"Seraphical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sharp little pinch quickly diverted your thoughts into the proper channel. As she pinched you, the Kitten dropped her eyes so that you noticed how long and black were her eyelashes. Then, having punished you, she raised her eyes to yours with so seraphic an expression that you thought of "large-eyed cherubim" and entirely forgot that she had pinched you at all, unless next day as you looked in the glass you happened to notice a little blue mark on your cheek. The Kitten could ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... minutes, and I was surprised by the clock striking ONE before it occurred to me that it was time to depart. Again I traversed the streets at that solemn hour, insensible to every feeling, and regardless of every object but the flaming torch lit up in my heart and the seraphic image of Laura. At length I was warned by the scrutinizing gaze of a watchman to repair to my lodgings. But my pillow afforded no rest. All night long I pondered on the exhilarating events of the day. Many were the endearing accents that escaped my lips ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... mingling contrasts of scales and wings, of feathers and hair. Through the combined lenses of science and imagination, we look back into ancient times, so dreadful in their incompleteness, that it may well have been the task of seraphic faith, as well as of cherubic imagination, to behold in the wallowing monstrosities of the terror-teeming earth, the prospective, quiet, age-long labour of God preparing the world with all its humble, graceful service for his unborn Man. The imagination of the poet, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... penny; or all shouting with one voice, "Give me money." Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. "Budge's Boots are the Best" simply means "Give me money"; "Use Seraphic Soap" simply means "Give me money." It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... heighten things, making giants out of pygmies—all the more, if a relish for revery and grumbling be joined with a tendency to exaggeration and with figures of speech corresponding thereto. Consequently, I am surprised that the reverend annalist or chronicler [i.e., San Antonio] of the seraphic province of San Gregorio praises this letter, saying that it is worth printing, since its author has penetrated as far as one may penetrate into the characters of the natives of these islands. And yet the author confesses that it ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... fair form that won my earliest vow, That my young spirit prized all else above, And now adored as freedom, now as love, Stands in seraphic guise, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... No more do I. Never would train for anything," said the Seraph now, pulling the long blond mustaches that were not altogether in character with his seraphic cognomen. "If a man can ride, let him. If he's born to the pigskin he'll be in at the distance safe enough, whether he smokes or don't smoke, drink or don't drink. As for training on raw chops, giving up wine, living like ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... short life of Donne has painted a figure of almost seraphic beauty. When Donne was but a boy, he declares, it was said that the age had brought forth another Pico della Mirandola. As a young man in his twenties, he was a prince among lovers, who by his secret marriage with his patron's niece—"for love," says Walton, "is a flattering mischief"—purchased ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... a face that 's fair, Nor lip and cheek that 's red, Nor of the tresses of her hair, Nor curls in order laid, Nor of a rare seraphic voice That like an angel sings; Though if I were to take my choice I would have all these things: But if that thou wilt have me love, And it must be a she, The only argument can move Is that ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... being seraphic, Full of fun, full of frolic and mirth; Who can talk in a manner most graphic Every possible language on earth. When she's roaming in regions Italic, You would think her a fair Florentine; She speaks German like Schiller; and Gallic Better far than ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... round it," said Emmeline, who was seated on Paddy's shoulder, holding on tight to him, and gazing upon the island, the green of whose trees was now visible, an oasis of verdure in the sparkling and seraphic blue. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... right, a Cherub tall: Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled Th' imperial ensign; which, full high advanced, Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind, With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host up-sent A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through the gloom were seen Ten thousand banners rise into the air, With ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... honours; their boat was third upon the river; their chapel-choir is not inferior to Saint George's itself; and the Boniface ale the best in Oxbridge. In the comfortable old wainscoted College-Hall, and round about Roubilliac's statue of Saint Boniface (who stands in an attitude of seraphic benediction over the uncommonly good cheer of the fellows' table) there are portraits of many most eminent Bonifacians. There is the learned Doctor Griddle, who suffered in Henry VIII.'s time, and Archbishop Bush who roasted him—there is Lord Chief Justice Hicks—the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was covetous about anything it was salvation. He was never satisfied with being as good as he was. He was always longing and praying and going about in the effort just to be a better man, more worthy of the message he had to deliver. These were the kind of seraphic pleasures he took in living. And there was no mortal power, no poverty or hardship that could do him out of them. He would come back from feeding some vicious sinner with his gospel substances exhilarated. It seemed to strengthen his spirit to drive five miles through freezing ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... bald head, which looked so very large because it shone so much; and the long grey hair at its sides and back, like floss silk or spun glass, which looked so very benevolent because it was never cut; were not, of course, to be seen in the boy as in the old man. Nevertheless, in the Seraphic creature with the haymaking rake, were clearly to be discerned the rudiments of the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... seeing the gesture followed by gloomy looks, and what French reporters call "sensation," in these young men, whom naturally I viewed with awe as my leaders, boys that were called young men, men that were reading Sophocles—(a name that carried with it the sound of something seraphic to my ears)—and who never had vouchsafed to waste a word on such a child as myself. The day was come, however, when all that would be changed. One of these leaders strode up to me in the public playgrounds, and delivering a blow on my shoulder, which was not intended to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... uncertain what to do, but his hesitation did not last long. A piece of pine wood lay near him, and picking it up he drew from under his belt a great keen-bladed bowie-knife, with which he began to whittle long slender shavings that curled beautifully; then a seraphic smile of ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... not in any way like the innkeeper's daughter of Comic Opera. She was a schoolgirl of sixteen, with a long, fair plait, a short serge skirt, and a seraphic oval face. She ought to have been called Fanny or Clara. Unluckily ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... boy and girl, lying naked side by side, were joined through the silent hours, in the seraphic promiscuousness of the shadows; such dreams as were possible to their age floated from one to the other; beneath their closed eyelids there shone, perhaps, a starlight; if the word marriage were not inappropriate to the situation, they were husband and wife after ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... that seized her when, in her haunted imagination, she saw all Susan's rapture at the vows of Mainwaring mantling in Helen's face! All that might have disarmed a heart as hard, but less diseased, less preoccupied by revenge, only irritated more the consuming hate of that inexorable spirit. Helen's seraphic purity, her exquisite, overflowing kindness, ever forgetting self, her airy cheerfulness, even her very moods of melancholy, calm and seemingly causeless as they were, perpetually galled and blistered that writhing, preternatural susceptibility which is formed ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... strangely moved at her child's prayer and murmured, Amen. And as the little innocent knelt there, a perfect picture of seraphic beauty, purity, innocence and faith, the thought of the ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... those piquant flippancies of speech which harass the enemy like a straggling fire; and could contrive, when it suited her purpose, to make herself as disagreeable as if her face had not been that of a cherub, or her voice seraphic. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... Luther. With a nature originally rougher, more earth-born, and of less genial goodness than that of Joan of Arc, but with a shaping imagination of the same realizing intensity, the beautiful myths of Romish superstition, which her innocent soul transfigured into gracious ministering spirits of seraphic might and seraphic tenderness, glared in upon his more morbid spiritual vision as menacing angels, or grinning imps, or scoffing fiends. But still the tortured soul toiled sturdily on through the anguish of its self-created hells, the mind crazed and shattered, the heart hungry for peace, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... over in an incredibly short time. One by one, two by two, they rose heavily and lumbered out with one last, wistful look at Mrs. Field. She will never know how seraphic she seemed sitting there amid those rough surroundings—the dim, red light of the kerosene lamp falling across her clear pallor, out of which her dark eyes shone with liquid softness, made deeper and darker by her half-sorrowful tenderness for these ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... attorney's countenance shone with a serene and heavenly light, so pure and bright, indeed, that I almost wonder his dazzled servants, sitting along the wall while he read and expounded that morning, did not respectfully petition that a veil, after the manner of Moses, might be suspended over the seraphic effulgence. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... near the window, idly following with her eyes the perambulations of Bung, who was flitting about the garden like a ghost with a curled tail and a turned-up nose. Mr. Amarinth leaned largely upon the piano, in an attitude of rapt attention. His clever, clean-shaved face wore an expression of seraphic sensuality. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... has strength to go forward; they enter the door,— And there, on the crowded and blood-tainted floor, Close wrapped in his blanket, lies Douglass:—his brow Wore never a look so seraphic as now! She stretches her arms the dear form to enfold,— God help her!..., she shrieks ..., it is silent ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... softly: "You little devil; you were Attendance personified, and I've got you now." At which Isidro, pausing in the act of throwing a shell with the top of his head at another shell on the ground, looked up beneath long lashes in a smile absolutely seraphic. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... in the Madonnas and Cherubim of Raffaelle, it seems to shine out in still more truthful vividness from the brow of a young person rapt in religious ecstasy. The hands clasped in prayer,—the upturned eyes,—the expression of humble confidence and seraphic hope, (displayed, let me suggest, on a beautiful face,) constitute a picture of which, having witnessed it, I can never forget the force. Yet I knew it was only a trance. So one knows that village churches are built by common mechanics. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... fat pearls she so often wore about her round, full throat; the white frock, say, with arabesques of blue all over it, that Felix Kennaston said reminded him of Ruskin's tombstone; or that other white-and-blue one—decollete, that was—which I swear seraphic mantua-makers had woven out of mists and the skies of June: when I remember these things, I repeat, almost am I tempted to become a boot-maker and a lapidary and a milliner and, in fine, an adept ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... (there by him was brought forth what he possessed in the spirit). And he told me further concerning this: that where the universal or general love is born in any one, such would be the true signature and token that this seraphic stone would there be formed and take to itself a bodily shape." (L. G. B., I, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... thousands of innocent men and women at the hands of Philip's soldiers in a country at peace with Philip, at the very moment when that monarch was protesting with a seraphic smile on his expiring lips that he had never in his whole life done injury to a single ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... secluded, and with no other view than that of the heavens. In front of it is the street in the middle of which is the royal hospital of the Spaniards, which has been administered since its foundation by the religious of our seraphic father St. Francis. There the religious who is vicar of this convent, who administers to us the holy sacraments, had a cell. From the alms given us we provide for his support. Lately, Governor Don Sevastian Hurtado de Corcuera, without cause or reason for it, drove the religious from ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles drop a bow or curtsey as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle I can be content to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic doctor. ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... would seem, my dear count, that you can at pleasure enjoy the seraphic strains that proceed from the seven ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... forgotten. She was a madcap and a hoiden—a wild, hare-brained, fox-hunting Amazon—all that was shocking and unwomanly, but, at the same time, all that was bright, beautiful, entrancing, irresistible. His golden-haired ideal, with the azure eyes and seraphic smile was forgotten, and this gray-eyed enchantress, robed in white, crowned with ivy, dancing desperately the whole night long, set brain and heart reeling in ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... Hark! strains seraphic fall upon the ear, From shining ones around th' eternal gates: Glad that man's load of guilt may disappear, Infinite ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... magic can lurk in the simple substitution of quantity for value? Surely, X., you are hair-splitting a little in this instance, and mean to amuse yourself with my simplicity, by playing off some logical legerdemain upon me from the "seraphic" or ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to concentrate his senses on the sword-play; but one half of his brain was wrestling with the puzzle; the apocalyptic and almost seraphic apparition of a stout constable out of Clapham on top of a dreary and deserted hill in France. He did not, however, have to puzzle long. Before the duellists had exchanged half a dozen passes, the big, blue policeman appeared once more on the top of the hill, a palpable monstrosity in the eye ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... world, In depth of counsel by created ken Unfathomable, to the end that she, Who with loud cries was 'spous'd in precious blood, Might keep her footing towards her well-belov'd, Safe in herself and constant unto him, Hath two ordain'd, who should on either hand In chief escort her: one seraphic all In fervency; for wisdom upon earth, The other splendour of cherubic light. I but of one will tell: he tells of both, Who one commendeth which of them so'er Be taken: for their ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... seductive; heart-robbing, alluring, enticing; appetizing &c. (exciting) 824; cheering &c. 836; bewitching; enchanting, entrancing, enravishing[obs3]. charming; delightful, felicitous, exquisite; lovely &c. (beautiful) 845; ravishing, rapturous; heartfelt, thrilling, ecstatic; beatic[obs3]; beatific; seraphic; empyrean; elysian &c. (heavenly) 981. palmy, halcyon, Saturnian. Phr. decies repetita placebit[Lat]; "charms strike the sight but merit wins the soul" [Pope]; "sweetness and light" [Swift]; beauty is ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Law or gospel, physics or metaphysics; himself alone superior to college, court, or convocation. Before him sunk scholiast and schools. In his presence the doctors all must stand uncapped: the seraphic, the subtle, and the singular; the illuminated, the angelic, and the irrefragable to him, were tyros all. Our censor in private, and in public our familiar: like a malignant demon, no respect, no place, no human barriers could ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... dinner, Lilith's gaze scarcely met that of Wolkenlicht; and once or twice, when their eyes did meet, her glance was so perfectly unconcerned, that Karl wished he might look at her for ever without the fear of her looking at him again. She seemed like one whose love had rushed out glowing with seraphic fire, to be frozen to death in a more than wintry cold: she now walked lonely without her love. In the evenings, he was expected to continue his drawing by lamplight; and at night he was conducted by Teufelsbuerst ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... Zoological Gardens, where, a fortnight ago, we saw wild boars from Hesse Darmstadt; wild boars from Egypt; bush pigs from Africa; peccaries from South America; and two painted pigs from West Africa; all "de grege porci," and in excellent health: to say nothing of two hippopotamuses; four "seraphic" giraffes; antelopes (we did not number them); brush turkeys from Australia; an apteryx from New Zealand; the curious white sheathbills from the South Seas; the refulgent metallic green and purple-tinted monaul, or Impeyan pheasant, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... the Italiens. Never had that beautiful and enchanting woman looked more seraphic, more ethereal. Nobody in the house could have believed that she had debts which reached the sum total mentioned by de Marsay that very morning. No single one of the cares of earth had touched that sublime forehead of hers, full of woman's pride of the highest kind. In her, a ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... is called the Seraphic Doctor; and I repeat my doubt, whether it is possible for any human authority to give a more full, entire, and unreserved sanction to the works of any human being than the Church of Rome has given to {357} ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... June-bug on the window-sill. Chang-how stood with folded hands and drooping shoulders, a seraphic calm upon his features, as of one who had stood upon the burning deck when all but he had fled. Evidently he had done his duty. I was so impressed with this fact, and that the responsibility, if not the guilt, was now mine, that I simply said, "Go set the table ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... mothers in itself. We all felt it, mothers or not. But the great sensation was when he got into the pulpit. The manner in which he dropped on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, and showed his beautiful rings was, as a young lady said behind me, simply seraphic. We understood his celebrity, from that moment—I wonder whether ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... the modern child, born out of the mental-conscious love-will, born to be another unit of self-conscious love-will: an ideal-born beastly little entity with a devil's own will of its own, benevolent, of course, and a Satan's own seraphic self-consciousness, like a ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... far withdrawn, He turned with measured steps and slow, Trimming his lantern as he went; And there, among the shadows, bent Above one ponderous folio, With whose miraculous text were blent Seraphic faces: Angels, crowned With rings of melting amethyst; Mute, patient Martyrs, cruelly bound To blazing fagots; here and there, Some bold, serene Evangelist, Or Mary in her sunny hair: And here and there from out the words A brilliant tropic bird took flight; And through the margins many ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... it, I expect I didn't—so I wrote to her giving both our thanks and explaining the state of affairs. "All is over," I said, "between that lady and myself. Do not name her to me, lest the hideous word 'Woman' should blind me to the seraphic word 'Aunt.' My life is a howling waste—but what matter? Ha! Ha! Ha!" I cannot remember my exact words, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... woman since his wife's death. After dinner my Lady Sandwich sending to see whether I was come, I presently took horse, and find her and her family at chapel; and thither I went in to them, and sat out the sermon, where I heard Jervas Fullwood, now their chaplain, preach a very good and seraphic kind of sermon, too good for an ordinary congregation. After sermon, I with my Lady, and my Lady Hinchingbroke, and Paulina, and Lord Hinchingbroke, to the dining-room, saluting none of them, and there sat and talked an hour or two, with great pleasure and satisfaction, to my Lady, about my Lord's ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Lepelletier is more enchanting still in some soft black fabric, with dull gold in relief. Floyd has washed and brushed and freshened, but still wears his travelling suit for a very good reason. Cecil is in white, with pale blue ribbons, which give her a sort of seraphic look. Yet she is tired with all the jaunting about, and after a while Laura ceases to torment her with questions, as the conversation becomes ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the forms of light, Seraphic and divine, The painter's wand had summoned from The dim Ideal's shrine; And felt within my fevered soul Ambition's wasting fire, And seized the pencil with a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... thoroughly. She would chuck him under the chin mornings, or shake his solid head between her hands, telling him he was a brute, but a nice kind of a brute. "Yes, yes," he would growl. "I know. I'm an animal, I suppose. You're a seraphic suggestion of attenuated thought." ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... expressions of deep anxiety. Will attempted to speak, but could not; then he tried to move, and, in doing so, fainted. On recovering consciousness, he observed that no one was near him except Larry O'Hale, who lay extended at his side, looking through the open doorway of the hut, while a series of the most seraphic smiles played on ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... allay in me the whirlwind of the passions! How did my frame tremble, and madden, and shiver, and burn! How were my lips at once bursting with frenzy and locked in silence! It was my guardian angel that protected me, that pleaded for me, that awed me to patience, and that repaid by her seraphic praise ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and pears, and quaffed the California wines with appropriate delight and hilarity. She also studied JOHN CHINAMAN in all his phases, and came to the conclusion that he would do. She thought it would be a seraphic experience to see the pride and importance of Misses BRIDGET and GRETCHEN taken down a little. JOHN would certainly not possess the voluble eloquence—of the first, nor the stolid impudence of the second, nor would he have, like the pretty Swede, a train of admirers a mile in length. Of course he ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... word, in this sense, in the poem 'At a Solemn Music,' where the 'saintly shout' of the seraphic choir, with 'loud uplifted angel-trumpets,' 'immortal harps of golden wires,' and the singing of psalms and hymns, are collectively called 'that melodious noise.' Also in his Hymn on the Nativity, verse ix., he has 'stringed noise'—i.e., band of stringed instruments. ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... an unfailing token of mediaeval sainthood. We read of Francis of Assisi's sheepskin that "often a companion of the saint would take it to the fire to clean and dispediculate it, doing so, as he said, because the seraphic father himself was no enemy of pedocchi, but on the contrary kept them on him (le portava adosso) and held it for an honor and a glory to wear these celestial pearls in his habit. Quoted by P. Sabatier: Speculum Perfectionis, etc., Paris, 1898, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... my dearest friend, and also you, "Joint sons of sacred harmony, adieu! "Apollo whispering, prompts me to retire, "And bids me join the bright seraphic choir: ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... had said, was young and handsome. He had luxuriant fair hair, hanging in clusters around his face and falling on his shoulders, so as to give a seraphic air to his face, very well calculated to touch the heart of pious Celestine. In his mild blue eyes, however, there was an expression of will, decision and daring which strangely contrasted with the rest of his face. The Doctor was tall and elegantly formed, and wore at home the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... spirit of youthful innocence, so guileless that the very light of purity and truth seemed to break in radiance from her countenance. Her form was round, light, and flexible. When she smiled her face seemed to lose the character of its mortality—so seraphic and full of an indescribable spell were its lineaments; that is, the spell was felt by its thrilling influence upon the beholder, rather than by any extraordinary perception of her external beauty. The general expression ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... young man's cane ceased. He looked up into his host's glowering face with a seraphic ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... friend Emma, she laid down her pen and thought of nothing; and into this dreamfulness a wine passed, filling her veins, suffusing her mind, quickening her soul: and coming whence? out of air, out of the yonder of air. She could have imagined a seraphic presence in the room, that bade her arise and live; take the cup of the wells of youth arrested at her lips by her marriage; quit her wintry bondage for warmth, light, space, the quick of simple being. And the strange pure ecstasy was not a transient electrification; it came ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... criticism as this, a shining reflection, so to speak, of the work which it exalts; yet MacSilly, the seraphic aesthete of Edinburgh, has expressed in a still more moving and penetrating fashion the impression produced upon his mind by the sight of this primitive painting. "The Madonna of Margaritone," says the revered MacSilly, "attains the ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... of Nature whose creation appears to demand as its right all the happiness of love. Here was a fair young face, on which the sun of Spain had cast faint tones of bistre which added to its expression of seraphic calmness a passionate pride, like a flash of light infused beneath that diaphanous complexion,—due, perhaps, to the Moorish blood which vivified and colored it. Her hair, raised to the top of ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... "And this seraphic ocean-child And heroine was Orlie Wilde: And thus it was I came to hear Her voice's music in my ear— Ay, thus it was Fate paved the way That I walk desolate ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Whipple, Motley, Charles Eliot Norton, Edmund Quincy, Francis H. Underwood, Judge Hoar, J. Elliot Cabot, and others. Lowell and Holmes were the wits par excellence, though Judge Hoar did not fall far behind. Emerson sat always with a seraphic smile upon his face, and Longfellow thoroughly enjoyed every good sally, though not adding to the mirth-making himself. Dr. Appleton, who met Dr. Holmes at ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... unclean, historic river swept beneath; behind were dusky, reeking walls, spotted here and there with hanging rags and flower-pots in windows; opposite, at a distance, were the bare brown banks of the stream, the huge rotunda of St. Angelo, tipped with its seraphic statue, the dome of St. Peter's, and the broad-topped pines of the Villa Doria. The place was crumbling and shabby and melancholy, but the river was delightful, the rent was a trifle, and everything was picturesque. Roderick was in the best humor with his ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... door closed behind her a heavy sigh floated through the grating, and the sweet seraphic face of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... scandalized by them. As a sort of atonement she wrote 'Day after Day,' the story of a dismal and joyless orphan, who dies to the sound of angelic music, faint and farheard, filling the whole chamber. A carefuller study of the phenomenon reveals the fact that the seraphic strains are produced by the steam escaping from the hot-water bottles at the feet ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to kiss thy Mistress' skirt Amaze thy brain, scorn not the Priest Whom greater honours do not hurt. Stand off and gaze, if more than this Be more than thou canst understand, Revering him whose power of bliss, Angelic, dares to seize her hand, Or whose seraphic love makes flight To the apprehension of her lips; And think, the sun of such delight From thine own darkness takes eclipse. And, wouldst thou to the same aspire, This is the art thou must employ, Live greatly; so shalt thou ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... pastor, as different from him as possible. Mr. Lurton was as gentle as his predecessor had been boisterous. There was a strong substratum of manly courage and will, but the whole was overlaid with a sweetness wholly feminine and seraphic. His religion was the Twenty-third Psalm. His face showed no trace of conflict. He had accepted the creed which he had inherited without a question, and, finding in it abundant sources of happiness, of moral ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... know of the elegaic and seraphic Chopin? I wrote a few lines from Pau to Mme. Sand, but my letter hardly asked for a reply, and she has, moreover, better things ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... showed my muscle as man of the world, who did those Alcide exercises to silence by moral force the champion of physical force, that old soldier with a heart, that friend of this very young girl, whom he'll now go and tell that I have a heart of iron!—I, to play Napoleon when I ought to have been seraphic! Good heavens! True, I shall have my friend. Friendship is a beautiful thing. I have kept him, but at what a price! Six millions, that's the cost of it; we can't have many friends if we ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... hour! In yonder heaven deep the stars are lit For evening service of seraphic quires— Eternal pomp of serried, blazing worlds, The heraldry of God, ere yet Time was. The moon hangs low, her golden orb impearl'd In a sweet iris of delicious light, That leaves the eye in doubt, as swelling die Round trills of music ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... be at home when this telegram came. It was the first he had ever received. With trembling hands he tore it open, his rosy face broke into a seraphic smile, and the tears came into his eyes. He rushed to his mother, threw his arms ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... the general expedition—the "Seraphic and Apostolic Squadron," as Palou calls it, was composed of three ships—the San Carlos, the San Antonio, and the San Joseph. A list, fortunately preserved, gives all the persons on board the San Carlos, a vessel of about 200 tons only, and the ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... can make circuit of the whole stellar system and be back in time for matins! Perhaps yonder twinkling constellation is the residence of the martyrs; that group of twelve luminaries is the celestial home of the Apostles. Perhaps that steep of light is the dwelling-place of angels cherubic, seraphic, archangelic. A mansion with as many rooms as worlds, and all their ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... life and beauty, this gay glory and tremorous ecstasy and effort was here for moth-love of one incarnate fever of frail-winged loveliness! Oh! to what unguessed archangelic observation, to what infinite seraphic compassion, may not our own swarming race, who dare not too much pity ourselves, be but just such dainty ephemera! Splendid in purposes, intelligence, and affections as these in colors and grace, glorious when on the wing, and marvellous still, ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... robed in white, was bareheaded and barefooted. The dress, the action, the seraphic face were not infrequent on the water, and especially in the churches; recognition was instantaneous, and through the eager crowded ranks the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... and as Tina had just been saved from doing so, the marriage in the first case never actually takes place, and in the second it ends after a few months. And as a smaller instance of repetition, we may compare the bedroom visit of the seraphic Dinah Morris to the earthly Hetty with that of the pattern Lucy Deane to the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... loss and compassion and pity and loneliness and aspiration and sensitiveness; and lo! there is born from this pain, the spiritual Self, which embraces the lesser consciousness, enfolding all your consciousness in the softness and bliss of pure, Seraphic ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... Azazel as his right, a Cherube tall: Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurl'd Th' imperial ensign, which, full high advanc't Shon like a meteor streaming to the wind, With gemms and golden lustre rich emblaz'd Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metall blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host up-sent A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through the gloom were seen Ten thousand banners rise ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... country—Lux mundi, as he was called. Some fragments of his conversation have been preserved, the unquestioned judgements which his hearers loyally received. Of the Schoolmen he was contemptuous, with their honorific titles: 'doctor angelic, doctor seraphic, doctor subtle, doctor irrefragable.' 'Was Thomas (Aquinas) a doctor? So am I. Thomas scarcely knew Latin, and that was his only tongue: I have a fair knowledge of the three languages. Thomas saw Aristotle only as a phantom: ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... the grave, in modern religions the earthly instruments, the fanciful idols of the common people and of mystics, also resound in Elysium and the heavens, touched and inspired by choirs of angels and by seraphic powers. ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... been suggested to the seraphic Bard, Williams, of Pantycelyn, by the approach of Columbus to the shores of ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... respectable men were the words that had once kindled the souls of St. Catharine and St. Francis into a white-hot hatred of the carnal. He could-not be as the saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a little ashamed of loving a wife. "Amabat, amare timebat." And it was here that Margaret hoped to ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... tell; I hear a song, Vivid as day itself, and clear and strong, As of a lark—young prophet of the noon— Pouring in sunlight his seraphic tune." ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... created luminous, seraphic, composed of light and emotion. She came so near and so large that her very thoughts seemed to be photographed. She drifted away; she smiled, danced, wept, and made her human ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... vigorously out on the milky whiteness of the neck. This was neither Norman beauty, where flesh abounds, nor French beauty, as fugitive as its own expressions, nor the beauty of the North, cold and melancholy as the North itself—it was the deep seraphic beauty of the Catholic Church, supple and ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... not the interpretation and ultimatum in its final form. The laws which rule the world as forces are, in it, thoughts and liberties. All the grand imaginations of men, all the glorified shapes, the Olympian gods, cherubic and seraphic forms, are but symbols and adumbrations of what it contains. As the sun, having set, still leaves its golden impress on the clouds, so does the absolute nature of man throw up and paint, as it were, on the sky testimonies of its power, remaining itself unseen. Only, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... of angels to whom a knowledge of the future, or the seraphic penetration into the hidden heart of man is forbidden, stayed his wings over the lovely valley in which the main scene of our history has been cast, no spectacle might have seemed to him more appropriate to that lovely spot, or more elevated in the character of its ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... remained his most intimate friend. He also came to know Fichte, and eagerly absorbed his Doctrine of Science. A little later he came into close relations with Wilhelm Schlegel and Tieck in Jena. He experienced a seraphic love for a delicate girl of thirteen, whose passing away at the age of fifteen served to transport the youth's interests almost exclusively to the invisible world: "Life is a sickness of the spirit, a passionate Doing." His chief conversation lay in solitude, in seeking ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and seraphic being who but a short time since, rich in the charms of native grace and loveliness, had been the star of a happy home, and the delight of a fond and admiring parent—that Theodora was now changed into the fearful semblance ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... was half lying in a softly cushioned chair; there was a large globe at his side, and an equally large atlas, with other books on a small table near by, and Max's chair was close to the whole arrangement. He was a fair, lovely boy, with the seraphic eyes that sufferers from spinal diseases so frequently possess—eyes with the look in them of a Conqueror of Pain. But also, on his young face there was the solemn Trophonean pallor which signs those who daily dare "to look ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... altar, wide the door, the air is the vehicle of the sacred word which shall spring from my lips. Hear, then, with the ears of the soul and the heart, that the words of the Lord may not fall on a stony ground, but that they may grow and shoot upward in the field of our seraphic father, St. Francis. You, sinners, captives of those Moors of the soul who infest the seas of the eternal life, in the doughty ships of the flesh and the world; you who row in the galleys of Satan, behold with reverent compunction him who redeems souls from the captivity of the demon—the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... artist went back to the stainless robes and seraphic face of her pictured Peace in the loved "Modern Macaria," and, as she resumed her work, her brow cleared, the countenance kindled as in days of yore, bitter memories hushed their moans and fell asleep at the wizard touch of her profession, and the stormy, stricken soul found ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... onward like the brook hurrying to the sea. They say that love is blind: love may be short-sighted, or inclined to strabismus, or may see things out of their true proportion, magnifying pleasant little ways into seraphic virtues, but love is not really blind—the bandage is never so tight but that it can peep. The only kind of love that is really blind and deaf is Platonic love. Platonic love hasn't the slightest idea where it is going, and so there are surprises and shocks in store for it. The other kind, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... to female influences. Besides, what would Jorrocks' ghost be to this? Could anything be in better taste? Would I not be exposing myself to the chance of injuring my nervous system by interviews with such creatures as my last visitor, unless I decided at once? She gave me a seraphic smile, as if she knew what was passing in my mind. That smile settled the matter. "She will do!" I cried; "I choose this one;" and as, in my enthusiasm, I took a step toward her, I passed over the magic circle which had girdled ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... lady at his will, That ever my desire may verdant rise. Deep pity she with graceful grief applies— Warm feelings ever gentle bosoms fill— While captived equally my fond ears thrill With her sweet accents and seraphic sighs. Love and fair Truth were both allied to tell The charms I saw were in the world alone, That 'neath the stars their like was never known. Nor ever words so dear and tender fell On listening ear: nor tears so pure and bright From ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... her sweet eyes meeting mine in a sad adieu. I looked my last then on the face of the mortal Jennie. But in a land of perpetual summer, lighted by the smile of God, robed in garments of everlasting light, faithful and true, there awaits me Jennie the immortal! She knows it all now. Those bright seraphic eyes lighted with heaven-born love, have turned from celestial light to mark my gloomy wanderings. When she died, there was added to the band of ministering spirits the one whose silent influence was most powerful for good, most potent to aid me in overcoming evil. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... altar railing. What dreadful thing was I contemplating, what fearful temptation was assailing me, here under the light of the sanctuary lamp? I looked reproachfully at St. Stanislaus, as if that seraphic youth had betrayed my confidence. I suspected him of being too anxious to rid himself of the ambiguous trust imposed upon him without so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps he was secretly irked at the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... while Hans enjoyed the sensation of being carried by somebody else, and lay upon the cushions smoking with a seraphic smile and addressing sarcastic remarks to the bearers, who fortunately did not understand them. Soon, however, he wearied of these novel delights and as he was still determined not to walk until he was obliged, climbed on to the roof of the ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... men of any generation can look forward to, will be the increased gladness that their right conduct will secure for a coming generation: and that gladness, when it comes, will be, as it were, the seraphic song of the blessed and holy dead. Thus every present, for the positivist, is the future life of the past; earth is heaven perpetually realising itself; it is, as it were, an eternal choir-practice, in which the performers, though a little out of tune ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... been at one time (nay, was at the very moment of composition) inspired and suffused with that firm belief in God's goodness and His justice—that full assurance of rewards beyond the grave—that exulting and seraphic cheerfulness which associates joy with the Creator—and that animated affection for the Brotherhood of Mankind, which Christianity—and Christianity alone, in its pure, orthodox, gospel form, needing no aid from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... seraphic in appearance, are far from this! But in this condition, as in all others, there are souls more or less divine. God hides them in His bosom, and under the veil of a most common life, so that they may be known to Him alone, though they are His delight. ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... O seraphic Sextum! continued Homenas, how necessary are you not to the salvation of poor mortals! O cherubic Clementinae! how perfectly the perfect institution of a true Christian is contained and described in you! O angelical Extravagantes! ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... glance of disdain, as Beauvayse, his seraphic face agrin, screwed in his supererogatory eyeglass, and lounged over the table. "You artless babes! Did you suppose I should be likely to swallow such a feuille de chou without even oil and vinegar? For pity's sake, leave off winking, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... repent it, mind you—no, no, I may be battered, my dear, but I am seasoned; I have great experience: you would not repent, and shall not, by the Face on the Handkerchief! But happen you see my master, happen he wear his brocade of white and gold—it is all peacocks' eyes, my seraphic heart, in gold and blue upon snowy white—happen again he look, 'Come' at you—why, off you trot as a hound to the platter, and I speed you thither with open heart. Thus walks his world, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... song, As if for you to choose, Discretion in the interval, With gay delays he goes To some superior tree Without a single leaf, And shouts for joy to nobody But his seraphic self! ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson |
