"Prettiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came to Rome—twenty-two and art-mad. She had been pretty, with that pink-cheesecloth prettiness of the provincial English girl, who degenerates into blowsiness at thirty. Since seventeen she had saved and scrimped and contrived for this modest Roman holiday. She had given painting lessons—even painted on ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... two if they pleased, and down they knelt upon the pavement, examining the contents of his basket, and talked in almost breathless whispers to each other of the respective merits, the softness, colour, and prettiness, ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... and a pink-and-white complexion. This description makes of her a rather doll-like girl; but doll-like girls are just the sort to attract an inexperienced young man who has yet to learn that beauty and charm are quite distinct from prettiness, and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... figure wandered toward them. Strutted would perhaps be the better word, since she stepped like a person for whom stepping means a calculation. She was about Letty's height, and about Letty's figure. Moreover, she was pretty, with that haughtiness of mien which turns prettiness to beauty. What was most disconcerting was her coming straight toward Letty, and standing in front of ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... same thing holds true of painted walls and ceilings, though they too are hygienically good. When we come to papers, we are lost in a maze of stripes and garlands and nosegays, either alone or in combination. Prettiness is by no means synonymous with expense these days, when the general patterns and colors of costly papers are successfully reproduced in the cheaper grades. Tapestry papers are too heavy for bedrooms. Those figured with that mathematical precision which drives ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... fortunate, even at this early age, that Madelon's little pale face, with its wide-open brown eyes, had none of the prettiness belonging to the rosy-cheeked, blue- eyed, golden-haired type of beauty, and that she thus escaped a world of flattery and nonsense. She was silent too in company, as a rule, keeping her chatter and laughter, for the most part, till she was alone with ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... obscure perception of Mr. Bradshaw's feeling while he was making his phrases. That gentleman was, in another moment, to have the tingling delight of showing the grand creature he had just begun to tame. He was going to extinguish the pallid light of Susan's prettiness in the brightness of Myrtle's beauty. He would bring this young man, neutralized and rendered entirely harmless by his irrevocable pledge to a slight girl, face to face with a masterpiece of young womanhood, and say to him, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... which terminates at the distance of two or three miles with a low naked hill, beyond which appears the void of the firmament. This conceit singularly helps the idea of vastness, though in effect it is certainly inferior to the pastoral prettiness and rural thoughts of modern landscape gardening. Probably too much is attempted here; for if the mind cannot conceive of illimitable space, still less can it be represented by means ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... at this sudden revelation of his wife's prettiness and its evident effect upon his visitors came over Ira. It resulted in his addressing the empty space before his door with, "Well, ye won't ketch much if ye go on yawpin' and dawdlin' with women-folks like this;" ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... morning—Billy had devoted two hours and a half to the accident of that happening!—he had joyously mentioned that he was trying to buy out another man's berth upon that boat. It wasn't so much his wanting to come that was droll—teasing sprites of girls with peach-blossom prettiness are not unwonted to the thunder of pursuing feet—but the frank and cheery way he had of announcing it. Not many men had the courage of their desires. Not any men that little Miss Arlee had yet met had the frankness of such courage. And because all women love the adventurous ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... painting mere fashionable pictures, pretty portraits and the like, which yield money, but can never give fame. Do that, and your talent is lost and thrown away. Be patient, wait, reflect, chasten your taste by study, and wean yourself from that hankering after prettiness and dandyism. Leave such tricks to those who care but for gold, and propose yourself a higher aim, the never-dying laurels of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... extenuated by no such oblique tribute to his powers. The attitude of looking up is a strain on the muscles; and it was becoming more and more Glennard's opinion that brains, in a woman, should be merely the obverse of beauty. To beauty Mrs. Aubyn could lay no claim; and while she had enough prettiness to exasperate him by her incapacity to make use of it, she seemed invincibly ignorant of any of the little artifices whereby women contrive to palliate their defects and even to turn them into graces. Her dress ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... plain, Tom was just now incapable of judging. He only knew that her eyes were wonderful. He never remembered to have seen such eyes—clear, dark blue-grey with fine shading of eyelash on the lower as well as the upper lid. Unquestionably they surpassed all ordinary standards of prettiness. Were glorious, yet curiously embarrassing; too in their seriousness, their intent impartial scrutiny—under which last, to his lively vexation, the young ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... had been victimised. She was stylishly dressed, and had the air of enjoying an unusual treat. Her children were of more promising type, though Earwaker would hardly have supposed them so old as he knew them to be. Bella, just beyond her fourteenth year, had an intelligent prettiness, but was excessively shy; in giving her hand to the stranger she flushed over face and neck, and her bosom palpitated visibly. Her sister, two years younger, was a mere child, rather self-conscious, but of laughing ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... on peacefully, scarce murmuring as it coursed among the water plants which made it ripple. Then, amid a clump of oaks, appeared the big shed sheltering the wheel, and the other buildings garlanded with ivy, honeysuckle, and creepers, the whole forming a spot of romantic prettiness. And at night, especially when the mill slept, without a light at any of its windows, there was nothing of ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... from hat to boot in the most approved Oxford bandbox-cut of trimness and prettiness. Sheffield was turning into the High Street, when Reding stopped him: "It always annoys me," he said, "to go down High Street in a beaver; one is sure to ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... mouth very red; the complexion clear and rather pale, and the style of the face and its expression lofty. When Berthe Alix was a child, people were accustomed to say she was pretty and refined enough to belong to the aristocracy; nobody would have dared to say so now, prettiness and refinement, together with all the other virtues admitted to a place on the patriotic roll, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of her face was admirable: nothing could exceed in beauty the lines of her cheeks or the shape and softness of her chin. Those who were fastidious in their requirements might object to them that they bore no dimple; but after all, it is only prettiness that requires a dimple: full-blown beauty ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... know she's got to believe in you again, and in the deep purpose you stand for. But before you can do that, you've got to stand for some deep purpose. It's no good faking one up. You won't take a woman in, not really. Even when she chooses to be taken in, for prettiness' sake, it won't do ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... effected by means of photography. It is curious in tracing his hand through Punch to see how his work gradually strengthened; how his early vigour of subject and activity of mind, expressed in strong black-and-white, gave way to a daintier touch when the grace and prettiness of his dramatis personae came to demand greater refinement of the drawn line; and how this again constantly widened out into a broader method, under the inspiration of Charles Keene. And yet from first to last, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... went on, "she hasn't the face of a murderer. I don't mean to say that because she's pretty she couldn't commit a crime, but there are certain types of prettiness which have their origin in spiritual beauty, and Miss Stevens, or Rider, as I suppose I should call her, is one ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... toward the town. Beauty had not hitherto been a condition to which he attached great value. If anything, he had held it in some scorn. Now, for the first time in his emotional life, he was stirred by a girl's mere prettiness—a quite unusual prettiness, it had to be admitted; a slightly haggard prettiness, perhaps; a prettiness a little worn by work, a little coarsened by wind and weather; a prettiness too desperate for youth and too tragic for coquetry, but for those very reasons doubtless all the more haunting. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... among the most winning statuettes in the world. They were frequently copied by Desiderio and his entourage. One of the little heads in the Vanchettoni Chapel at Florence is likewise animated by a similar exemplar. There is something girlish about them, a pursuit of prettiness which is no doubt the source of their singular attraction, and which invests them with an irresistible charm. The San Giovannino, also in the Vanchettoni, is a more concrete version of childhood, but is by the same hand as its fellow. These four busts fail to characterise ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... not tell why, Charmian felt that there was a dawning of hope in her sky. Her depression seemed to lift a little. She was conscious of her youth, of her grace and charm, her prettiness, her intelligence. She was able to put ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... been by the book which she was reading, was almost startled by the gentle and rather wistful beauty of the face which she now showed to him. He had been prepared at the best for a fresh edition of the mother's worn and feverish prettiness. What he saw was distinct in quality. It seemed to him that an actual sympathy and friendliness looked out from her dark and quiet eyes, as though by instinct she understood with what an eager exultation he set out upon his holiday. ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... thought of Nancy till a few months ago. But in the spring-time, when his emotions blossomed with the blossoming year, he met the girl after a long interval, and saw her with changed eyes. She had something more than prettiness; her looks undeniably improved. It seemed, too, that she bore herself more gracefully, and even talked with, at times, an approximation to the speech of a lady. These admissions signified much in a man of Tarrant's social prejudice—so strong ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... looked sedately indulgent,—I suppose because he is a great man, this staff officer, who helps work out all the wonderful plans that are some day to make Germany able to conquer the world; but, as she explained to me the other day when I said something about her eyelashes being so long and pretty, prettiness is out of place in her position, and she prefers it not mentioned. "What has the wife of an Oberforster to do with prettiness?" she asked. "It is good for a junges Madchen, who has still to find a husband, but once she has ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... was tall, handsome, dark and aquiline, and made a foil for Peggy's blond prettiness. Peter thought her a step above Peggy in the cultural sense, and only learned afterward that as she was not very well off, Peggy was using her as a rung in the social ladder. Mordaunt, Peter didn't fancy, but Gittings, who was jovial and bald, managed to inject some ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... that it was better to be good-looking than to be good. He certainly was wonderfully handsome. People who did not like him, Philistines and college tutors, and young men reading for the Church, used to say that he was merely pretty; but there was a great deal more in his face than mere prettiness. I think he was the most splendid creature I ever saw, and nothing could exceed the grace of his movements, the charm of his manner. He fascinated everybody who was worth fascinating, and a great many people who were not. He was ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... finely pencilled were his eyebrows. He was growing up fast, and his teeth were a little decayed and blackened,[100] which gave a peculiar beauty to his smile, and the prettiness of his appearance only served to increase her regret; and with a profound pensiveness she ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... fellow in his neat tennis-flannels, slim, graceful, twenty-eight or thirty years old, with a Frenchy pointed beard. She was "nice" in all her pretty clothes, and she herself was pretty with that type of prettiness which outwears most other types—the prettiness that lies in a rounded figure, a dusky skin, plump, rosy cheeks, white teeth and black eyes. She might have been twenty-five; you guessed that she was ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... him poignant indeed. For it was indeed Maud who entered the room and came towards him with carefully studied embarrassment and half doubtfully extended hand. He did not see the cheap millinery, the slightly more developed figure, the passing of that insipid prettiness which had once charmed him into the bloom of an over-early maturity. His eyes were blinded with that sort of masculine chivalry—the heritage only of fools and very clever men—which takes no note of such things. It was Miss Brown who, from her place in a corner of the ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... through a long stretch of wilderness, and stopping to spend the night at an obscure settlement of a dozen houses. We were directed to lodgings in a common frame house at a little distance, where, it seemed, the only hotel was kept. When we entered the parlor, we were struck with utter amazement at its prettiness, which affected us before we began to ask ourselves how it came to be pretty. It was, in fact, only one of the miracles of harmonious color working with very simple materials. Some woman had been busy there, who had both eyes and ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... friendship in the care of the packing. Her aunt's left-off clothes had come to her in a big roll, fastened with a corking-pin. But Rebecca, with delicate fingers, had made each article of her tribute to look pretty, as though for the dress of such a one as Nina prettiness and care must always be needed. It was not possible for her to refuse a present sent to her with so many ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... matter over their evening pipes and gin-and-water, have not enough of matutinal zeal to carry out their purpose. Bullhampton is situated on a little river, which meanders through the chalky ground, and has a quiet, slow, dreamy prettiness of its own. A mile above the town,—for we will call it a town,—the stream divides itself into many streamlets, and there is a district called the Water Meads, in which bridges are more frequent than trustworthy, in which there are hundreds of little sluice-gates for regulating the irrigation, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... along the road for some minutes together, the stranger admiring all the way the golden tresses of the laburnum and the rich perfume of the lilac, and talking much as he went of the quaintness and prettiness of the suburban houses. Philip thought them pretty, too (or rather, important), but failed to see for his own part where the quaintness came in. Nay, he took the imputation as rather a slur on so respectable a neighbourhood: for to be quaint is to be picturesque, ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... are the pieces de resistance of a Mexican baile: quadrilles are not relished by the dusky danseuses. There are some New Mexican dances which do not lack prettiness. Of these, the Cuna is the most popular. It commences with a see-saw movement suggestive of its name—cuna- or cradle-dance. For the rest, the waltz enters much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... direction of restriction from the uncomely, the forced and the sensational, and in favor of the beautiful, the becoming and the divine. Nevertheless, it is the inevitable consequence of a prescription of this kind to run into mere prettiness and tuneful emptiness. Protection is a failure in art. The spirit must have freedom, or it will never take its grandest flights. And it is altogether possible that the needed corrective will presently be discovered of itself, through the progress of spirit into a clearer vision, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... every doorway; but, mistletoe or not, the owner of that arm, if he did succeed in ravishing a kiss, got his ears smartly boxed the next moment. I don't know precisely what was Miss Maria's function in the economy of the household; I can fancy her setting the table, and adding touches of neatness and prettiness; dusting the ornaments and fine china on the shelves of the whatnot; straightening the frames of the pictures on the walls; and, in her less romantic moments, hemming towels or sheets, or putting up preserved ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... or the superciliousness of an expert: "Dreadfully old-fashioned," "Archi-connu,""second-rate school work," "completely painted over," "utterly hashed in the performance" (of a piece of music), "mere prettiness"—etc. etc. How often has not a sentence like these turned the tide of honest incipient enjoyment; and transformed us, from enjoyers of some really enjoyable quality (even of such old-as-the-hills elements as clearness, symmetry, ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... at this portrait because it was not "pretty." There was something bigger than mere prettiness here. He had painted the soul of her, reading with his art what had been hidden from the man, as he had strayed through the labyrinth of her thoughts viewing the blighted blossom of her girlhood and wifehood and the neglected garden of her maturity. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... house, and an actor—yes, and not even a pre-eminent actor—a gross, poor posturing vagabond, just twice your age, presumed to love you. What child would not amuse herself with such engaging toys? Vivacity and prettiness and cruelty are the ordinary attributes of kittenhood. So you amused yourself. And I submitted with clear eyes, because I could not help it. Yes, I who am by nature not disposed to underestimate my personal importance—I submitted, because your mockery was more desirable than the ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... chiffonnerie in the picture. There is a remarkable effect of depth in the painting of the figure of the dancing girl, especially at the feet and at the bottom of her skirt. Perhaps the only criticism that could fairly be passed upon M. Jacquet's picture is that there is too much of mere "prettiness" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... women. He conjured up in his mind all the evil that he knew of her, and persuaded himself that she was a little jade, and, being conscious that he loved her, he believed that he loved her merely because of her extreme prettiness. This reason seemed to him a sound one; but on analysing it he perceived that it explained nothing; that he loved the girl not because she was exceedingly pretty, but because she was pretty in a certain uncommon fashion of her own; that he loved her for that which was incomparable and ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... restraint, and looked like a blissful little gypsy, with her brunet prettiness set off by a dashing costume of cardinal and cream color and every hair on her head curled in a Merry Pecksniffian crop, for youth was her strong point, and she much enjoyed the fact that she had been engaged three times ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... had become extremely fond of the young Englishwoman; she delighted in Sylvia's radiant prettiness, her kindly good-temper, and ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... moods sometimes, though I can hide them better than he can; and this morning I was in the wrong key for the idyllic peace and prim prettiness of Broek-in-Waterland. I should have liked better to be out on a meer in Friesland, in a stiff breeze; but since it had to be Broek, I made the best ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... to the table decorations, but no one had seen them all assembled and they all paid themselves and each other compliments on the prettiness of the various parts and Della and Dorothy on the ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... its own grace, and Amelys, mysterious as the spirit of dusk with dreams in its hair. But Maudlin was the pale gold wonder of the dawn, a creature of ethereal light, a vision of melting stars and wakening flowers. And she delighted in making seem cheap the palpable prettiness of this, or too robust the fuller beauty of that, or dim and dull the elusive charm of such-an-one. She would have scorned to set her beauty to compete with those who were not beautiful, even as a proved knight would scorn to joust with an unskilled boor. ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... thoughts of the poet breathe. In Moore's style the ornament continually outstrips the sense. Cowper and Walter Scott, on the other hand, are slovenly in their versification. Sophocles writes, on the whole, without studied attention to the style; but Euripides frequently affects a simplicity and prettiness which exposed him to the ridicule of the comic poets. Lastly, the style of Homer's poems is perfect in their particular department. It is free, manly, simple, perspicuous, energetic, and varied. It is the style of one who rhapsodized ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the Methodist version of John Wesley Among those few, however, happens to be myself, which arose from the accident of having, when a boy of eleven, received a copy of the "De Imitatione Christi" as a bequest from a relation who died very young, from which cause, and from the external prettiness of the book— being a Glasgow reprint by the celebrated Foulis, and gaily bound—I was induced to look into it, and finally read it many times over, partly out of some sympathy which, even in those days, I had with its ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... rose, threw off his velvet and lace, and designedly let his thoughts turn to Arenta. "She is pretty beyond all prettiness," he said softly as he moved about, "She dances well, talks from hand to mouth, and she gave me one sweet glance; and I think if she has gone so far— she might go further." At this reflection he smiled again, and lifting a decanter slowly poured into a goblet ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... about eighteen, but already looked dissipated and unhealthy, with a mawkishly insolent grin on his unclean face, and an expression of fatigue in his swollen eyes. He was like his father, only his features were smaller and not without a certain prettiness. But in this very prettiness there was something offensive. He was dressed in a very slovenly way; there were buttons off his undergraduate's coat, one of his boots had a hole in it, and ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... thoroughly tired Of being admired, By ladies of gentle degree—degree, With flattery sated, High-flown and inflated, Away from the city we flee—we flee! From charms intramural To prettiness rural The sudden transition Is simply Elysian, So come, Amaryllis, Come, Chloe and Phyllis, Your slaves, for the ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... themselves, until tapestries were a decoration only; and then the minimising of grandeur under Louis XV when everything fell into miniature and tapestries were demanded only in small pieces that could be applied to screens or chairs—a prostitution of art to the royal demand for prettiness. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... have felt for her only the appetite inspired by the freshness of her youth, experiencing nothing which resembled love. Other women dominated him then with the seduction of their artifices and refinements, but here, in his loneliness, seeing Margalida surrounded by the brown and rural prettiness of her companions, beautiful as one of those white goddesses which inspire religious veneration among peoples of coppery skin, he felt the dementia of desire, and all his acts were absurd, as if he had completely ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... choice nation within England long disregard these virtues in the nineteenth-century master? How disregard him, for more than the few years of reaction, for the insignificant reasons of his bygone taste, his insipid courtliness, his prettiness, or what not? It is no dishonour to Tennyson, for it is a dishonour to our education, to disparage a poet who wrote but the two—had he written no more of their kind—lines of "The Passing of Arthur," of which, before I quote them, I will permit myself the personal remembrance of ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... is supposed to have been working, was piled together in front of it; and she and Alexander took their places. The curtain was drawn aside, and a cry of pleasure from the company testified to the picturesque prettiness of the representation. It was according to the fact, that Priscilla should be looking in John Alden's face; it was just at the moment when she is supposed to be rebuking him for bringing to her his friend's suit and petition. Thinking herself safe, and ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Spain spirit and the American spirit, in our modern world, the nations got their final and conclusive sense of what the Spanish civilization really was, of the old Don Quixote thinking, of the delightful, brave, courtly blindness, of the world's last stronghold of pomposity, of vague, empty prettiness, of talking grand and ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... her own heart beating fast. The excitement of it all, of life itself, the bliss, the pain and loss, came keenly on her. She thought of the days that had gone to buying this thing of prettiness, the strained muscles, the racing blood and thrilling brain, the sweat and toil of it, and something choked her to think that now the pretty thing was almost won. Newell would have it, his heart's desire, and in thirty years perhaps it would look like Alida's mother with ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... American ladies from the other side—at least so I conjectured, and with reason. A look decided it. They were clad in pronouncedly cool costumes, dresses that would make a full ball toilet in Canada, but which exposed much prettiness to the ruthless action of the sun and wind on this hot midsummer afternoon. They were using their lips and tongues in a violent manner, accompanying commonplace remarks with the most exaggerated varieties of facial ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... long hours of leisure. But even then I think the whip will be in the overseer's hands, and not in vain. For, when it comes to be a question of each man doing his own share or the rest doing more, prettiness of sentiment will be forgotten. To dock the skulker's food is not enough; many will rather eat haws and starve on petty pilferings than put their shoulder to the wheel for one hour daily. For such as these, then, the whip will be in the overseer's ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the main dome rests upon four semi-domes. At the same time, when viewed from the exterior, the main dome rises large, bold and commanding, with nothing of the squat appearance that mars the dome of St Sophia, with nothing of the petty prettiness of the little domes perched on the drums of the later Byzantine churches. The great mosques express the spirit of the days when the Ottoman empire was still mighty and ambitious. Occasionally, as in the case of Laleli Jamissi, where the dome rests upon an ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... the style have been set forth as "pedantic and far-fetched allusion, elaborate indirectness, a cloying smoothness and drowsy monotony of diction, alliteration, punning, and such-like puerilities, which do not, however, exclude a good deal of wit, fancy, and prettiness." Many contemporary authors, including Shakespeare, made game of it, while others, e.g. Greene, admired and practised it. L. also wrote light dramatic pieces for the children of the Chapel Royal, and contributed a pamphlet, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... a dear, noble fellow, and has the highest, purest principles and feelings. I can't but love him almost as if he were my own child: I never saw so much sweetness and prettiness about any one, except his mother; and, oh! how far superior he is to her! But then, he is boyish, he is weak—I ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... airs upon learning of my sister's illness, as, That she would not be sorry for it; for now she should look upon herself as the prettiest woman in England.—She meant only, I suppose, as to outward prettiness, brother! ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Before I go any further I must tell you about this girl. Her name is Hilton, Geraldine Hilton, but as that is too long a name and already we are great friends, I call her G. She is very pretty, with the kind of prettiness that becomes more so the more you look—and if you don't know what I mean I can't stop to explain—with masses of yellow hair, such blue eyes and pink cheeks and white teeth that I am convinced I am sharing a cabin ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... regretted it. She said it would be a mesalliance for him, Tardif! What then would it be for you, a Dobree? No; it is a delusion, an infatuation, which will quickly pass away. I cannot believe you are so weak as to be taken in by mere prettiness without character; and this person—I do not say so harshly, Martin—has no character, no name. Were you free you could not marry her. There is a mystery about her, and mystery usually means shame. A Dobree could not make an adventuress his wife. Then ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... fallen from its glory struggled against death, fought against returning paganism and the invading Renaissance. The era of the great cathedrals ended in the production of this exquisite abortion, which was in its way a masterpiece, a gem of prettiness, of ingenuity, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... him the impression of a delicate prettiness, a superior sort of prettiness, like that of the daughter of the Big White House on the Hill, the Squire's house, at Parthenon; though Nelly was not unusually pretty. Indeed, her mouth was too large, her hair of somewhat ordinary brown. But her ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... the unwavering eyes of her sister. Looking at her, he was reminded of girls he had seen beyond the Alleghanies—girls who knew little, or no, toil, and who jealously guarded their beauty from sun and wind. Answering Lancaster's blunt questions, that followed close upon each other, he paid her prettiness constant and wondering homage; and she, noting the attention, retreated a little and was quiet ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... something about Mrs. Fontage that precluded the possibility of her asking any one a favor. It was not that she was of forbidding, or even majestic, demeanor; but that one guessed, under her aquiline prettiness, a dignity nervously on guard against the petty betrayal of her surroundings. The room was unconcealably poor: the little faded "relics," the high-stocked ancestral silhouettes, the steel-engravings ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... solutions. Sir Christopher Wren's account of a Saracenic origin was vague and unsupported; and Warburton's deduction from groves and interlacing boughs, though ingeniously illustrated by the late Sir James Hall, has more prettiness than probability. Dr. Milner's "intersecting hypothesis," as it is technically termed, is brief and simple: "De Blois," he says, "having resolved to ornament the whole sanctuary of his church with intersecting semicircles, conceived the idea of opening them, by way ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... clergyman's house, which was placed in the finest situation imaginable and where we beheld that profusion of comforts which sense and economy will enable the possessors of narrow fortunes to enjoy. This gentleman and his wife have but a small living and still less paternal estate, but the neatness, prettiness and convenience of their habitation were enough to put one out of humour with riches, and I should certainly have breathed forth Agar's prayer with great ardour if I had not been stopped in the beginning by considering how great a ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... head has indeed a certain prettiness of a not very uncommon kind; the paint has been sweetened with a soft brush and licked smooth till all texture as of flesh is gone and the head is wooden and tight; I can see no expression in it; the hand upon the open book is as badly drawn as ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... are common in Scottish folk- lore. We have them too, but take them much less dreadfully. Our tales turn all their doings to favour and to prettiness, or hopelessly humorize the creatures. A hole in the Sligo river is haunted by one of these monsters. He is ardently believed in by many, but that does not prevent the peasantry playing with the subject, and surrounding it with conscious fantasies. When I was a small boy I fished one day ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... feminine key. Substantially, she preserved the image of the mother who had been summoned to wander in other and less finite green pastures long before the waxing herds of kine had conferred royalty upon the house. She had her mother's slim, strong figure and grave, soft prettiness that relieved in her the severity of the imperious McAllister eye and the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... sun, The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play. He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird, Ascends the neighbouring beech; there whisks his brush, And perks his ears, and stamps and scolds aloud, With all the prettiness of feigned ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... her slenderness; the joyful way she swung when she walked; even the cut of her clothes spelled youth. And she was undeniably pretty, with eyes like bits of blue sky and quantities of silky, corn-colored hair. Her mouth was almost too large, but even that could not spoil the essential prettiness of her. She was laughing at her escort, with glowing upturned face, as they swept past Elinor and Ross in their quiet corner, and her laugh displayed an unusually straight row ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... slimmer, paler than her sister: of a certain babyish prettiness. She had Mrs. Oldrieve's weak mouth and ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... must see this girl again and as soon as possible. He was as liable as any young man in the world to the most sudden and most violent enthusiasms, but they had been enthusiasms for a pretty face, for a sensual appeal, for a sentimental moment. Here there was no prettiness, no sensuality, no sentiment. There was something so new that he felt like Cortez upon ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... might have been taken for her. Margaret was struck afresh by her cousin's beauty. They had grown up together from childhood, and all along Edith had been remarked upon by every one, except Margaret, for her prettiness; but Margaret had never thought about it until the last few days, when the prospect of soon losing her companion seemed to give force to every sweet quality and charm which Edith possessed. They had been talking about wedding dresses, and wedding ceremonies; ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Adele exactly as if she had been an engaging five-year-old, and she had charming childish mannerisms for him alone. He pacified her when she fretted and complained, and was eagerly grateful when her mood was serene. Her prettiness and her little spoiled airs, Martie realized surprisedly, were ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... looked ashamed if anybody alluded to her prettiness. Now she leaped to Maida's side and pretended to ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... three—Apollo, Diana, and Pallas—were the gods of all that was nobly, purely, and wisely lovely; but the Greeks also believed in powers of ill, and there was a goddess of beauty, called Venus (Aphrodite). Such beauty was hers as is the mere prettiness and charm of pleasure—nothing high or fine. She was said to have risen out of the sea, as the sunshine touched the waves, with her golden hair dripping with the spray; and her favourite home was in ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... style of his reception at the Board meeting, and the opposition he encounters there. Anon comes his marriage to Rosamond Vincy,—a marriage prompted by no true affection, but solely by the fascination of her prettiness, her external grace and accomplishments. Led on mainly by his own taste for luxury and external show, he plunges into extravagances of every kind. Debt inevitably follows, crippling his resources, cramping his energies, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... stood looking at Archelaus for a moment with the cup in her hand. The footlight effect softened her prominently-boned face and struck some of the over-strong colour from her cheeks—she showed a faint hint of the prettiness that had ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... work she had taken away with her on Thursday, quite in order—and her face wore the usual mask. I wonder if I had not ever seen her without her glasses if I should have realized now that she is very pretty—I can see her prettiness even with them on—her nose is so exquisitely fine, and the mouth a Cupid's bow really—if one can imagine a Cupid's bow very firm. I am sure if she were dressed as Odette, or Alice, or Coralie, she ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... Club House at Camp Sherman stretch the cantonments—a Euclidian nightmare of bare boards, black roofs and ditches, making grim vistas of straight lines. This is the architecture of Need in contradistinction to the architecture of Greed, symbolized in the shop-window prettiness of those sanitary suburbs of our cities created by the real estate agent and the speculative builder. Neither contain any enduring element ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... heart?") and drinking his health passed on to him the cup of excellent cwrw. The girl, evidently a village belle, was as warmly greeted by the young men, while the girls eyed her rather askance with a half-jealous look, which Owen set down to the score of her extreme prettiness. Like most Welsh women, she was of middle size as to height, but beautifully made, with the most perfect yet delicate roundness in every limb. Her little mob-cap was carefully adjusted to a face which was excessively pretty, though it never could be called handsome. It also was ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of William Blake was not a marketable commodity in the same way as Stothard's talent. The one caught the trick of the time with his facile elegance; the other scorned to make any concessions, either in conception or execution, to the mere popularity of prettiness. ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... bit, Mrs. Dennison. I dare say I am getting to be rather violent and careless in my way of talking. It's a reaction from the vagueness and prettiness of speech I used to hear down in Silvertree, where they begin their remarks with an 'I'm not sure, but I think,' et cetera. But, really, you must overlook my vehemence. If I could spend my time with sweet souls like you, I'd be a different ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... she saw the short girl who had braved Rachel's possible wrath and had offered her coffee on her arrival. It was a pleasant face that gazed into hers, not exactly beautiful, but with a charm that eclipsed all mere ordinary prettiness; the sparkling gray eyes were dark-fringed, the cheeks were like wild roses under their freckles, the tip-tilted little nose held an element of audacious sauciness, and dimples lay at the corners of the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... late King, and its design or approval was probably one of his labours of leisure. It is less decorated and fantastical than other buildings in its vicinity, and perhaps deserves the faint praise of prettiness. Grave persons dislike the little bells attached to the lantern-like part of the roof, and consider them too closely allied to the cap of folly. Perhaps this objection to the building itself will only make the contiguous scenery more delightful. Of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... With her delicate prettiness, decked in what gewgaws she could afford, Elvira stood shaking her forefinger. "You don't know why? Oh, fie! you know very well, naughty, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... guest's room, which drew Sophia's admiration for its prettiness. She hurried to the window and looked out ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... prettiness there, but I don't know that I want to keep it now," he said. "It's way behind the original. She has grown in the meanwhile—just as one would expect that girl ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... this happiness? Whence indeed, but from me only, by whose procurement it is furnished with little of wisdom, and so with the less of disquiet? And when once lads begin to grow up, and attempt to write man, their prettiness does then soon decay, their briskness flags, their humours stagnate, their jollity ceases, and their blood grows cold; and the farther they proceed in years, the more they grow backward in the enjoyment of themselves, till waspish old age comes on, a burden to itself ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... {286} so it is not so applicable as the Portuguese name, for the native image is not a doll or toy, and has far more affinity to the image of a saint, inasmuch as it is not venerated for itself, or treasured because of its prettiness, but only because it is the residence, or the occasional haunt, of ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... overcome and science well displayed can take the place of what is, after all, the one excuse and breath of art—charm. A little further, and he will regard charm in the light of an unworthy sacrifice to prettiness, and the omission of a tedious passage ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stupidities of men has been their tendency to dress soldiers in red clothes, and monks, or pacific persons, in black, white, or grey ones. At least half of that mental bias of young people, which sustains the wickedness of war among us at this day, is owing to the prettiness of uniforms. Make all Hussars black, all Guards black, all troops of the line black; dress officers and men, alike, as you would public executioners; and the number of candidates for commissions will ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... slip of a girl with a small-featured face and a certain pale prettiness. There was an appealing tinge of melancholy in her eyes notwithstanding they were eager and alert. Her dress was plain, but ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... men tried to guide their steps by the light of "The Seven Lamps of Architecture." A sentimental fancy for Gothic based on irrational grounds was all but universal, and it needed courage to avow a preference for the classical. The compromise in favour of quaintness and capricious prettiness which began under the name of the "Queen Anne style," and has contributed so many picturesque and pleasing buildings to our modern London, had not yet budded. Nor would it ever at any time of his life have thoroughly responded to Leighton's taste. So long as he could detect a defect he ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... absolute fixtures on account of the weighty legs upon which they were built. In short, the careful and cultivated decorator finds it as imperative to guard against exaggerated simplicity as unsupported prettiness. ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... grow vapid, notwithstanding they are on subjects of common life and experience, upon which moralists have rung the changes of words for centuries past. Occasionally, however, there are some new positions and little conceits which have more of prettiness than truth to recommend ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... old king. I can, however, quite imagine the irritation the sharp chirrup-chirrup of this little squirrel would cause to an invalid, for there is something particularly ear-piercing about it; but their prettiness and familiarity make up in great measure for their noisiness. They are certainly a nuisance in a garden, and I rather doubt whether they are of any use, as McMaster says, "in destroying many insects, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... school was like the advance of a conquering hero. Although she had just entered this fall she was already one of the most popular girls in school. She had that fair, delicate prettiness which invariably appeals to boys, and an open, unaffected manner which endeared her to the girls. Beside her very lovable personality she had a background which was almost certain to insure popularity to a girl. She was rich ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... up on deck at that moment, and if I was impressed by the calm sweetness of the elder girl's face on the previous afternoon, the strength and beauty of it as I saw it in the fresh morning sunlight made my heart pound violently against my ribs. The prettiness of Miss Barbara made the quiet dignity of the elder sister more noticeable, and that apparent strength of character made me doubt Holman's contention that she would be unable to help the scientist if Leith's motives were ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... years. She affects neither fashion nor intellectual eccentricity. Yet she attains to a better average of reasonable, sensible action than she could otherwise do. She knows less of the impulsive, emotional prettiness of adolescence than women of other country communities, and in later years gives herself less to intellectual vagaries. Women's rights are established on the Hill; it is impossible to be strenuous ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... as he unravelled, to his own satisfaction, the tangled web of his impressions, his brow cleared, and he smiled gravely,—"I was, I say, moved by an insane desire to draw that dainty small bundle of frippery and prettiness into my arms—yes,—it was so, and why should I not confess it to myself? Why should I be ashamed? Other men have felt the same, though perhaps they do not count so many years of life as I do. At any rate with me the feeling was momentary,—and passed. Then,—some moments ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... and whether in an unconscious hugging of his chains, or, as was more probable, from the desire to save time, he would drag his aching heart and reluctant body through the sordidness or the squalor of this short cut, rather than seek the pleasanter thoroughfares which were open to him. Even the prettiness of Warwick Crescent was neutralized for him by the atmosphere of low or ugly life which encompassed it on almost every side. His haunting dream was one day to have done with it all; to have fulfilled his mission with his son, educated him, launched him in a suitable career, and to ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... ways from the river to the bank, from the canals to their houses, from the bridges to the barges,—all these made the scene one of motion and variety. Everywhere was water,—color, new forms, childish figures, little details, all glossy and fresh,—an ingenuous display of prettiness—a mixture of the primitive and the theatrical, of grace and absurdity, which was partly European, partly Chinese, partly belonging to no land,—and over all a delightful air of peace ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... pitiful, beautiful little snob!" Joan wafted a kiss. "Your prettiness saves you. If you had a turned-up nose ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... of prettiness about the girl, and aside from her incongruous garments she was not unattractive—when her face was revealed. Mr. Hammond's interest increased. He approached the spot where the girl had been left by ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... ladies are good. Miss HELENA DACRE looks magnificent. Then Miss EDITH CHESTER combines prettiness with fun, and the duet between her and clever Miss LAURA LINDEN is enthusiastically encored—and deservedly so, for it is seldom that two young actresses will "go in" for a real genuine bit of nonsensical burlesque, and win. In fact it is all ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... a Tragedy in Erse; Under dark Allegory's flimsy veil Let them with Ogilvie spin out a tale Of rueful length; Let them plain things obscure, Debase what's truly rich, and what is poor Make poorer still by jargon most uncouth; With ev'ry pert, prim prettiness of youth Born of false Taste, with Fancy (like a child Not knowing what it cries for) running wild, With bloated style, by affectation taught, With much false colouring, and little thought, With phrases ...
— English Satires • Various
... again and again in their course through and around the city, but with never quite such spectacular effects as our spidery tressels, achieve. The stations are pleasant, sometimes with lunch-counters and news-stands, but have not the comic- opera-chalet prettiness of ours, and are not so frequent. The road is not so smooth, the cars not so smooth-running or so swift. On the other hand they are comfortably cushioned, and they are never overcrowded. The line is at times above, at times below the houses, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... much improved by his mother's fine blue eyes, and was a very pleasant- looking boy, though not handsome; little Tom was a thin, white, delicate edition of his father; and Blanche contrived to combine great likeness to him with a great deal of prettiness. Of those that, as nurse said, favoured their mamma, Margaret was tall and blooming, with the same calm eyes, but with the brilliance of her father's smile; Flora had greater regularity of feature, and was fast ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... lying at full length on an immense red leathern sofa. A young doctor was kneeling on the floor, bending down to press his ear against the girl's side; he moved his head continually, listening for the beating of her heart. Her face was of a type every one knows, and had a certain half-pathetic prettiness; the features were small, and the chin was degenerate but delicately modelled. The rather colourless fair hair was elaborately done; her thin cheeks were dreadfully white, and her thin neck shrank painfully each time she breathed out, though it grew smooth and full as she ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... come, and was driven up to the door in the gig from Taunton, just as had been the case on his previous visit. Then, however, he had come in the full daylight, and the hay-carts had been about, and all the prettiness and warmth of summer had been there; now it was mid-winter, and there had been some slight beginnings of snow, and the wind was moaning about the old tower, and the outside of the house looked very ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... low-browed, deep-eyed, full-lipped. Here was none of smiling prettiness, for these eyes were grave and thoughtful, these lips, despite their soft, voluptuous curves, were firmly modelled like the rounded chin below, and, in all the face, despite its vivid youth, was a ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... dress, and the best of us follow both, as sheep follow their leader. We will sometimes follow our neighbor's line of insular prejudice, when worlds could not bribe us to copy her grammar or her gowns. Dull people admire youth. They excuse its follies; they adore its prettiness. That it is only a period of education, and that real life begins with maturity, does not enter into their minds. The odor of bread and butter does not nauseate them. Dull people, I say—and God pity us, most of us are dull—admire youth. Men love it. ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... of Lady Jane Grey, after De Heere, is an interesting variety. Milton composing Paradise Lost, from a drawing by Stothard, is far from our taste; but the Blue Bell, by Fox, from a picture by W.A. Hastings, somewhat atones for the previous failure: its prettiness is of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... as a thing external, that he might veraciously and successfully have pleaded a passionate hunger for breakfast: nay, that he would have done so, if he had been downright in earnest. For she had the prettiness to cast a spell; a certain curve at the lips, a fluttering droop of the eyelids, a corner of the eye, that led long distances away to forests and nests. This little woman had the rosy-peeping June ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... came three reporters, one of them a woman. She was a young woman, plainly dressed and, though she could not be called beautiful, there was a certain patrician prettiness in her small, oval, womanly face with its grey kind eyes, its aquiline nose, its firm lips and determined jaw, a certain charm in the manner in which her chestnut hair escaped occasionally from under her trim hat. Young, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... attainable "treasures of the jewelled skies" be an offense against truth, it is not, poets would say, because of his non-conformance to the so-called facts of astronomy, but because his sense of beauty is at fault, leading him to prefer prettiness to sublimity. As for the poet's visions, of naiad and dryad, which the philosopher avers are less true than chemical and physical forces, they represent the hidden truth of beauty, which is threaded through the ugly medley of life, being invisible ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... his most uneasy frame of mind, betrayed a passing amusement. He looked into the girl's face and saw its prettiness flush with pretty confusion, and this did not tend to restore ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... before. It must have been that winter she spent in Boston, just after she came out. That's over five years ago; he's probably dead or married before this. Well, get on with your pretty little tale: not that I see much prettiness about it.—"And when I would tease him to tell me some secret, he would answer, in his own well-chosen language. Some day you will know: you wait and see. By-by, ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... thanked him, and told him, if he had a friend who loved her, he had only to teach him how to tell his story, and that would woo her. Upon this hint, delivered not with more frankness than modesty, accompanied with a certain bewitching prettiness, and blushes, which Othello could not but understand, he spoke more openly of his love, and in this golden opportunity gained the consent of the generous lady ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb |
