"Ravishing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... six weeks, and still no burning: for the place seems to plead with me, it is so ravishing, so that I do not know why I did not live here, and spare my toils during those sixteen nightmare years; for two whole weeks the impulse to burn was quieted; and since then there has been an irritating whisper ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... greater part of the Belgian line and the whole of the part we visited runs parallel to the course of the canalised river Yser, which empties itself into the sea at Nieuport. To reach it we had to pass through Furnes, most charming of old Flemish towns, with a ravishing Grande Place, surrounded by beautiful brick houses, some of them of the XVth century, some of them dating from the time of the Spanish occupation, and some again, of the epoch of Louis XIV. As the Belgian lines are on a dead flat alluvial plain reclaimed from the sea, it had proved impossible ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... another with some new thing, something to see and to do. We separated to dress, to make ourselves beautiful for the evening, and then till the morning light came in through the curtains, never a pause or a weariness. Yes! sometimes one had a terrible pang. There would be a toilette, which was ravishing, which was far superior to mine—for I never had money to dress as I wished—or some one else would have a success, and attract all eyes. But what did that matter?" the Contessa cried, lighting up more and more. "One did not really ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... stimulated by Dorothy Lane's ravishing description of you, have asked many times to see your picture. I am ashamed of my own carelessness in having gone away without obtaining one for exhibition purposes. Will you send me one at once? One not already in circulation among poets and painters. I will set it on my writing table, and allow ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... Belle, of course, George always sends her some, but these are altogether ravishing," cried Annie, with ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... dusk of the swamp. You see it best by looking close into the very face of the flower as the bumblebee does when about to alight on it, and I think it is set there to show him the way. By the time he has seen that, he is near enough to be drawn by the faint but ravishing perfume which is breathed out by the flower. It is so faint that you must come like the bee to the very lip of the corolla before you will find it. It is so tender and of such refinement that when once you get it you will think no blossom has its equal. The white alder at this ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... associate themselves with it. "Why should I want to join that?" was the question they put. But it pleased Johnny McComas, both by its present manifestations and its latent possibilities. It was richly in unison with his own nature, and I believe he had a ravishing vision of its ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... with one of her most ravishing smiles. "Keep it for my sake—for the sake of her whom it too flatteringly represents. Besides, upon the back of the trinket you may discover, perhaps, the very information you seem to desire. It is now, to be sure, growing rather dark—but you can examine it at your leisure in the morning. In ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... replied the genial gentleman. "I've seen a great many concerts, and I've heard a great many good games of pool, but the concert last night was simply a ravishing spectacle. We had a Cuban pianist there who played the orchestration of the first act of Parsifal with surprising agility. As far as I could see, he didn't miss a note, though it was a little annoying to observe how ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... placing himself in spirit beneath all his subjects, and all mankind, and esteeming himself the last of all creatures. St. Paul, though vested with the most sublime authority, makes use of terms so mild and so powerfully ravishing, that they must melt the hardest heart. Instead of commanding in the name of God, see how he usually expresses himself: "I entreat you, O Timothy, by the love which you bear me. I conjure you, by the bowels of Jesus Christ. I beseech ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... rough or harsh, but sweet music striking on the ear." It sounded from birds on every tree, from the branches of trees, from marvellous stones, and from the harps of divine musicians. And this is recalled in the ravishing music which the belated traveller hears as he passes fairy-haunted spots—"what pipes and timbrels, what wild ecstasy!" The romantic beauty of Elysium is described in these Celtic tales in a way unequalled in all other sagas or Maerchen, and it is insisted ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... it by a description so incomparably false, that, though one should laugh derision at it from Christmas to Candlemas, he would not laugh enough. "Hiring servants for life,"—that is the most intrepid lucus a non lucendo of the century. It fairly takes one's breath away. It is stunning, ravishing. One can but cry, on recovering his wind,—Hear, O Caucus, and give ear, O Mock-Auction! ye railway Hudsons, tricksters, impostors, ye demagogues that love the people in stump-speeches at $—— per year, ye hired bravos of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... for the following months the prospect is charming; we scarce observe a pile of grass, unless what we tread under foot; the flowers, which are then in all their beauty, exhibit to the view the most ravishing sight, being diversified without end; one in particular I have remarked, which would adorn the most beautiful parterre; I mean the Lion's Mouth (la gueule ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... out its flood of summer upon a world of virgin forest. The sky was without blemish. A dome of perfect azure roofed in the length and breadth of Nature's kingdom. Nevertheless the fairness of the summer day, with its ravishing accompaniment of soft, mystery sounds from an unseen world and the lavish beauty of shadowed woods were fit setting for the pulsing of savage emotions. It was far out in the lost world of Northern Quebec. It was far, far ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... that they of course both counted on him—he himself and the other earnest person—for cheer and support. It was brave to Strether to hear him talk as if the line of wisdom they had struck out was to make things ravishing to the Pococks. No, if Madame de Vionnet compassed THAT, compassed the ravishment of the Pococks, Madame de Vionnet would be prodigious. It would be a beautiful plan if it succeeded, and it all came to the question of Sarah's being really bribeable. The precedent of his own case helped Strether perhaps ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... have something to tell you," startled Leah, and caused the chords of love and fear to vibrate wildly within her bosom. Yet she concealed her deeper feelings, and sang-beautifully, bravely, sweetly-the tender, ravishing love-ditty which she knew was her father's favorite. The melody died away, the chords relaxed and hushed their sweetness, and Leah turned toward her father, awaiting the words of commendation that he always awarded to her performances. But he ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... Rogers, hardly daring to contemplate the ravishing prospect of Taylor's house without Cotton, "the dervishes are sure to come out strong this afternoon. Let 'em once get their eye in, and either of 'em is good enough for ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... heart of the tenderest, and was fascinated by beauty.... He had even obtained a sumptuous English keepsake, and (oh shame!) gloated adoringly over its 'elegantly engraved' representations of the various ravishing Gulnaras and Medoras.... But his innate modesty always kept him in check. In the house he used to work in what had been his father's study, it was also his bedroom, and his bed was the very one in which his father had breathed ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... "I am—what do you call it?—a somnambulist. In that condition it has sometimes been my so good fortune to wander into the most odd and ravishing situations. But as it happens, helas! I can never recall a single incident of them when I waken in the morning. Ma foi!" (he remembered that even yet his suspicions of the Baron were unsatisfied), "I would with some pleasure become a nocturnal conspirator myself, and I have all ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... David's little serenade to herself as she dressed without Annette's assistance and smiled at her own radiance reflected at her from her mirrors. She had just completed a most ravishing church toilet when she heard the major's door close softly and she knew that now she would find him before his logs ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... his eyes—and I have a firm conviction that if you were perchance to offend him, he would without compunction stab you, or do you some other dreadful injury—perhaps kill you outright. Therefore,"—with a most ravishing smile, and a tightening of her grip upon my arm—"you will be pleased to consider yourself as ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... mild air, a sunny sky, and ravishing scenery, be what they seek who cross the Alps, my father," said Adelheid, after they had stood a moment, gazing at the magnificent panorama, "why should the Swiss quit his native land? Is there in Italy aught more soft, more winning ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... will ever cause the memory of the pleasure she thus gave me to fade. I know that A. came to enjoy treading upon me, as much as I enjoyed having her do it. She had a liberal dress allowance and, seeing the pleasure they gave me, she was always buying pretty stockings and ravishing slippers with the highest and most slender Louis heels she could find and would show them to me with the greatest glee, urging me to lie down that she might try them on me. She confessed that she loved to see and feel them sink into my body as she trod upon me and enjoyed the crunch ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of stringes in accorde, Heard I so play, a ravishing swetnesse, That God, that maker is of all and Lorde, Ne heard never better, as I gesse, Therewith a wind, unneth it might be lesse, Made in the leaves grene a noise soft, Accordant to the foules ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... went and laid itself down at the Morgue. But for this I will not vouch. Only of this be sure. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' More and more the light peeps through the chinks. Soon, amidst music ravishing, the curtain will rise, and the glorious scene be displayed. Adieu! Remember me. Ha! 'tis dawn," Pinto said. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and thou mine, And that's a feeling disputation: But I will never be a truant, love, Till I have learn'd thy language; for thy tongue Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn'd, Sung by a fair queen in a Summer's bower, With ravishing division, to ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... the sensitive guardians of the brain, mingling in the fray, give you up, one by one, captive to the devil. In the lighter hours of the day, the dead hopes of the Past, the beauties of other days, throng round you, and shake their dry bones; and oh, what efforts at sprightliness! what ravishing of graces! what whirling and rattling of bare bones, as they waltz round to that music of other days! And now, born of these, comes another group, with the laughing eye of young years and a full heart; and ah! the tempting lip, the heaving bosom, the light step of the perfect form; ha! ha! there ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... chaotic; full day was far from rising upon it. He is without ambition in the worldly sense. Ambition is a red devil of a horse, but he gets you somewhere. One overcomes Inertia in riding far and long on that mount. He takes you to the piled places where the self may satisfy for the moment all its ravishing greeds. This is not a great thing to do. One sickens of this; all agony and disease comes of this. The red horse takes you as far as you will let him, on a road that must be retraced, but he gets you somewhere! ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... delights of love. The idea I have formed of it is quite seductive. Do you think that deep in my heart I desire to enjoy its charms less than you? But the more its image is ravishing to my imagination, the more I fear it is not real, and I refuse to yield to it lest my happiness be too soon destroyed. Ah, if I could only hope that my happiness might endure, how feeble would be my resistance? But will you not abuse my credulity? Will you not some day ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... at Atlantic City—and now the convalescent's heart leaped. In the distance he saw Marjorie coming—in pink again, with a ravishing little parasol over her head. And alone! No Mitchy-Mitch was to mar ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... now anyhow, and if it is wrong may the good Father forgive me," she said softly to herself, just as the orchestra struck up, thrilling her with its ravishing strains, and making her forget all else in ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... there was not so great a singer as herself. The most famous of the public performers scarcely could equal her. In the bravura she astonished! in the cantabile she charmed; her maestoso was inimitable! and her adagios! Oh! they were ravishing! killing. She indeed openly accused him of flattering her; but Signor Gridarini appealed both to his honour and his friends; the best judges in Europe, who as she well ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... nimbly to pace the swift coranto, or to move with a loftier grace in the stately galliard, for this rugged and decayed dungeon of rusty-coloured stone—quitting the gay theatre, for the solitary chimney-nook of a Scottish dog-house—bartering the sounds of the soul-ravishing lute, and the love-awaking viol-de-gamba, for the discordant squeak of a northern bagpipe—above all, exchanging the smiles of those beauties, who form a gay galaxy around the throne of England, for the cold courtesy of an untaught damsel, and the bewildered stare of a miller's maiden. ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... he vowed that he could make better music at the chateau than up in noisy Paris. On a fine afternoon it is said that it was no uncommon sight to see the chevalier, all togged up in his bravest court costume, sword and all, sitting at his harpsichord, playing ravishing music. This was out in the pretty little park back of the chateau, and the duchess would sit at Gluck's side and pour out champagne for him. All this may have been idle talk, but at last the duke got wind of the rumours, and one night he ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... jumping about on the benches, and heavy and loud sounded at intervals the steps of the giants. Orm and his wife listened to the clattering of the plates, and the shouts of joy with which they celebrated their banquet. When it was over and midnight drew near, they began to dance to that ravishing fairy-tune, which some have heard in the rocky glens, and learned by listening to the underground musicians. As soon as Aslog caught the sound of this air, she felt an irresistible longing to see the dance. Nor was Orm able to keep her back. "Let ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... Roman Ladies, their Beauties and Deformities; and when I light upon a Portia or Cornelia, crown'd with still flourishing leaves of truth and goodness; with such a feeling I peruse their Fortunes, as if I then had liv'd, and freely tasted their ravishing sweetness; at the present loving the whole Sex for their goodness and example. But on the contrary, when I look on a Clytemnestra, or a Tullia; the first bath'd in her Husband[s] bloud; the latter, without a touch ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... constitutions, and conclusions, knowing that a truly Christian minde and royall heart inclined from above, to religion and piety, will at the first discern, and discerning be deeply possessed with the love of the ravishing beautie, and heavenly order of the house of God; they both proceeding from the same Spirit. But as the joy was unspeakable, and the hopes lively, which from the fountaines of your Majesties favour did fill our hearts, so were we not a little troubled, when wee did perceive that your Majesties ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... only known how ravishing that simple costume made her appear and what a vision she would be to the hungry eyes of Bob McGraw! Yet, she was ashamed to let even the San Pasqualians see her leaving town in such a dowdy costume, and as she walked up the tracks from the Hat Ranch that momentous morning, bearing ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... time silence had reigned, for no sound came to us from this vast aerial fleet; but now there burst forth from both ranks of vessels strains of music of such ravishing sweetness that I and my two colleagues were quite overwhelmed. It seemed as though our mortal bodies were completely etherealised by the thrilling melodies which floated down to us from ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... architecture. But the two travellers, without stopping to admire, moved swiftly on till they beheld the Virgin seated with her Infant Son on a small temple of white marble, which served her as a throne. She seemed about fifteen years of age, and was of a "ravishing beauty." Her head was turned aside; she was gazing fixedly on a wild waste of mountains and valleys, half concealed in mist. Marie de l'Incarnation approached with outstretched arms, adoring. The vision bent towards her, and, smiling, kissed her three times; whereupon, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... and jasper swung back upon their golden hinges, making the most ravishing music, and the Saint, stepping aside, bowed ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... When the Christian religion reached Great Britain, it brought necessarily with it an impulse to intellect as well as to morality. So startling are the facts it relates, so broad and deep the principles it lays down, so humane the spirit it inculcates, and so ravishing the hopes it awakens, that, however disguised in superstition and clouded by imperfect representation, it never fails to produce, in all countries to which it comes, a resurrection of the nation's virtue, and a revival, for a time at least, of the nation's political and intellectual energy and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... she was upon her feet or drifting about like the fire-fly, driven by the pulses of an inward bliss. But she knew little as yet of her inheritance. Unconsciously she took one step forward from the threshold, and the girl who had been from her very birth a troglodyte stood in the ravishing glory of a Southern night, lit by a perfect moon—not the moon of our Northern clime, but a moon like silver glowing in a furnace—a moon one could see to be a globe—not far off, a mere flat disk on the face of the blue, but hanging ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... lead when the german was first projected, and had accepted. That was fully two weeks before; and now—no one knew just what ought to be done. It was known that Nina Beaubien had returned on the previous day from a brief visit to the upper lakes, and that she had a costume of ravishing beauty in which to carry desolation to the hearts of the garrison belles in leading that german with Mr. Jerrold. Old Madame Beaubien had been reluctant, said her city friends, to return at all. She heartily disapproved of Mr. Jerrold, and was bitterly ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... she exclaimed: "And there, down below, to the right, is the little beach—the ravishing little beach! How I loved it! Here, take the glasses, Jacques, and ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... demure in cap and kerchief as the most ravishing of young Priscillas, rose obediently at the request. "May I read to her a little if she wants ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... recalled such as were in exile on their account.—Now, though he had done all this, he showed himself the most impious of men in the case both of his grandmother and of his sisters. The former, because she had rebuked him for something, he forced to seek death by her own hand; and after ravishing all his sisters he shut two of them up on an island: the third had previously died. Again in the matter of Tiberius (whom he also termed "grandfather"), he asked that he might receive from the senate the same honors as Augustus; but these were not immediately voted, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... lord and I are on the intention to make good cheer, and a great expense; -and this country is in possession to furnish wherewithal to amuse oneself. All that England has of illustrious, all that youth has of amiable, or beauty of ravishing, sees itself in this quarter. Render yourself here, then, my friend; and you shall find assembled all that there is of best, whether ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... book is the real scene of interest in the Paradise Lost; it is its ravishing scenes of primeval innocence and bliss which have given it immortality. We are never tired of recurring to the bower of Eve, to her devotion to Adam, to the exquisite scenes of Paradise, its woods, its waters, its flowers, its enchantments. We are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... and with a smile bowed to the ravishing utterer of last words on the most baffling of subjects. This fluttered person soon perceived that she had been mistaken in supposing that the room was full. The clanging sound kept recurring, the dog kept barking, and new guests continually poured into the room, thereby proving that it was ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... with Monica in her boudoir, which, unlike the usual run of German rooms, had an open fireplace in which a cheerful fire was burning. Monica, in a ravishing kimono, was perched on the leather railed seat running round the fireplace, one little foot in a satin slipper held out to the blaze. In that pretty room she made a charming picture, which for a moment almost made me forget the manifold ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... Spraggon stumped back to his easy-chair. 'Well, now,' said he, seating himself comfortably in it, 'let's see where did we go first? "He broke at the lower end of the cover, and, crossing the brook, made straight for Fleecyhaugh Water Meadows, over which," you may say, "there's always a ravishing scent."' 'Have you got that?' asked Jack, after what he thought a sufficient lapse of ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... long, long time ago, an old man who lived on this mountain lost himself in the jungle at its foot, and at night, being tired, and afraid of snakes and the evil spirits of the wood, he climbed into a tree and fell asleep. He was woke by a noise of ravishing music, the sweetest gongs and chanangs mingling with voices over his head. The music came nearer and nearer to the place where he was, until he heard the sweet voices under the tree, and, looking down, beheld a large clear fountain opened, and seven beautiful females ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... Anna declared, with a little grimace. "I was perfectly happy, Francis, sitting here before the open window and looking out at the lights in that cool, violet gulf of darkness. I believe that in another minute I should have said something to you absolutely ravishing. Then your telephone rings and back one ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their mossy, mouselike nests in the ground. With powerful teeth and claws these are speedily laid bare, and almost before time is given for a general buzz the bees, old and young, larvae, honey, stings, nest, and all, are devoured in one ravishing revel. ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... than his friend, Sir Tobie Matthews, "A man so rare in knowledge, of so many several kinds, endued with the facility and felicity of expressing it all in so elegant, significant, so abundant, and yet so choice and ravishing a way of words, of metaphors, of allusions, as perhaps the world hath not seen since it was a world."—"Address to the Reader" prefixed to Collection of English ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... gentlemen lodgers could be obtained, was not a person whose acquaintance it was desirable to cultivate. Moreover, the words opera singer raised ecstatic visions of a possible future introduction to some "ravishing tenor," the remote idea of which caused her to be so visibly preoccupied, that Miss Kling took her leave with angry sniffles, and returned home to ponder ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... delegates of the people, after listening to the eloquent appeal of an intrepid Huguenot pastor, determined to petition the States General for the free exercise of the reformed religion. The representatives of the church made its complaints regarding the "ravishing wolves, false preachers, and their adherents, who are to-day in so great numbers that there are not so many true sheep knowing the voice of their shepherds." The "mild and holy admonitions" of the church ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Beauty, soul-ravishing, Shines from his prayer, that now he be shriven Of all the past! And penitence lavishing, All he confesses; with glad homage given Mirrors and masses Deep the ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... only require of you to pay to the people the increased obligation which the voluntary surrender of my dignity lays upon you. Other princes esteem it a peculiar felicity to bequeath to their children the crown which death is already ravishing from then. This happiness I am anxious to enjoy during my life. I wish to be a spectator of your reign. Few will follow my example, as few have preceded me in it. But this my deed will be praised if your future life should justify my expectations, if you continue ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... course of my life I had never heard anything so exquisite. So great was my amazement that I could scarcely breathe. Awakened by the violence of my feelings, I instantly seized my violin, in the hope of being able to catch some part of the ravishing melody which I had just heard, but all in vain. The piece which I composed according to my scattered recollections is, it is true, the best I ever produced. I have entitled it 'Sonata del Diavolo;' but it is so far inferior to that which had made so forcible an impression ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... sex, and was always saying to whoever would listen: "Ah, mon cher, I have met a woman! But such a woman!" Then his dark eyes would glow and he would snap his thumb nail under an upper tooth, with an expression of ravishing joy that only a Castilian billiard player could assume. And, of course, it was always ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... wildly, it throbbed more strongly. If she had given Hamlet of her superabundance of spirits, he had given her of his wisdom and discretion. She had always been a great favorite in society; but Verona thought her ravishing now. The mantua-makers cut their dresses by her patterns, and when she wore turquoise, garnets went ont of style. Instead of the groans and tears, and all those distressing events which might possibly have happened if Juliet had persisted in loving Romeo—listen to her laugh and ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... few days of frightful illness she began to feel better, and was able to be moved from her cabin to the ladies' lounge. Wrapped in one or other of Diana's ravishing boudoir garments of silk and fur, she was supported there every morning, ensconced on the most luxurious sofa, and surrounded by attentions from the other semi-invalids. Nothing was too good for the peer's delightful daughter, and everyone ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... her. It seemed a grossness of which I was incapable to break up her reverie by speech. I stood and drank her in with my eyes; how the light made a glory in her hair, and (what I have always thought the most ravishing thing in nature) how the planes ran into each other, and were distinguished, and how the hues blended and varied, and were shaded off, between the cheek and neck. At first I was abashed: she wore her beauty like an immediate halo of refinement: she discouraged me like an angel. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to ravage Thrace.—VII. Profuturus, Trajan, and Richomeres fought a drawn battle against the Goths.—VIII. The Goths being hemmed in among the defiles at the bottom of the Balkan, after the Romans by returning had let them escape, invaded Thrace, plundering, massacring, ravishing, and burning, and slay Barzimeres, the tribune of the Scutarii.—IX. Frigeridus, Gratian's general, routs Farnobius at the head of a large body of Goths and Taifalae; sparing the rest, and giving them some lands around the Po.—X. The Lentiensian Alemanni are defeated in battle by the generals ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... as no mortal ever sung and looked it, she left the stage and carried my heart and soul away with her. What chance had I? Here shone all the beauties that adorn the body, all the virtues and graces that embellish the soul; they were wedded to poetry and ravishing music, and gave and took enchantment. I saw my paragon glide away, like a goddess, past the scenery, and I did not see her meet her lover at the next step—a fellow with a wash-leather face, greasy locks in a sausage roll, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the music of love, awakening an intensity of emotion long dormant. It whispered of an ele- vation before unaspired to; of ease and plenty her simple heart had never dreamed of as hers. She knew the voice of her charmer, so ravishing, sounded far above her. It seemed like an an- gel's, alluring her upward and onward. She thought she could ascend to him and become an equal. She surrendered to him a priceless gem, which he proudly garnered as a trophy, with those of other victims, and left ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... where the boy was a petted page, later the honoured almoner of the bounty of many patrons, one who "not unworthily," as Tofte said, "beareth the name of the chiefest archangel, singing after this soule-ravishing manner," yet leaving but "five pounds lying by him at his death, which was satis viatici ad coelum"—is not this the panorama of a poetic career? But above all, to complete the picture of the ideal poet, he worshipped, and hopelessly, from youth to age the image of one, woman. He never ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... 'Tis my happy destiny to love her!" he said softly to himself. "Such an adorable girl! Such a ravishing beauty is not elsewhere on this earth!" And he was not conscious of any exaggeration in such language. Nor was there. He was young, he was rich, he had no business to consider, no sorrow to sober him, no care of any kind to mingle with the ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... said, "in the Calle del Puerto, where they sell some wonderful scent. I believe it's all good, but their 'Red Violets' is simply ravishing." ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... strong wings that took the sun From inward, fledged with might of sorrow and mirth And father's fire made mortal in his son. Nor was not spirit of strength in blast and breeze To exalt again the sun's child and the sea's; For as wild mares in Thessaly grow great With child of ravishing winds, that violate Their leaping length of limb with manes like fire And eyes outburning heaven's With fires more violent than the lightning levin's And breath drained out and desperate of desire, Even so the spirit in him, when winds grew strong, Grew great with child of song. Nor less ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... defend himself, and which we call armies, it seems as though sentiments liked to be complete when they showed themselves, and are sublime by juxtaposition. So it is with faces. In Paris one sometimes sees in the aristocracy, set like stars, the ravishing faces of young people, the fruit of quite exceptional manners and education. To the youthful beauty of the English stock they unite the firmness of Southern traits. The fire of their eyes, a delicious bloom on their lips, the lustrous black of their soft locks, a white complexion, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... ravishing dance music and we all danced about an hour. There couldn't be a pleasanter night than that one was. Some of those people complained of fatigue but I don't seem to know what the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the cock and the fox. One day, dan Russell, the fox, came into the poultry-yard, and told Master Chanticlere, he could not resist the pleasure of hearing him sing, for his voice was so divinely ravishing. The cock, pleased with this flattery, shut his eyes, and began to crow most lustily; whereupon dan Russell seized him by the throat, and ran off with him. When they got to the wood, the cock said to the fox, "I would recommend you to eat me at once, I think ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... d'Etioles had a complexion of the most striking whiteness, lips somewhat pale, and eyes of an indescribable color in which were blended and compounded the seduction of black eyes, the seduction of blue eyes. She had magnificent chestnut hair, ravishing teeth, and the most delicious smile which "hollowed her cheeks into two dimples which the engraving of La Jardiniere shows; she had a medium-sized and round waist, perfect hands, a play of gestures lively and passionate throughout, and, above all, a physiognomy of a ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... their necks as I could, quietly inhale their odours, and talk all the time. Not every woman smelt nice to me, and when they did, it was not patchouli, for I got patchouli, which I liked, and perfumed myself with it. This delicate sense of smell of a woman I have had throughout life, it was ravishing to me afterwards, when I embraced the naked body of a fresh, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... please Rodolfo; for the rich who are open-handed always find parasites ready to encourage their bad propensities; and thus to conceive this wicked design, to communicate it, approve it, resolve on ravishing Leocadia, and to carry that design into effect was the work of ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... ravishing sight was that of the Administration Building with its corona of light, its dome, arches, and angles outlined with those brilliant lights, as were those of the Peristyle also, and of the grand structures between—Manufactures, ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... at once recognised as only second to the great Geber himself. One of the doctors present inquired whether a man who knew so many sciences was acquainted with music? Alfarabi made no reply, but merely requested that a lute should be brought him. The lute was brought; and he played such ravishing and tender melodies, that all the court were melted into tears. He then changed his theme, and played airs so sprightly, that he set the grave philosophers, sultan and all, dancing as fast as their legs could carry them. He then sobered them again by a mournful strain, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... "Ha! The most ravishing creature in all Matanzas. All the men were mad over her." Cueto's eyes gleamed craftily, for he believed he had measured Cobo's caliber. "She should have married old Castano and all his money, but she was heart ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Liszt, both spiritual and musical. More and more does the Hungarian loom up as an overmastering influence of his own and a succeeding age. It seems as if Liszt, not Wagner, was the musical prophet who struck the rock of modern pessimism, from which flowed a stream of ravishing art. The national current in Tschaikowsky's music was less potent than with his younger compatriots; or at least it lay ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... and seated on the rich rugs which cover the marble pavement, musicians and singers pause to listen to impassioned words from a laurel-crowned poet, while further on a sort of orchestra plays time for the sensuous dance of lithe-bodied Oriental dancers—each woman of them more ravishing than the other. Minor incidents, like dice-play and love-making, give interest to the remaining space, ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... and the glory and soul-ravishing goodness of that presence, is a thing that the world understands not, nor can they as such desire ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... less and less like children, and began to disappear from the family board and roof by a mysterious process called marrying, which greatly mystified Zosephine, but equally pleased her by the festive and jocund character of the occasions, times when there was a ravishing abundance of ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... star. Is not this love's uniform history? Blinded, not of lust or ambition, but of ideality. Saul met Christ at noon, and was blinded by his vision; and would not all brave men covet blindness thus incurred? And better to be blinded, as Don Quixote, by a ravishing ideal, than to see, besotted in soul and shut out from God. That humorous figure astride lean Rosinante, esquired by pudgy, sensible Sancho; eager for chances to be of use; faithful to his love as dawn to sun; strong in his desire of being all eyes to see distress, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... more familiar with Geoffrey Croyden's affairs than any one else, Colin," she said, crossing her knees, in the reckless fashion women have now-a-days, and exposing a ravishing expanse of blue silk stockings, with an unconscious consciousness that was delightfully naive. "And I want to ask you something—or rather, ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... youngest boy or girl in class or college is the weakest wolf in the pack, the under dog in the fight. I had all of a little girl's natural desire for new playfellows and the dreamer's passion for more material for castle-building. The prospect of "the school" was ravishing. I constructed scenes and rehearsed conversations, with the cast of coming actors, until the quartette must have been super-or sub-human, had they come up to one tithe ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... She was ravishing. The green and gold brought out the tawny red glint of her hair, which was bound with two gold bands about the head, ending in tiny emerald clasps over the barely discoverable tips of her ears; little gold shoes ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... romances of chivalry which were then being first printed and were much read. At that time Anne Boleyn, a lady who had lately returned from France, and appeared from time to time at Court, saw him at her feet; she was not exactly of ravishing beauty, but full of spirit and grace and with a certain reserve. While she resisted the King, she held him ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses' feet, flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and wolves and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying. And to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, I assured him, "that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... that terrible paradise of the gambler, Monaco, on the shore of the lovely Mediterranean. I have lately heard a most thrilling account of what is to be seen in that fearfully attractive palace of despair. Lovely gardens are there, ravishing music, an exquisite salon where the entranced players meet to throw away fortune, peace, and hope. At first you might imagine you were in a church, so still and serious are the deluded mammon- worshippers. And what follows? ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... should have cried myself had I seen her as she was at first. She was a stumpy, flat-headed, squat-nosed, cross-eyed thing. She did not even look good. One virtue she appears to have had, however. It was faith. She believed what the label said, she did what the label told her. She is now a tall, ravishing young person, her only trouble being, I should say, to know what to do with her hair—it reaches to her knees and must be a nuisance to her. She would do better to give some of it away. Taking this young lady as a text, it means that the girl who declines to be a dream of loveliness does ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... lovely Mien, kind melting Airs, soft snowy Breasts that pant with am'rous Sighs, Eyes lauguishing that steal forth welcome glances; Cheeks rip'ning, glowing, kindling, ravishing. ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... of Silver Cloud, and the old walls of the castle certainly seldom, if ever, rang with such music as was discoursed there that night. The domestics had so far recovered from their fright that they now crowded the adjoining hall to hear the singing. So ravishing was the harmony to their semi-barbaric ears that, conjoined with the marvelous manner of their coming among them, these poor creatures were ready to fall down and worship them as heavenly visitants. The Count himself seemed to enjoy the music exceedingly, and encored long and loudly. When ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... spirit, but in the very essence and soul of good- fellowship. The General had called at the Manor, and paid his respects to the Seigneur, who received him abstractedly if not coolly, but Madelinette had captured his imagination and his sympathies. He was fond of music for an Englishman, and with a ravishing charm she sang for him a bergerette of the eighteenth century and then a ballad of Shakespeare's set to her own music. She was so anxious that the great holiday should pass off without one untoward incident, that she would have resorted to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... conceptions of Phidias, full of majesty and of grandeur as they are—the matchless finish of the works of Apelles and Praxiteles, ravishing the senses with their carnal beauty, still lacked one element, without which art can never reveal itself in the full ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... this, and it was as if nothing new had happened. Meantime, I was anxious about the employment Madam de Warrens had procured me, as if that alone had been material. My ideas were calm and peaceable, not ravishing and celestial; every object struck my sight in its natural form; I observed the surrounding landscape, remarked the trees, the houses, the springs, deliberated on the cross-roads, was fearful of losing myself, yet did not do so; in a word, I was no longer in the empyrean, but precisely ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Kansas scenes have been distributed among the blacks. The gentleman who has seen some of these chromos writes that the most ravishing presentment of rural life in Kansas is depicted. The Negroes look on the State as a second paradise, compared with which old Canaan is a Florida swamp. One of these pictures, entitled "A Freedman's Home," represents a fine landscape, with fields of ripening grain stretching ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... in one of those ravishing bays that one meets at every turn of the mountain; there were only four or five fronting the sea at the foot of the mountains, and behind them a wild fir wood slopes into two great valleys, that were untraversed by roads. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant |
