the owner. He sat in a high-back chair, with his head tilted back, and his eyes were closed and he seemed to be asleep, but Sarah was not quite sure. She stopped short. She became ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... interesting: we had not seen them in companies or brotherhoods rising one above another at a long distance. Ben Lomond stood alone, opposite to us, majestically overlooking the lake; yet there was something in this mountain which disappointed me,—a want of massiveness and simplicity, perhaps from the top being broken into three distinct stages. The road carried us over a bold promontory by a steep and high ascent, and we had a long view of the lake pushing itself up in a narrow line through an avenue of mountains, terminated ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... side with the massiveness of the Roman Past, all matters that we handle or dream of nowadays look evanescent and ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by Albert Jaegers. Here, as in "Rain" and "Sunshine," there is a sense of fruitfulness, of profuseness, a maternal suggestion that helps to carry out the symbolism of the court. In all three of these statues, too, there is something of the nobility and massiveness that distinguish the same artist's "bull" groups across the court. All are eminently suited to the massive Roman architecture; nowhere else have sculptor and architect worked ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... erected by Peter de Rupibus in the early part of the thirteenth century. In its more mature and elaborate work it shows a considerable advance on the simplest form of Early English, though the apparently low elevation, and massiveness of the piers and lower arcading, are obviously not free from Norman influences. It is divided into five bays by alternate circular and octagonal piers, the dwarfed appearance of which is relieved by triple vaulting shafts on the north and south sides, and single shafts to support the arch mouldings. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... Municipio, is a shapeless unfinished block of masonry. It is here that the Eugubine tables, plates of brass with Umbrian and Roman incised characters, are shown. The Palazzo de' Consoli has higher architectural qualities, and is indeed unique among Italian palaces for the combination of massiveness with lightness in a situation of unprecedented boldness. Rising from enormous substructures mortised into the solid hillside, it rears its vast rectangular bulk to a giddy height above the town; airy loggias imposed on great forbidding masses of brown stone, shooting ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... nose and aggressive chin beneath the flaming whiskers, and his whole magnificent body gave the impression of resolve and repressed action. Rainey fancied whimsically that he could hear a dynamo purring inside of the giant's massiveness. He had seen him in open rage when he had first denounced Honest Simms, but the serious mood was far ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... reign of Queen Anne taste reverted to the older lighter designs, grotesques were eliminated, massiveness gave place to grace, and brightness of colour to a soft modified brilliancy that was very engaging. In the Georgian copies heaviness again obtained favour, and gradually the designs deteriorated, and were eventually temporarily ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands
... about. The tree has a gnarled, grotesque trunk which divides into insignificant branches, bearing leaves mean in shape, harsh in texture, with a silvery underside. It gives but a quivering shade and has no massiveness, nor symmetry. Ay! but there are olives on the branches. And so the beauty of the humble tree is in what it grows for man's good. After all, it is the outcome in fruitfulness which is the main thing about us. God's meaning, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... by a love for the grotesque and devilish. Not even the unsteady, deceptive glare of the ember light, throwing streaks and patches of shade, ever changing and ever moving, across the ragged surface of the beard, could hide the square massiveness of the jaws and the curve of the hard yet sensuous lips. There was strength in the nose, strength and cruelty, and the straight black band that formed the heavy brow added to the repellent expression. Such a face it was that, looking ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... was like Durham. It is true that Durham Cathedral stands upon a noble cliff overhanging a ravine, while Reading Abbey stood upon a small and irregular hill which hardly showed above the flat plains of the river meadows, but in massiveness of structure and in type of architecture Reading seems to have resembled Durham more nearly than any other of our great monuments, and to emphasise its parallelism to Durham is perhaps the best way to make the modern reader understand what ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... draw. Rochester has a fine old cathedral, rather dilapidated, and in part restored, but its chief attraction is the castle towering above the river, its Norman keep forming a tower over seventy feet square and rising one hundred feet high, its masonry disclosing vast strength and impressive massiveness. Cobham Hall, the residence of Earl Darnley, is near Rochester, standing in a nobly wooded park seven miles in circumference. Just north of Cobham Park is Gad's Hill, where Charles Dickens lived. Beyond Rochester the powerful modern defensive ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... fashion, and I could spare my eyes until I reached the first slope of the mountains. When the path began to ascend and I was afforded a better view of the heavens, thunder-clouds were piling in sullen massiveness above ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... a ruin of a different character; one of the old strongholds of the rough time when men lived by the might of hand. No delicate arches and graceful mouldings had ever been here; all was, or had been, grim, stern strength and massiveness. The strength was broken long ago; and grace, in the shape of clustering ivy, had mantled so much of the harsh outlines that their original impression was lost. It could be recalled only by a little abstraction. Within ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... impressive in the angry sorrow of Joris. It partook of his own magnitude. Standing in front of him, it was impossible for Captain Hyde not to be sensible of the difference between his own slight, nervous frame, and the fair, strong massiveness of Van Heemskirk; and, in a dim way, he comprehended that this physical difference was only the outward and visible sign of a mental and moral one ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... capped them quaintly, hardly making two alike. Here, at Carcassonne, every tower, or nearly every tower, resembles its fellow, and all have sugar-loaf caps that irritate the eye with iteration of the same form. The citadel has no character of massiveness, no grand donjon to distinguish it from the rest of the fortifications, and the cathedral has only two mean little donkey's ears of towers that are most ineffective, peeping over the walls of the south-western angle of the town. In looking out for a study for a picture one has to get where some of ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... brown stone, simply laid one on the other; the whole naked, rugged surface of which suggests a natural cliff (say of the Vaucluse order) rather than an effort of human, or even of Roman labor. It is the biggest thing at Orange, - it is bigger than all Orange put to- gether, - and its permanent massiveness makes light of the shrunken city. The face it presents to the town - the top of it garnished with two rows of brackets, perforated with holes to receive the staves of the vela- rium - bears the traces of more than one tier of orna- mental arches; though how these flat arches were applied, or ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... of Messrs. Parsons and Glieve, solicitors, are situated off the Strand, and within seven minutes' walk of Covent Garden. It is an old-established and exceedingly respectable firm. Its respectability is emphasized by the massiveness of its furniture and the age of its office boy. He is fifty, if he is a day. An exceeding slowness of brain prevented him from rising to a more exalted position, a position to which his quite extraordinary conscientiousness and honesty would have entitled him. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... felt when we compare it with Gothic churches. It is more an external work than the Gothic churches are, and is not so made out of the dim, awful, mysterious, grotesque, intricate nature of man. But it is beautiful and grand. I love its remote distances, and wide, clear spaces, its airy massiveness; its noble arches, its sky-like dome, which, I think, should be all over light, with ground-glass, instead of being ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... representation of majesty; and thence he has the satisfaction of seeing all the poachers transported beyond the seas. The county jail and the house of correction are particular pets of his. He admires even their architecture, and prides himself especially on the size and massiveness of the prison. He used to extend his fondness even to the stocks; but the treadmill, almost the only modern thing which has wrought such a miracle, has superseded it in his affections, and the ancient stocks now ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... strong built, and compact, with the air of native lordliness and command. His countenance was peculiarly beautiful, full and rounded as if young; fresh-coloured; and beaming with health, spirit, and vivacity. Its almost womanly sweetness was chastened and redeemed by the massiveness of the head, the deep penetrating eye, and an aspect of uncommon elevation and nobleness. Till the last, he was the very personification of the old Dux—the Duke of Chivalry—the foremost leader and commander of the people. But instead of chained ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and rattle of belt and armature, of ill-lit subterranean aisles of sleeping places, illimitable vistas of pin-point lights. Here was the smell of tanning, and here the reek of a brewery, and here unprecedented reeks. Everywhere were pillars and cross archings of such a massiveness as Graham had never before seen, thick Titans of greasy, shining brickwork crushed beneath the vast weight of that complex city world, even as these anemic millions were crushed by its complexity. And everywhere were pale features, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... philosophic writings and Homer's epics. All the great works of literature and philosophy were well known to him. Thus he brought to bear on his music a mind singularly well equipped in every direction. He was, too, essentially a Teuton, with all the German massiveness of conception and depth of soul. A lesser man must have fallen before the prospect of attempting such a colossal reform. What was that reform in its essentials? It was this—to compose opera in which the idea of the drama ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Klopstock's odes. The poet entered. I was much disappointed in his countenance, and recognised in it no likeness to the bust. There was no comprehension in the forehead, no weight over the eye-brows, no expression of peculiarity, moral or intellectual, on the eyes, no massiveness in the general countenance. He is, if anything, rather below the middle size. He wore very large half-boots, which his legs filled, so fearfully were they swollen. However, though neither W—— nor ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... thirteenth-century Cathedral, its high spire piercing the skies in which rooks are for ever circling and calling. The time-worn stone, at a little distance delicate as lacework, is transformed at different hours of the day into shifting shades of colour, varying from grey to purple: the massiveness of the great nave and transepts contrasts impressively with the gradual tapering of the spire, rising so high above turret and clerestory that it at last becomes a mere line against the ether. In morning, as in afternoon, ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... little accustomed to such labour, she removed several stones, and advanced in her task so far as to obtain a glimmering of light, and, what was scarce less precious, a supply of purer air. But, at the same time, she had the misfortune to ascertain, that, from the size and massiveness of a huge stone which closed the extremity of the passage, there was no hope that her unassisted strength could effect her extrication. Yet her condition was improved by the admission of air and light, as well as by the opportunity afforded of calling ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the matron was preparing to devote to him stood shrinking with a trepidation which she could not conceal at sight of his strange massiveness, with his rust-gold hair coming down toward his thick yellow brows and mocking blue eyes in a dense bang, and his jaw squaring itself under the rather insolent smile of his full mouth. The matron felt that her victim teas perhaps going to fail her, when a voice at her ear said, as if the question ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with its labyrinth of cromlechs and stone circles, a very city of dead years. There is something awe-inspiring in the mere massiveness of these piled and ordered stones, the visible boundaries of invisible thoughts; that awe is deepened by the feeling of the tremendous power lavished in bringing them here, setting them up in their ordered ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... glass; yet it was not without a certain impressiveness. The hall was so large that nearly two hundred men could find seats on the two benches that ran through it from end to end. Its walls were of a symmetry and massiveness to outlast the wear of centuries; and the interior had ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... wake he could see the whole head of the Inlet deep in winter snows,—a white world, coldly aloof in its grandeur. It was beautiful, full of the majesty of serene distances, of great heights. It stood forth clothed with the dignity of massiveness, of permanence. It was as it had been for centuries, calm and untroubled, unmoved by floods and slides, by fires and slow glacial changes. Yes, it was beautiful and Hollister looked a long time, for he was not sure ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Duomo. This Cathedral is of immense size. The architecture is singular from its being a mixture of the Gothic and Greek. It appears the most ponderous load that ever was laid on the shoulders of poor mother earth. There is nothing light in its structure to relieve the massiveness of the building, and in this respect it forms a striking contrast to the Cathedral of Milan which appears the work of Sylphs. The outside of this Duomo of Florence is decorated and incrusted with black and white marble, which ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... survival of the fittest, no doubt—all the frailer samples dropt, sorted out by death)—as if to show how the earth and woods, the attrition of storms and elements, and the exigencies of life at first hand, can train and fashion men, indeed chiefs, in heroic massiveness, imperturbability, muscle, and that last and highest beauty consisting of strength—the full exploitation and fruitage of a human identity, not from the culmination-points of "culture" and artificial civilization, but tallying our race, as it were, with giant, vital, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and dingy colour-tone to the buildings. The low and even relief of the site and the long vistas of the streets do not lend themselves to the picturesque; yet this quality may be claimed for the high and broken skyline, varied colour, massiveness, bustle and impressive commercialism of the business district. Chicago is generally credited with being the original home of the steel-frame "sky-scraper,"[5] though there are now higher buildings elsewhere in America. The unstable soil of sand, clay and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... roof, where the eaves have for their immediate background the pavement of the streets below; only this cathedral was 9,000 feet high. Now, any one standing at the foot of the Wetterhorn may admire their stupendous massiveness and steepness; but, to feel their influence enter in the very marrow of one's bones, it is necessary to stand at the summit, and to fancy the one little slide down the short ice-slope, to be followed ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... among rocks under reaches of shadow—the shadow of Rokeby Woods. I climbed very leisurely up the hill-side, having in my hand a bag with a meal, and up the stair in the wall to the top I went, where there is no parapet, but a massiveness of wall that precludes danger; and here in my miner's attire I sat three hours, brooding sleepily upon the scene of lush umbrageous old wood that marks the long way the river takes, from Marwood Chase ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... was carried to its comparatively great height that it might serve as a tower of observation as well as a place of last retreat if in an attack the outer walls of the fortress should give way. Here at Vincennes a certain massiveness is noted in connection with the donjon, though the actual ground area which it covers is not very great; it was not like many donjons of the time, which were virtually smaller chateaux or fortresses enclosed within ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... establishment of the empire. The enactments of the emperors, clothed at first in the pretence of popular sanction, but afterwards emanating undisguisedly from the imperial prerogative, extend in increasing massiveness from the consolidation of Augustus's power to the publication of the Code of Justinian. It will be seen that even in the reign of the second emperor a considerable approximation is made to that condition of the law and that mode of administering ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... the works of the Mound Builders are noticeable for their solidity and massiveness. We see this illustrated in the great walls of Fort Ancient. Some of our scholars think this is a distinguishing feature of the Mound Builders' work. It seems to us that it is difficult to make this a distinguishing feature, as we have no ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... particular stretched our eyes "as far (to borrow Caxton's language) as we well might"—in the direction of Hochstedt—we descended, extremely gratified; and sought the hotel and our dinner. Upon the whole, the cathedral of Ulm is a noble ecclesiastical edifice: uniting simplicity and purity with massiveness of composition. Few cathedrals are more uniform in the style of their architecture. It seems to be, to borrow technical language, all of a piece. Near it, forming the foreground of the Munich print, are a chapel and a house ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... struggles the more painful, the temptations more dangerous, the inconsistencies too often the more shameful, the capacities for evil as well as for good, more huge, just in proportion to the native force and massiveness of the soul? The doctrine may seem dangerous. It is dangerous, like many truths; and woe to those who, being unlearned and unstable, wrest it to their own destruction; and presume upon it to indulge their own passions under ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... grown too old for service, but had been pensioned and was more fond of fine stories than ever, added to his importance as a gentleman of quality by describing the banquets at the Towers, the richness of the food, the endless courses, the massiveness of the gold plate, the rareness of the wines, and the magnificence of ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... they lie steeped in color, gorgeous, tremulous, passionate, rosy red dropping away into pale gold, emeralds dim and sullen where they ripple down towards the darkness, dusky browns and broad reaches of blue-black massiveness, till the silent starlight wraps the scene with blessing, and the earth sitteth ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... of these figures is marble, its coolness and massiveness suiting the growing severity of Greek thought, yet they have their reminiscences of work in bronze, in a certain slimness and tenuity, a certain dainty lightness of poise in their grouping, which [264] remains in the memory as a peculiar ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... out from among them and forming a sheltering roof with their boughs, showing for how long a period they must have been deserted. There were churches too, which we discovered to be such by their construction and the massiveness of their walls; many of them of considerable size, and built of well-burnt bricks. Altogether we were struck by the elegance and substantial appearance of the different buildings, so superior to those of modern architecture, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... another portrait, painted by Savage. It is cold and dry, hard enough to serve for the signboard of an inn, and able, one would think, to withstand all weathers. Yet this picture has something which Stuart left out. There is a rugged strength in the face which gives us pause, there is a massiveness in the jaw, telling of an iron grip and a relentless will, which has ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... uninhabitable and are occupied by only a few sickly, degraded natives who live largely by the chase. Yet in the past this region was the scene of by far the highest culture that ever developed in America. There alone in this great continent did men develop an architecture which, not only in massiveness but in wealth of architectural detail and sculptural adornment, vies with that of early Egypt or Chaldea. There alone did the art of writing develop. Yet today in those regions the density of the forest, the prevalence of deadly fevers, the extremely enervating ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... producing the catastrophe required. Until further information, therefore, I shall maintain it to be a sea-unicorn of colossal dimensions, armed not with a halberd, but with a real spur, as the armoured frigates, or the 'rams' of war, whose massiveness and motive power it would possess at the same time. Thus may this puzzling phenomenon be explained, unless there be something over and above all that one has ever conjectured, seen, perceived, or experienced; which is just within the bounds ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... his preoccupation the freedom and massiveness of the West broadened the Boy's mental vision. He absorbed the spirit of the big world it typified, and he saw things more clearly than in the crowded city. And yet he suffered more, too. He could not often talk about his sorrow and his loss, but ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... and buildings from the hills themselves, and raised in the plains of Lower Egypt artificial pyramids in imitation of the granite hills of this form. Their temples were in form like many of the granite ranges, and were thoroughly encased with stone. The extraordinary massiveness of these works suggests that Nature assisted the design; the stone columns are imitations of the date palms, and the buildings are copies of the rocky hills—the two ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... dried up on their bones; the fool had deemed them sleeping; but, for lack of food, they had perished and tasted the cup of death. Now when the Emir Musa saw this, he stood still, glorifying Allah the Most High and hallowing Him and contemplating the beauty of the palace and the massiveness of its masonry and fair perfection of its ordinance, for it was builded after the goodliest and stablest fashion and the most part of its adornment was of green[FN139] lapis-lazuli, and on the inner door, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... particular. This innovation was a healthy one, and led to very noble results when followed up by succeeding artists: but in many of Giotto's compositions the figures become ludicrously cumbrous, from the exceeding simplicity of the terminal lines, and massiveness of unbroken form. The manner was copied in illuminated manuscripts with great disadvantage, as it was unfavourable to minute ornamentation. The French never adopted it in either branch of art, nor did any other Northern school; minute and sharp folds of the robes remaining ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... broad that it gave an almost square appearance, the neck, short and thick, the forelegs disproportionately small but very sturdy; and the whole animal was built on a slope towards the hind quarters which seemed to equal in massiveness all the rest of the body. One would have said that the horse was a freak meant by nature for the climbing of hills. And to glance at it no man could suppose that those ponderous limbs might be moved to a gallop. However, Haw-Haw Langley well knew the powers of the ugly beast, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... trumpet-flower overran this porch, whose antique massiveness harmonized with the building, for the straggling branches shot out in all directions, and its coarse blossoms, then in season, seemed to have drank up all the red paint as it vanished from the clapboards. Long, uncut grass, ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... come off victorious. The Robbers is a tragedy that will long find readers to astonish, and, with all its faults, to move. It stands, in our imagination, like some ancient rugged pile of a barbarous age; irregular, fantastic, useless; but grand in its height and massiveness and black frowning strength. It will long remain a singular monument of the early genius and early fortune of ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... heavy steering oar, finding it difficult even in that moment of suspense to suppress a smile at the expression of terror on Alphonse's black face, I stood up, awed by the solemn massiveness of the vast bulk towering above me, now barely thirty feet away. For the first time I realized fully the desperation of my task, and my heart sank. But the gesticulations of the wrathful guard could no longer be ignored, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... I did nothing of the sort," retorted the General. "I trust I am not so lacking in manners. I merely remarked its beauty and quaintness and massiveness and general artistry. My host expressed pleasure at my appreciation of its qualities and volunteered the information that it was a little thing he had picked up in a curio shop on Regent Street, London, last summer. He had acquired it in perfect good faith. What its history ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... which suggests a natural cliff (say of the Vaucluse order) rather than an effort of human or even of Roman labour. It is the biggest thing at Orange—it is bigger than all Orange put together—and its permanent massiveness makes light of the shrunken city. The face it presents to the town—the top of it garnished with two rows of brackets perforated with holes to receive the staves of the velarium—bears the traces of more than one tier of ornamental arches; though how ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... of the stones, alternating with spaces, and set in an accurate circle, and across the tops of them other stones were set, equally huge. The stones were undressed and rugged; but the huge massiveness of them impressed the eye more than all the temples and daintily tooled pyramids of our wondrous city. And in the centre of the circle was that still greater stone which formed the altar, and round which was carved, in the rude chiselling of ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... the right during the speech of Bismarck, with now and again a general ripple of laughter at some pleasantry accessible to the German mind; but these were much outdone in heartiness by the applause which frequently interrupted Richter when speaking. There is a massiveness about this scene which rises up in memory with a vividness greater, if possible, than the reality made on our excited and wearied endurance during the hours we spent there. Later, Windhorst, the leader of the Roman Catholic party, ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... the long avenue rolled concealed its beauty to the unaccustomed eye, showing only more bare trees and sodden stretches of brown grass. The house itself, as it loomed up out of the thickening rain-mist, appalled Tembarom by its size and gloomily gray massiveness. Before it was spread a broad terrace of stone, guarded by more griffins of even more disdainful aspect than those watching over the gates. The stone noses held themselves rigidly in the air as the reporter of the up-town society ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... immediate place of safety seemed to be the Inner Sanctuary of Nagaya, . . it was untouched by the flames, and its Titanic pillars of brass and bronze suggested, in their very massiveness, a nearly impregnable harbor of refuge. The King had fled thither, and now stood, like a statue of undaunted gloomy amazement, beside Lysia, who on her part appeared literally frozen with terror. Her large, startled eyes, roving here and there in helpless anxiety, alone gave any animation ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... presumably, with Secchi's third and fourth orders of stars with banded spectra. Whether, in the interim, they should display spectra of the Sirian or of the solar type was made to depend on their greater or less massiveness.[1381] But the relation actually existing perhaps inverts that contemplated by Ritter. Certainly, the evidence collected by Mr. Maunder in 1891 strongly supports the opinion that the average solar star is a weightier body than the average ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... creative faculty in man—is obvious and remarkable. It reveals itself in all the productions of man—his architecture, his sculpture, his painting, and his poetry. Oriental architecture is characterized by the boldness and massiveness of all its parts, and the monotonous uniformity of all its features. This is but the expression, in a material form, of that shadowy feeling of infinity, and unity, and immobility which an unbroken continent of vast deserts and continuous ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... extremities containing narrow windows; a band of chequered stonework is carried across the space beneath them, and a small circular window inserted above. It may be mentioned here that the pointed arch has generally been adopted in the new work, to distinguish it from the old, but the characteristic massiveness and predominant scale of the original has been preserved throughout the restoration. A practical illustration of these principles will be seen in The Porch, as an ingenious compromise between the older and newer types of architecture ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... became lithe and quick. The yellow of his coat darkened, and there was a whitish-gray streak along his back like that along Kazan's. He had his mother's under-throat and her beautiful grace of head. Otherwise he was a true son of Kazan. His limbs gave signs of future strength and massiveness. He was broad across the chest. His eyes were wide apart, with a little red in the lower corners. The forest people know what to expect of husky pups who early develop that drop of red. It is a warning that they are born of the wild and that their ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... The massiveness and vastness of these temples demonstrate the power of the religious instinct in man, even when that instinct is most perverted. With all their grossness and crudity, these shrines reveal a wealth of imagination and an artistic inventiveness, which ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... laughing equally at and with him. Nevertheless, if I had the choice of sitting with him at the Boar's Head or with Johnson at the Turk's, I shouldn't hesitate for an instant. The agility of Falstaff's mind gains much of its effect by contrast with the massiveness of his body; but in contrast with Johnson's equal agility is Johnson's moral as well as physical bulk. His sallies 'tell' the more startlingly because of the noble weight of character behind them: they are the better because he makes them. In Falstaff there ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... of animal predominance we find that the moral region does not rise above the forehead, but runs back flat without elevation, while the depth of the ear below the level of the brain and the massiveness of the base of the brain running into a large neck show plainly that the animal ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... close-fitting flow of her robe, and the luxuriant mass of light-brown hair hanging low on both sides of her head, as marked characteristics of her costume. Her features were very plain and large, too large for anything like beauty, but strongly impressive by their very massiveness. More than one of her friends has spoken of her resemblance to Savonarola, perhaps suggested by her description of that monk-prophet in Romola. Mr. Kegan Paul finds that she also resembled Dante and Cardinal ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... restraint anywhere, and wore frills and falls of black lace where other people would have followed the fashion in high collars and close wristbands. What must have struck any one with an observant eye, as she sat thus, thrown into beautiful light and shade by the blaze of the wood fire, was the massiveness of the head compared with the nervous delicacy of much of the face, the thinness of the wrist, and of the long and slender foot raised on the fender. It was perhaps the great thickness and full wave of the hair which gave the head ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make. I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle. But soon London's massiveness, I might say its very ugliness, began to impress me. I began to experience that sense of grandeur which one feels when he looks at a great mountain or a mighty river. Beside London Paris becomes a toy, a pretty plaything. And I must own that before I left the world's metropolis ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... Edwin easily ranks first in graceful symmetry; its span is one hundred and ninety-four feet, its elevation one hundred and eight feet, its width thirty-five feet. Combining grace and massiveness, the Augusta stands pre-eminent. It rises in majestic proportions to the height of two hundred and twenty-two feet and has a span between abutments of two hundred and sixteen feet. The width of the road-bed is ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... the buildings increase in size, style, and finish. The ordinary material is adobe, not only because it is cheap, but also because it best resists earthquake shocks. Fear of a terremoto has likewise led to a massiveness in construction which is slightly ludicrous when we see the poverty which it protects; the walls are often two or three feet thick. The ground floor is occupied by servants, whose rooms—small enough ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... which lies between the two brick pyramids, was built entirely of stone. Nothing of it remains above ground, but the investigation of the subterranean portions showed that it was remarkable for the massiveness of its stones and the care with which the masonry was executed. The same characteristics are found in the dependent tombs of the princesses Ha and Khnumet, in which more jewelry was found. This splendid stonework is characteristic of the Middle ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... good at all ages,' replied Loerke. 'A man should be big and powerful—whether he is old or young is of no account, so he has the size, something of massiveness and—and stupid form.' ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... is necessary to make them pretty massive. The number of the vibrations depends upon such massiveness, and it is necessity to know the relation which exists between these two quantities in order to be able to construct an instrument under determinate conditions. I made in former years such a research with regard to tuning forks of prismatic form, that is to say, of a constant rectangular ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... the features, the skull was disproportionally large, both behind and before; and a physiognomist would have drawn conclusions more favourable to the power than the tenderness of the Provencal's character from the compact closeness of the lips and the breadth and massiveness of the iron jaw. But the son's sketch exaggerated every feature, and gave to the expression a malignant and terrible irony not now, at least, apparent in the quiet and meditative aspect. Gabriel himself, as he stood, would have been a more tempting study to many an artist. It is true that ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them doubtfully, till it opened out upon the light. The houses on each side were divided only by a pace or two, and communicated with one another, here and there, by arched passages. They looked very ancient, and may have been inhabited by Etruscan princes, judging from the massiveness of some of the foundation stones. The present inhabitants, nevertheless, are by no means princely,—shabby men, and the careworn wives and mothers of the people,—one of whom was guiding a child in leading-strings through these antique ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... same space, and with equal facility of access, so many subjects for his pencil. Mountains, forests, rocks, lakes, rivers, cataracts, all in perfection. But he must be bold as a lion in colouring, or he will make nothing of it. There is a clearness of atmosphere, a strength of chiaro oscuro, a massiveness in the foliage, and a brilliance of contrast, that must make a colourist of any one who has an eye. He must have courage to dip his pencil in shadows black as night, and light that might blind an eagle. As ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... forms, and the short story here is in general not romantic or fantastic, but what we understand by the word "realistic." The outward body of the story is in several instances more built up by cumulative details than formerly, which gives it an air of solidity or massiveness, and is less expressed through a swift selection of things essential. And this may lead a reader to suppose that the story is more a narrative of external incidents than is actually the case. In truth, though the "corporal ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... there's too much fulness and massiveness in parts. But just look at the articulations, they are delicate and really pretty. Come, good-bye, I must leave you. I'm going to sit down a while. My legs ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... beneath the light awning, wreathed in flowers, of one of the many little teahouses improvised in this courtyard. We are on a terrace at the top of the great steps, up which the crowd continues to flock, and at the foot of a portico which stands erect with the rigid massiveness of a colossus against the dark night sky; at the foot also of a monster, who stares down upon us, with his big stony eyes, his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sterner aspect of the South American jungle affords little invitation to repose or restful contemplation. And the charm which its riotous prodigality exerts is in no sense idyllic. For the jungle falls upon one with the force of a blow. It grips by its massiveness, its awful grandeur. It does not entice admiration, but exacts obeisance by brute force. Its silence is a dull roar. Its rest is continuous motion, incessant activity. The garniture of its trackless wastes is that of great daubs of vivid color, laid thick upon the canvas with the knife—never ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... at 660 to 670 Washington Street, immediately in the rear of the Invalids' Hotel and Surgical Institute, is of brick, with sandstone trimmings, six stories high, and 100 feet square. Its most striking architectural features exteriorly are massiveness, combined with grace and beauty of outline, and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... gown are, first, the way it showed off the very plump neck of the wearer. The fine throat line was visible, but at the shoulders, where too much massiveness takes the place of fine firm flesh, the robe was draped. The arms were likewise covered at the top, their thickest part, and, as the robe fell over them when in repose, much of their apparent ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... have a law of propriety and regularity among themselves. The tall spire is of such admirable proportion that it does not seem gigantic; and, indeed, the effect of the whole edifice is of beauty rather than weight and massiveness. Perhaps the bright, balmy sunshine in which we saw it contributed to give it a tender glory, and to soften a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... and spectacular decorations of gilded wood have destroyed the architectural value and real beauty of the Cathedral's interior. Yet in the dim light, which is the light of its every-day life, the great height of the church and its sombre massiveness are ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... gave a howl of joy. O'Kayo the bawd came out to ascertain the cause of the brawl. She turned livid with fear on recognizing Kibei. They were standing together in the sort of entresol or room at the head of the stairway. Only a large brazier separated Kibei from his vengeance. Its massiveness of three or four feet breadth baffled him. The woman was fleeing for life. As he strove to get within striking distance fear gave her wings. From one side to another she leaped and dodged. Kibei was hampered. He had to cut her off from stair and ro[u]ka. As he hesitated she discharged ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... horizon in picturesque confusion, and are scarcely to be distinguished from the more artificial ruins of the ancient metropolis of the Deccan, which are usually constructed with blocks quarried from their sides, and vie in grotesqueness of outline and massiveness of character with the alternate airiness and solidity exhibited by nature in the nicely-poised logging stones and columnar piles, and in the walls of prodigious cuboidal blocks of granite which often crest and top her massive domes and ridges in ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... dog because built on slightly heavier lines. He had the wolfhound's fleetness, but with it much of the massy solidity of the bloodhound. His chest was immensely deep, his fore legs, haunches, and thighs enormously powerful. And the wrinkled massiveness of his head, like the breadth of his black saddle, gave him the appearance of ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... sumptuous palace-building; and for no purpose was the early Renaissance style better adapted than for the erection of dwelling-houses that should match the free and worldly splendour of those times. The just medium between mediaeval massiveness and classic simplicity was attained in countless buildings beautiful and various beyond description. Bologna is full of them; and Urbino, in the Ducal Palace, contains one specimen unexampled in extent and unique ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... odd looking beast, formidable in his sturdy strength and his massiveness of jaw; and ugly beyond question, but for the alert intelligence of his eyes. A palpable mongrel, he showed none the less that he had strains of distinction in his ancestry. English bull was the blood most clearly proclaimed, in his great ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts |
