"Smoothness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was imposing merely because of its immense dimensions. It consisted of a huge rectangular block of pure white marble, the walls of which were from eight to ten feet thick, without columns, or pediment, or even so much as a few pilasters to break up the monotonous smoothness and regularity of its exterior surface, the only aids in this direction being the great east doorway, or main entrance, which was some thirty feet wide by about sixty feet high, with an immense window opening on either side of it, through which and the doorway entered all the light ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... cul-de-sac. The first locomotives, apart from the heavy tradition of their ancestry, were, like all experimental machinery, needlessly clumsy and heavy, and their inventors, being men of insufficient faith, instead of working for lightness and smoothness of motion, took the easier course of placing them upon the tramways that were already in existence—chiefly for the transit of heavy goods over soft roads. And from that followed a very interesting ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... will soon renew its smoothness, soon The visions will return! And lo! he stays: And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms Come trembling back, unite, and now once more The pool becomes a mirror; and behold Each wildflower on the marge inverted there, And there the half-uprooted tree—but where, O where the virgin's snowy ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... too young at that time to value her; but now that I know her worth, and that we so long have slept together, rose at the same instant, learned, played, and eat together, I cannot live out of her company." Frederick replied, "She is too subtle for you; her smoothness, her very silence, and her patience speak to the people, and they pity her. You are a fool to plead for her, for you will seem more bright and virtuous when she is gone; therefore open not your lips in her favour, for the doom which I have passed ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... branch is made towards a river, across which Nature, the first of bridge-builders, many a generation ago afforded an easy, dry passage by throwing down a huge tree. It spans from bank to bank, and the wood is worn to slippery smoothness by the passing of shoeless feet. Thence it leads through forest and jungle and mangrove belts to ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... every day, and to form the character into such habits as will fit or unfit it for great proofs of unselfishness, should such be ever called for. Besides, it is on trifles such as these that the smoothness of "the current of domestic joy" depends. It is a smoothness that is easily disturbed: do not let your hand be ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... field batteries where the men, stripped to the waist, were serving the guns, running the shells in and discharging their weapons with marvelous smoothness, speed and precision. ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... from each other. But the good debater is he who faces the negative aspects of the question, who meets sudden objections, has an answer for any momentary summons of doubt or difficulty, dissipates seeming inconsistencies, and reconciles the geometrical smoothness of a priori abstractions with the coarse angularities of practical experience. The great work of Ricardo is of necessity, and almost in every page, polemic; whilst very often the particular objections or difficulties to which ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... been left bare by the efflux of the tide. He wished that the steamboat would stop, and let him land upon one of them. He also looked down over the bows, and admired the graceful form and beautiful smoothness of the ripple, or rather wave, which was formed by the cutwater of the boat as it urged its way rapidly through the water. After gazing upon this for some time, Marco turned to go away in pursuit of Forester, when an occurrence took place, which being somewhat important in its consequences, ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... becomes a poultry-yard—a consummation we are not yet in sight of, as is proved by the legions of pigs and beeves, barreled or bellowing, that roll in from the ancient realms of Pontiac and the Prophet with a smoothness and velocity unattained by the most luxurious coach ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... and gentle, a murmur vast and faint; the murmur of trembling leaves, of stirring boughs, ran through the tangled depths of the forests, ran over the starry smoothness of the lagoon, and the water between the piles lapped the slimy timber once with a sudden splash. A breath of warm air touched the two men's faces and passed on with a mournful sound—a breath loud and short like an uneasy sigh of the ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... simply stood his own ground, saw that his work was properly done, and waited until the man courted his own punishment. In the meantime, the men mistook his forbearance, his quietness, his smoothness of tones and manner for weakness, and Marley, a bully by nature, and quite incapable of understanding his employer, grew ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... Thus quaintly self-contradictory in the upper part of her face, she was hardly less at variance with established ideas of harmony in the lower. Her lips had the true feminine delicacy of form, her cheeks the lovely roundness and smoothness of youth—but the mouth was too large and firm, the chin too square and massive for her sex and age. Her complexion partook of the pure monotony of tint which characterized her hair—it was of the same soft, warm, creamy fairness ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... seems not consonant to himself about the Red, which as you have seen in one place, he represents as somewhat more Asperous than the Blew; and in another, very Smooth: But because he speaks of this Smoothness in that place, where he mentions the Roughness of Black, we may favourably presume that he might mean but a comparative Smoothness; and therefore I shall not Insist on this, but rather Countenance my Conjecture by this, that he found it ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... the river for a few miles the boatmen came to a difficult part of the voyage. Here the river was divided by an island. The dark waters moved with great swiftness, and with the smoothness of oil, over the concealed rocks, breaking into foam at the foot of the rapids. Now for the first time the Indians had hard work. For quite half an hour they paddled as if in despair, and the canoe moved upward inch by inch. It was not ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... poetry. Thus put upon his mettle, John resolved to do his best to change the scepticism of his father, and having written some verses which he liked, and corrected them over and over again into desirable smoothness, he one evening read them to his astonished parents. But the result was thoroughly disappointing. So far from admiring his son's poetry, Parker Clare expressed his strong conviction that it was mere rubbish, not to be compared to the half-penny songs of the fairs. John was ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... musical nor inspiring, but Billy had somehow adopted the ditty and made it his own, so far as eternally singing it could do so, and his comrades had found it not unpleasant; for the voice of Billy was youthful, and had a melodious smoothness that atoned for much in the way of imbecile words ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... works with perfect smoothness and never arouses the ill-feeling aroused by the selections nominally made by the Prime Minister. To-day the Foundations of Belief may not be an essay which causes confidence in the ability of the author to pick the best bishops, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... surprised and embarrassed to make much of her thanks; nor did her wonder diminish as, unfolding the paper, she beheld a blue watered silk binding, richly embossed, with the title of "The Wreath of Beauty," and soon there lay before her, in all the smoothness of India paper and mezzotint, a portrait, beneath which she read the name of Selina, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... matter-of-fact nonchalance. He would be as much at home on his second day in London as he had ever been in Lynn; or he would go from a friend's week-end house-party, where the habits of a Sybarite were forced on him, to a camp in the woods and pilot-bread fare, with an equal smoothness of temper and enjoyment. Since luxury made no impression on him, and hardship never blunted his own ideals of politeness or pleasure, no one ever knew which ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... the bottom of a cliff for ages, and imperceptibly wears its rugged projections to smoothness; but an earthquake overthrows it in an instant. The mind of Evellin, which for a period of seven years had contended with hope and fear, sometimes almost suspecting, and at other times rejecting distrust, was by this proof of his friend's ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... cannot remain the same for several different tones. But there should never be an abrupt change, either audible to the audience or felt in the singer's throat. Every tone must be imperceptibly prepared, and upon the elasticity of the vocal organs depends the smoothness of the tone production. Adjusting the vocal apparatus to the high register should be both imperceptible and mechanical whenever a high note ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... a plant newly introduced here, is minutely described in the Suppl. Pl. of the younger LINNAEUS, under the name of laevigata, apparently from the smoothness of its flowers: in the year 1786, Mr. ALEXANDER ANDERSON sent this plant to the Royal Garden at Kew, from the West-Indies, where it grows spontaneously, as well as at Surinam; and Mr. AITON has inserted it at the end of the Hort. Kew. assigning to it a new ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... his antitheses, his nettete, his command of every conventional and favourite artifice. Without Chapman's conceits, Homer's poems would hardly have been what the Elizabethans took for poetry; without Pope's smoothness, and Pope's points, the Iliad and Odyssey would have seemed rude, and harsh in the age of Anne. These great translations must always live as English poems. As transcripts of Homer they are like pictures drawn from a lost point of view. Chaque siecle depuis ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... son of Menon, bore off the Olympic olive, Mount Kronion shook with shouting of Hellas' hosts assembled. They praised his manly beauty, his grace and strength of body. They praised his eyes' alertness, the smoothness of his muscles. They blessed his happy father and wished themselves his brothers. Sweet rang the glorious praises in ears of Creon's lovers. But I, when upward gazing, beheld a sight more wondrous. The gates of high Olympos were open wide and clanging, Deserted ev'ry palace, the golden ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... been eager and active that night, for the key turned in the lock with a smoothness that made honesty impossible—almost foolish. And the old, weak lock on the box itself—why, a chisel had soon made an end of that! Only five minutes—it had been so quick—there had been no trouble. God had made no ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the change of times, Butler incurred the censure of his father-in-law; and sometimes the disputes betwixt them became eager and almost unfriendly. In all such cases Mrs Butler was a mediating spirit, who endeavoured, by the alkaline smoothness of her own disposition, to neutralise the acidity of theological controversy. To the complaints of both she lent an unprejudiced and attentive ear, and sought always rather to excuse than absolutely to defend the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... intent to describe Ileen Hinkle to you. Instead, I must refer you to the volume by Edmund Burke entitled: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. It is an exhaustive treatise, dealing first with the primitive conceptions of beauty—roundness and smoothness, I think they are, according to Burke. It is well said. Rotundity is a patent charm; as for smoothness—the more new wrinkles a woman acquires, ...
— Options • O. Henry
... assure herself that this thinking would die out. Looking round the world, her small world, how many women there were who had not married the men they had loved first! How few, perhaps, had done so! Life was not good-natured enough for smoothness such as that. And yet did not they, as a rule, live well with their husbands? What right had she to expect anything better than their fate? Each poor insipid dame that she saw, toddling on with half-a-dozen children at her heels, might have had ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... should be left to soak for some hours or even days, in good olive oil. This restores to the thread that softness and smoothness which use and bad washing had impaired. After the oil bath it should be washed on a bottle in the manner ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... of her body. She had relaxed completely and her mind soared, free. She moved one foot, cautiously, to see whether her body was still there, and smiled when she was reassured by the cool smoothness of the linen sheet, and the other warm little ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... overpowered and, yielding to their arguments, he had set forth for the adjoining village with the triumphant throng of tempters. At first all had gone well. The fourteen miles had slipped past with such smoothness and rapidity that Stephen, proudly enthroned at the wheel, had almost forgotten that any shadow rested on the hilarity of the day. He had been dubbed a good fellow, a true sport, a benefactor to the school—every complimentary pseudonym imaginable—and had glowed with pleasure beneath the ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... is clean and tidy. You can touch it anywhere and nothing comes off. Its face glows with soap and water. From the appearance of its hands it is evident that mud-pies and tar are joys unknown to it. As for its hair, there is something uncanny about its smoothness and respectability. Even ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... them first, then wipe them with a flannel; and when the dust and spots are removed, rub with a wax flannel, and dry them with a plain one. Use but little wax, and rub only with the latter to give a little smoothness, or it will make the floor cloth slippery, and endanger falling. Washing now and then with milk, after the above sweeping and dry rubbing, will give as good an appearance, and render the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... for the purpose was applied to an exceedingly large locomotive, and succeeded perfectly, first on a level, and then on an ascent of thirteen milliemes, the steepest in fact of the line. It was feared that difficulties would arise from the smoothness of the wheels on the rails,—but no inconvenience was perceptible from ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... himself obviously shared. He had the healthy, well-cared-for appearance of a country-dweller who has been turned into a town dandy without suffering in the process. His blue- black hair, growing very low down on a broad forehead, was brushed back in a smoothness that gave his head the appearance of a rain-polished sloe; his eyebrows were two dark smudges and his large violet-grey eyes expressed the restful good temper of an animal whose immediate requirements have been satisfied. The lunch had been an excellent one, and it was jolly ...
— When William Came • Saki
... quite a lion, as he deserves to be. Mark is a bachelor, faultless in taste, whose snowy vest is suggestive of endless quarrels with Washington washerwomen; but the heroism of Mark is settled for all time, for such purity and smoothness were never seen before. His lavender gloves might have been stolen from some Turkish harem, so delicate were they in size; but more likely—anything else were more likely than that. In form and feature he ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... an example, the impressions of roundness, angularity, smoothness, roughness, colour, etc., of a table contain, all told, nothing that could assure us of the existence of the object 'table' as the real content of an external world. How, then, do we receive the conviction of the latter's existence? Reid's answer is, by entering ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... by Mills, with his usual smoothness, but Jimmy Dumble, out of breath and excited, pushed his way into ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... like the feathery wing of a bird, and how birdie would enjoy snuggling his soft head against the exquisite smoothness ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... clear with a light breeze, which, towards mid-day, dropped entirely, and the schooner lay rocking lazily on a sea of glassy smoothness. The sun beat fiercely down, bringing the fresh paint on the taffrail up in blisters, and sorely trying the tempers of the men who were doing odd jobs ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... these great enterprises went through with remarkable smoothness. Both landlords and tenants were weary of the strife, and ready for peace on terms. The leaden, merciless pressure of the great Land Courts set up by Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1881 had gradually worn down the dour and ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... no trip to equal this cruise betimes in the sparking AEgean. Our trawler was travelling with the smoothness of a gondola on a Venetian canal. And the voyage, sunny and refreshing in itself, was given an added glamour, by reason of the shrine to which it was a pilgrimage. For, whether I could believe it or not, we ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Marget?" he said, still in a tone of conciliatory smoothness, through which, however, he could not prevent a certain hardness from cropping out plentifully. "Ye're busy as usual, I see. Weel, the hand o' the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Mr. Lambert's "Family of Cats" is considered one of the finest cat pictures in the world. In this painting the mother sits upon a table watching the antics of her four frivolous kittens. There is a wonderful smoothness of touch and refinement of treatment that have never yet been excelled. "After the Banquet" is another excellent example of the same smoothness of execution, with fulness of action instead of repose. And yet there is an undeniable lack of the softer attributes which should be evident in ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... "it is temperance of the soul in exercising the power of taking revenge." This moderation of soul comes from a certain sweetness of disposition, whereby a man recoils from anything that may be painful to another. Wherefore Seneca says (De Clementia ii, 3) that "clemency is a certain smoothness of the soul"; for, on the other hand, there would seem to be a certain roughness of soul in one who fears ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... perceived that he was not alone. Close under the pine-walled shore a dugout was swimming toward him with infinite grace and smoothness. At the first sight his breast contracted, for it seemed to have sprung out of nothingness—then his heart joyfully leaped up. At such a moment anything human was welcome. A squat little figure was huddled amidships, swinging a paddle from side to ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... contending feelings and passions which were going on in the little circle on which our eyes are fixed, the course of life had gone on with tolerable smoothness as far as Emily and Marlow were concerned, for about two months, when, one morning, Sir Philip Hastings received a letter in a hand which he did not know. It reached him at the breakfast table, and evidently ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... smoothness that spoke well for the weight and influence of Victor Nevill's name, the little matter of business, as the Jew smilingly called it, was transacted. A three-months' bill for five hundred pounds was drawn up for Bertie's signature ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... would overthrow all else. "Glory!" he cried mechanically aloud. He put down the hairbrush and inspected the razors on their shelf. The bright morning light flashed along the rubbed fine blades; they were beautiful, flawless, without a trace of defilement. He felt the satin smoothness of the steel with an actual thrill of pleasure; his eyes narrowed until they were like the glittering points of knives; he held the razor firmly and easily, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... which are addressed either to the understanding or the passions, he is bold, figurative, and animated. Indulging too much in amplification, he is apt to tire with prolixity; but in all his excursions he is ardent, elevated, impressive, and often brilliant. His versification has not the smoothness which we admire in the compositions of Virgil, and his language is often involved in the intricacies of technical construction: but with all his defects, his beauties are numerous; and he discovers ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... furniture, as he was breaking up the ground near the river Oxus, to set up the royal pavilion, discovered a spring of a fat, oily liquor, which after the top was taken off, ran pure, clear oil, without any difference either of taste or smell, having exactly the same smoothness and brightness, and that, too, in a country where no olives grew. The water, indeed, of the river Oxus, is said to be the smoothest to the feeling of all waters, and to leave a gloss on the skins of those who ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and Cynthia felt two large tears roll down her cheeks. They left no sorry stains upon the pale smoothness of the girl's skin; Cynthia's eyes could always hold a smile even when dimmed; her eyes were gray with blue tints and her straight, thick hair was the dull gold that caught and held light and shade. Some day ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... terror had kept the two men rooted to the spot, paralysed, and with feet deeply imbedded in the sand. Only their eyes seemed alive, roaming along the wall, all round to where on either side the silken ladders made vivid crimson streaks on the white smoothness of ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... can have it under similar conditions. So monasteries and communities of sympathetic devotees open their doors, and in their changeless order, characterized by omissions quite as much as constituted of actions, the holy-minded person finds that inner smoothness and cleanness which it is torture to him to feel violated at every turn by the discordancy and brutality of ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... 7. Smoothness of diction in a paragraph calls for the intelligent use of proper connective words between closely related sentences. A common fault, however, is the incorrect use of such words as and or but between sentences which are not ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... Ah! no: she forgets The charms that she wielded before; Nor knows the foul worm that he frets The skin which but yesterday fools could adore, For the smoothness it held, or ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... doubt, to the soothing and slightly purgative properties of the oil contained in the seed. The change made in the appearance of the animals receiving some of the bolls in their steamed food is very apparent after a few weeks' trial; and the smoothness and sleekness of their shining coats plainly show the benefit derived. Is it not surprising, with this fact before our eyes, that many agriculturists—indeed, I fear the majority—persist in the old-fashioned system of taking the flax to a watering-place ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... that bubble tried ponderously to rotate, rainbow gleams ran across it, hiding and then revealing the constellations. Here, on the asteroid's axis, there was no weight, and one moved with underwater smoothness, as if disembodied. "Oh, a fairy tale," ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... fancies while the train rolled over a track remarkable for its smoothness and leading ever onward across the vast, empty plains bare save for the low shrubs called sage-brush, and rising here and there into long ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... 5th of August, a party of the officers endeavoured to get on one of the larger icebergs, but ineffectually, owing to the steepness and smoothness of its sides, and the swell produced by its undulating motion. This was one of the largest we saw, and Mr. Hood ascertained its height to be one hundred and forty-nine feet; but these masses of ice are frequently magnified to an immense ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... (which was not cropped short, as is the fashion) had a lustrous softness, and at the same time an elastic bushiness, which nothing but the finest-tempered health can give; and his complexion, though tanned by exposure, had yet much of the smoothness of youth, save where the razor had passed upon his beard. Thus seen, a little way off, he appeared a young man in his rosy twenties; on closer view and acquaintance, however, that superficial impression was contradicted ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... simple truth,' bluntly answered James, running his hand through his black hair, to the ruin of the morning smoothness, so that it, as well as the whole of his quick, dark countenance seemed to have undergone a change from sunny south to stormy north in the few ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to 'The Lost Bower,' I am penitent about having caused you so much disturbance. I sometimes fancy that a little varying of the accents, though at the obvious expense of injuring the smoothness of every line considered separately, gives variety of cadence and fuller harmony to the general effect. But I do not question that I deserve a great deal of blame on this point as on others. Many lines in 'Isobel's Child' are very slovenly and weak from a multitude of causes. I hope you will ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... well as military business was being transacted in Pretoria with perfect smoothness, in spite of the proximity of the enemy. The yeomanry were acting as police both there and in Johannesburg. The gaol, of which we had a glimpse, was crowded with 240 prisoners, but was under the competent ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... its round smoothness for a short moment, but cleared again before the Duke dropped back with a ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... artistic acquirements, in the limited field in which Donizetti's opera called them into activity, at least, are of the highest rank. Her style is exquisite, and plainly the outgrowth of a thoroughly musical nature. It unites some of the highest elements of art. Such reposefulness of manner, such smoothness and facility in execution, such perfect balance of tone and refinement of expression can be found only in one richly endowed with deep musical feeling and ripe artistic intelligence. She carries her voice wondrously well throughout a wide register, and from her lowest ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of promise case," he said at last, in a low voice. "I—I am threatened with a breach of promise case." Here, in desperate quest of inspiration, he made a clutch at his beard; his fingers closed upon the unfamiliar smoothness of a shaven chin; and with that, hope and courage (if such expressions could ever have been appropriate in the case of Pitman) conjointly fled. He shook Michael roughly. "Wake up!" he cried, with genuine irritation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suddenly distracted in quite other ways; and when he was again able to turn his attention anywhere but to himself he found that and other matters which had disturbed his conscience tending with comparative smoothness toward a solution in which he personally had ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... languidly, and turned them on a monk sitting beside him,—a monk whose face was neither old nor young, but which presented a singular combination of both qualities. His high forehead, white as marble, had no furrows to mar its smoothness, and from under deep brows a pair of wondering wistful brown eyes peered like the eyes of a lost and starving child. The cheeks were gaunt and livid, the flesh hanging in loose hollows from the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... person interested in their glory, make out a claim either of superior atrocity, or, in equal atrocity, of superior neatness, continuity of execution, perfect preparation or felicitous originality, smoothness or curiosa felicitas (elaborate felicity). The men who murdered the cat, as we read in the Newgate Calendar, were good, but Williams better who murdered the baby. And perhaps (but the hellish felicity of the last act makes us demur) Fielding was ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... hills, your bitterness Of wind and storm. Stem ye the drift of herded men With your uncouthness So, tasting of your power, they press Back shrinking where upon their warm Safe ways of smoothness They feed their ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... she was in her mother's arms, so near that she could feel the warmth and smoothness of her shoulder through the fine texture of her gown, so near that a fresh fragrance, like that from a bank of violets, seemed to breathe upon her, Imogen found it a little difficult to control the discomfort that the contact aroused in her. "Of course I forgive you, dear mama," she said, in a ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... ascending Filled the sky with haze and vapor, Filled the air with dreamy softness, Gave a twinkle to the water, Touched the rugged hills with smoothness, Brought the tender Indian Summer To the melancholy north-land, In the dreary ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... lately proclaimed to have the admixture of atmospheric gases required to support animal life, but not, save under cover of a liberal afterthought, to be admitted into one's regular conception of things. I, for my part, felt nothing but regret that the spheric smoothness of his universe should be disfigured by the extrusion even of such ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... now in the full bloom of ornamental sorrow. A very shallow crape bonnet, frilled and froth-like, allowed the parted raven hair to show its glossy smoothness. A jet pin heaved upon her bosom with every sigh of memory, or emotion of unknown origin. Jet bracelets shone with every movement of her slender hands, cased in close-fitting black gloves. Her sable dress was ridged with manifold ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and were imitated locally from the fourth century onwards. The clay is pale or reddish (genuine Greek fabrics are usually quite red within) and the glaze thick, black, and of a brilliant glassy smoothness. Imitations are ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... poetry, except ballads and his contemporary Byron. He desired, as he said in the note to "Romantic Ballads," not the merely harmonious but the grand, and he condemned the modern muse for "the violent desire to be smooth and tuneful, forgetting that smoothness and tunefulness are nearly synonymous with tameness and unmeaningness." He once said of Keats: "They are attempting to resuscitate him, I believe." He regarded Wordsworth ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... and calm, and even of content—but withal a quenched look, as if the lustre of youth and hope had been extinguished, and the soul had been so driven in upon itself, that there was no opening to receive external sympathy—a settled expression, all the stranger on a face with the clear smoothness of early youth. One thing at least was unchanged—the firm friendship and affection—that kept the two constantly casting glances over one another, to assure themselves of the presence ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the deep, rich green colour of its broad leaves, which were twelve or eighteen inches long, deeply indented, and of a glossy smoothness, like the laurel. The fruit, with which it was loaded, was nearly round, and appeared to be about six inches in diameter, with a rough rind, marked with lozenge-shaped divisions. It was of various colours, from light pea-green to ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... unconsciousness of her manner. That day she carried no barbarous arrow in her hair. It was parted on one side, brushed back severely, and tied with a black ribbon, without any bronze mist about her forehead or temple. This smoothness added to the many varieties of her expression also ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... softly. If only the Cor had completed his sentence before he died. Hilary would have chanced a sudden rush forward to reverse it, to bring on a deluge of rain and clouds, even though it meant certain death. The machine seemed to gleam at him mockingly; the hum continued with tantalizing smoothness. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... James's edition of AEsop's Fables, published by John Murray in 1848, was already a brilliant expert. The accomplished young draughtsman soon took keen delight in the smooth face of a block, and at once began—and ever continued—to demand a degree of smoothness that was the despair of Swain to procure. Tenniel, indeed, always drew with a specially-manufactured six-H pencil—which appears more impressive with its proper style of "H H H H H H"—and so delicate was the drawing that, firm and solid as were the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... another, and examined them diligently; he then stroked my body very gently, and looked round me several times; after which, he said, it was plain I must be a perfect Yahoo; but that I differed very much from the rest of my species in the softness, whiteness, and smoothness of my skin; my want of hair in several parts of my body; the shape and shortness of my claws behind and before; and my affectation of walking continually on my two hinder feet. He desired to see no more; and gave me leave to put on my clothes again, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... make clear to man— And how they soar upon the right, for weal, How, on the left, for evil; how they dwell, Each in its kind, and what their loves and hates, And which can flock and roost in harmony. From me, men learned what deep significance Lay in the smoothness of the entrails set For sacrifice, and which, of various hues, Showed them a gift accepted of the gods; They learned what streaked and varied comeliness Of gall and liver told; I led them, too, (By passing thro' the flame the thigh-bones, wrapt In rolls of fat, and th' undivided chine), ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... the tediousness of highly civilized life comes from its smoothness and regularity. To-day is like yesterday, and we think that we can predict to-morrow. Of course we cannot really do so. The chances are still there. But we have covered them up so deeply with the artificialities ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... of fungus, chrysalis, sea-weed, eggs, and nests. But the shells, minerals, and fossils, form so extraordinary and numerous a collection that they are the subject of admiration of every beholder; the polish of the shells, the brilliance of the colours of the plumage of the birds, and the glossy smoothness of the skins of the beasts are as perfect as if they were living, but the same cannot exactly be said of the fishes. The marbles, porphyry, and granite, the lava, basaltes, barks of trees, bones of animals known and unknown, some within stones, are arranged by the celebrated Cuvier, whilst ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... could be sure. "You are here!" his eyes said to her, as she entered the room. "I have this hour at least. Nothing else matters." Then, by aid of the sunset, the warm breeze in his face, the flowers on the table, the fragrance of her perfume and the smoothness of her hand, he tried to drown himself in a sea of sensation, like one who listens, in a glamour of stained glass and a cloud of incense, to the protracted sweetness of an organ ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... gradually increasing obstacles and in the end roads along section lines were laid out, with grading and bridging. But the wagon and cattle trails of the early days, rut-cut, storm-washed, and polished by sun and wind and sand to a shining smoothness, still stretch across country, truncate and deserted. Under their weather-beaten silence lies the story of other days and ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... correctness, where no fault we see, Attests Art's loftiest or its least degree; Alike the smoothness of the surface shows The Pool's dull ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... light or gentle hand. In carrying out this undertaking a very little weakness, a very small display of indecision, might easily have meant an appalling amount of bloodshed. As it was, the whole business was completed in a wonderfully short while, and with remarkable smoothness. The judicial and municipal administration of these centres was to remain English; but supreme authority was vested in the officer commanding the German forces in each place, and the heads of such departments as the postal and the police, were ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... wetting, Young went down the river bank to pick out a stick about the same size to put in his bow case. Taking the first piece that came to hand he started to place it in the case, when struck by its smoothness he looked at it and found he had a weatherbeaten old Indian bow in his hand. It seemed like a sign, a good omen,—for we playfully indulge in omens in these ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... method would produce a harsh, shaky voice and all freshness would be lost. But in Madame Carvalho's case the opposite was true. The freshness and purity of her voice were beyond compare, while its smoothness and the harmony of the registers were perfect. It was a miracle the like of which we ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... only time he was ever worsted in malignity. Never a man went forth, bowed down with a recent shame, wounded and wincing from the public gaze, but that old rogue hirpled up to him, and lisped with false smoothness: "Thirce me, neebour, I'm thorry for ye! Thith ith a terrible affair! It'th on everybody'th tongue. But ye have my thympathy, neebour, ye have tha-at—my warmetht thympathy." And all the while the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... the order for mobilisation was received, and conveyed throughout the county that night by the police and eager parties of volunteers. The plan of mobilisation had been closely studied in all its details, and worked with complete smoothness. By 2 p.m. on the 5th the assemblage at Reading was complete, and after a laborious day spent in medical inspection, drawing of equipment and of ammunition, 28 officers and 800 other ranks entrained in the evening for ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... unruffled mountain mere by the skimming of a stone, and for a long time the clear images of blue sky, and wreathing cloud, and green mountain-top, are shaken and confused on the tremulous and twinkling wave, but unite together into the old picture when the water has recovered its glassy smoothness—so still more slowly did Kennedy's troubled memory reflect the incidents, (alas! unbeautiful and threatening incidents), of the preceding days. They came back to him as he lay there quite still; and ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... baking powder; rub in shortening; add milk, and mix with spoon to smooth dough easy to handle on floured board. Turn out dough; knead quickly a few times to impart smoothness; divide into small pieces: form each by hand into short, rather thick tapering rolls; place on greased pans and allow to stand in warm place 15 to 20 minutes; brush with milk. Bake in very hot oven. When almost baked brush again with melted butter. Bake 10 minutes longer and serve hot. If ...
— The New Dr. Price Cookbook • Anonymous
... stock of dramatic morality out of which a writer may be supplied without the trouble of copying from originals within his own breast. To know the boundaries of honour, to be judiciously valiant, to have a temperance which shall beget a smoothness in the angry swellings of youth, to esteem life as nothing when the sacred reputation of a parent is to be defended, yet to shake and tremble under a pious cowardice when that ark of an honest confidence is found to be frail and tottering, to feel the true blows of a real disgrace ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... insinuations and questions shall be answered in their proper places; here I will but say that I scorn and detest lying, and quibbling, and double-tongued practice, and slyness, and cunning, and smoothness, and cant, and pretence, quite as much as any Protestants hate them; and I pray to be kept from the snare of them. But all this is just now by the bye; my present subject is my Accuser; what I insist upon here is this unmanly attempt of his, in his concluding pages, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... large stall fed ox beef is the best, it has a coarse open grain, and oily smoothness; dent it with your finger and it will immediately rise again; if old, it will be rough and spungy, ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons
... effect his black dress-coat, on which, to do honour to Jenkins, he had pinned a few of his decorations, which he was in the habit of never wearing except upon official occasions. The reflection from the linen, from the white cravat, the dull silver of the decorations, the smoothness of the thin hair now turning gray, enhanced the pallor of the features, more bloodless than all the bloodless faces that were to be seen that evening in ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... about 1887. It is a wood Flute of very large scale, with the mouth on the narrow side of the pipe. The block is sunk, and the lip, which is of considerable thickness, is usually coated with a thin strip of leather to impart to the tone the requisite smoothness and finish. It is voiced on any wind pressure from 4-inch upwards. The Tibia Plena is the most powerful and weighty of all the Tibia tribe of stops. It is, therefore, invaluable in large instruments. * * * The Tibia Profunda and Tibia Profundissima ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... poets, and professed to have written at fourteen, his poem upon Silence, after Rochester's Nothing. He had now formed his versification, and in the smoothness of his numbers surpassed the original: but this is a small part of his praise; he discovers such acquaintance both with human life and publick affairs, as is not easily conceived to have been attainable by a boy ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... face, and, marveling at her words, looked ahead. He was within a half-mile of a sandy beach which bordered a wooded island. The sea was now like glass in its level smoothness, and the air was warm and fragrant with the smell of flowers and foliage. He shipped the oars, and pulled to the beach. As the boat grounded she arose, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... very dark, I found and lighted a candle, and came and stood beside her bed. Very white and trim it looked, yet I was glad to see its smoothness rumpled where I had laid her down, and to see the depression in the pillow that her head had made. And, while I stood there, up to me stole a perfume very faint, like the breath of violets in a wood at evening time, wherefore I sank down upon ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... rich blood mantled now and then like wine in a Venice glass; and her lips—the outline of the upper one just defined by a penciling of down, the lower one full and pouting—glistened with the brilliant smoothness of a pomegranate flower when the dew is clinging. Her eyes—the opium-eaters of Stamboul never dreamed of their peers among the bevies of hachis-houris. They were of the very darkest hazel; one moment ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... those whom you know at a glance to have been tried hard and long in the furnace of affliction. His face was an absolute puzzle; though sharp and sallow, it had neither the wrinkles of age nor the smoothness of youth; so that for the soul of me, I could hardly tell whether ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... was of a world unintelligible to him. Her hair, in its dips and convolutions, was altogether a puzzle. "How did she ever fix it like that?" Her low evening dress—"what was it made of—some white stuff, but was it silk or muslin or what?" Her shoulders were startling in their bare powdery smoothness—"how dare that young pup dance with her?" And her face, that had seemed so jolly and friendly, floated past the window as pale and illusive as a wisp of fog. His longing for her passed into clumsy awe. He remembered, without resentment, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis |
