"Unctuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Nancy but with stress of unctuous generosity. This, if his hearers knew what he had suffered at her hands, must tell greatly to his credit; if they were not aware of the circumstances, such a tone would become him as ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... absolute disregard to propriety. I made a point of listening for the accentuation of the 'my dear' which was being interchanged, but the key-note to the harmony existing between husband and wife was neither excessively unctuous, nor shrewd, and the connubial shuttlecock was so well kept up on both sides that I chose to await the issue rather than speculate on the origin of this strange exhibition. I therefore, as I could not be accused ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... during the night. I cannot express to your highness the satisfaction that I felt at finding that the carcase of the harpooner was in my possession. I surveyed my treasure over and over again with delight. I could now cook my French dishes. He was soon dissected, and all his unctuous parts carefully melted down, and I found that I had a stock which would last me as long as the bodies which I had remaining to exercise my skill upon. The first day I succeeded admirably—I cooked my dishes; and when they were ready I took off my night-cap and apron, passed my fingers ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... fig trees, their roses and lilies, their orchards of orange and lemon, and the distant snow-clad peaks glittering in the gentle sunshine, combine to form a perfect picture. There are detailed descriptions from the pens of those who feel an unctuous joy in painting the lily, kalsomining the calla, and adding perfumes to the violet, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... and the sacredness of the "home." He is a master in plot and has a clear, vigorous and appealing style. A gravely portentous sentiment sometimes spoils his tragic effects; but every lover of Paris will enjoy the unctuous elaboration of the "backgrounds" of his stories, touched often with the most delicate and mellow ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... are thinskinned and some are thick. One variety is quick and vigorous beneath the touch, another gentle and yielding. The pinnock has a thick skin with a spongy lining; a bruise in it becomes like a piece of cork. The tallow apple has an unctuous feel, as its name suggests. It sheds water like a duck. What apple is that with a fat curved stem that blends so prettily with its own flesh,—the wine apple? Some varieties impress me as masculine,—weatherstained, freckled, lasting, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Provenal house has been written, in a style somewhat unctuous and flowery, by M. Jules Canonge. I purchased the little book—a modest pamphlet—at the establishment of the good sisters, just beside the church, in one of the highest part of Les Baux. The sisters have a school for the hardy little Baussenques, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... such absorbing concern about the body of the boat, Walter moving slowly from stem to stern, and stern to stem, laying on the magic oil, (unctuous of victory to our noses), with steady sweeps, and the bent figure of black old Clump beside the caldron, from which rose a curling smoke, we must have made a tableau of heathen offering sacrifice, or some ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... Metallurgy, and the way how that unctuous Body, out of which mettals are produced, is elaborated by Nature, and what therein are Sulphur, Salt, and Mercury; besides, what it is that renders Mettals fluid in the Fire, but not Stones and Vegetables, &c. Secondly, of the Requisits ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... moulding, casting a perfect image of the time for future generations! To be exact, it took these generations eighteen centuries to discover and to appreciate the heritage that was theirs, buried at the foot of Vesuvius. During these long dark and dusky centuries charming goat herds had rested unctuous shocks of hair upon mysterious columns that, like young giant asparagus, stuck their magnificent heads out of the ground. Blinking drowsily at yonder villainous mountain, the summit of which is eternally crowned with a halo of thin white ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... the natives, and the latter is used for carts, casks, and all household purposes, as well as for the hulls of their boats, from the belief that It resists the attack of the marine worms, and that some unctuous property in the wood preserves the iron work ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... family, with no breadth or scope, no good retirement, but old and young huddling together cheek by jowl. What a hardy plant was Shakspeare's genius, how fatal its development, since it could not be blighted in such an atmosphere! It only brought human nature the closer to him, and put more unctuous earth about ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the clergyman's unctuous tones. "The elements are indeed at war to-night! I trust ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... come to see this Garrulier, whom she had so often heard mentioned at five o'clock teas, so as to be able to describe him to her female friends subsequently in droll phrases, imitating his gestures and the unctuous inflections of his voice, in order, perhaps, to experience some new sensation, or, perhaps, for the sake of dressing like a woman who was going to try for a divorce; and, certainly, the whole effect was perfect. She wore a splendid cloak embroidered with ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... would appear with an unusually good cup of chocolate, just right in warmth, sweetly smelling, and with the play of light on watered silk upon its unctuous surface, and with succulent grilled steak flavored with anise-seed, which would set Sancho-Tartarin off on the broad grin, and into a laugh that drowned the shouts ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... it with the idea that you are a believer in the New Testament, while you in fact reject it, or one of the most barren uninventive of all human beings, or fanatically fond of mystical language,—do not, I say, affect this very unctuous way of talking. And, for another reason, do not. I beseech you, adopt the phraseology of men who, according to your view, must surely have been either the most miserable fanatics or the most abominable ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety? Let such a man become an evangelical preacher; he will then find it possible to reconcile small ability with great ambition, superficial knowledge with the prestige of erudition, a middling morale with a high reputation for sanctity. Let him shun ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... said her cruel enemy's unctuous voice close to her ear, "that we have tried our humble best to make your brief sojourn here as agreeable as possible. May I express a hope that you will be quite comfortable in this room, until the time when Sir Percy will be ready to ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... gallant to his lady love—who, by the way, was frequently the wife of another man—had very little scruple about seducing a maid of low degree. The same gallantry is conspicuous in the Letters of Lord Chesterfield, beneath whose unctuous courtesy the beast ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... more and more unctuous in its friendliness of remonstrance, and he was almost in danger of forgetting that he was merely gambling in argument. When he left off, Grandcourt took his cigar out of his mouth, and looking steadily ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... After this favourable start, the process went on for many years by which a young man from Homerton was then developed into the influential and highly esteemed pastor of an important flock. Things may be, and probably are, differently managed now-a-days. Mr. Beecham had unbounded fluency and an unctuous manner of treating his subjects. It was eloquence of a kind, though not of an elevated kind. Never to be at a loss for what you have to say is a prodigious advantage to all men in all positions, but doubly so to a popular minister. ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... is better for the Government to help a poor man to make a living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his company. This principle was too sound to be fought openly. It is the kind of principle to which politicians delight to pay unctuous homage in words. But we translated the words into deeds; and when they found that this was the case, many rich men, especially sheep owners, were stirred to hostility, and they used the Congressmen they controlled to assault us—getting most aid from certain demagogues, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... this will greatly assist in modifying and fixing the tints and shades which the dyes impart. The best thing for the purpose, in the writer's opinion, is clear ox-gall, which, besides being useful as a mordant, will destroy all unctuous matter. ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... A bloated earwig, and a fly; With the red-capt worm, that's shut Within the concave of a nut, Brown as his tooth. A little moth, Late fatten'd in a piece of cloth; With wither'd cherries, mandrakes' ears, Moles' eyes: to these the slain stag's tears; The unctuous dewlaps of a snail, The broke-heart of a nightingale O'ercome in music; with a wine Ne'er ravish'd from the flattering vine, But gently prest from the soft side Of the most sweet and dainty bride, Brought in a dainty daisy, ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... used to read those jolly unctuous authors when I was young, in the old 'sitting-room' at home! The great fire-place glows before me now; its light dances on the wall; my mother's hand is on my head; my sister's eyes are beaming on her lover over in the darker corner; there is a murmur of pleasant voices; there ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... is also a recent invention. It was brought into England about twenty years since. Invented by M. Senefelder, of Munich. It is founded on the principles of Chemical Affinity. A Writing or Drawing is made on Stone, with an Ink prepared with a sort of unctuous ingredient—to this is applied another Ink of a contrary quality; the Ink with which the Writing or Drawing is made, remains on the Stone, while that with which the Printing is performed, separates from it, and is ...
— The Author's Printing and Publishing Assistant • Frederick Saunders
... laughing, as he said, fit to break his jaws. And he was no longer the timid little unctuous and obsequious provincial usher, but a well-set-up fellow, who, after reciting and mimicking the whole scene with impressive ardour, was now laughing with a shrill laughter the sound of which ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... something of a Friar Tuck and something of a Louis XV. abbe, he is a sort of privileged person, who by the mere force of impudence has made his way in the world. Most English girls in their teens fall in love with a curate and a cavalry officer. Monseigneur Bauer, who combines in himself the unctuous curate and the dashing dragoon, is adored by the fair sex in Paris. He knows how to adapt his conversation to the most opposite kind of persons, and I should not be surprised if he becomes a ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... With vigour drawn, must send the shaft below. The bottom was full twenty fathom broad, With crackling straw, beneath in due proportion strowed. The fabric seemed a wood of rising green, With sulphur and bitumen cast between To feed the flames: the trees were unctuous fir, And mountain-ash, the mother of the spear; The mourner-yew and builder-oak were there, The beech, the swimming alder, and the plane, Hard box, and linden of a softer grain, And laurels, which the gods for conquering chiefs ordain. How they were ranked shall rest untold ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... the first rehearsal of "The Beggar's Opera." Hippisley with his rich, unctuous humour was Peachum, and not less well suited to Lockit was Jack Hall's quaint face and naive manner. James Spiller, the favourite of the gods, was Mat o' the Mint, and the solemn visaged Quin essayed Macheath. Lavinia as Polly was both excited and nervous, and Lucy (Mrs. Egleton) ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... to say whether he was more absurd than cruel or more cruel than absurd. Mrs Fyne, with the fine ear of a woman, seemed to detect a jeering intention in his meanly unctuous tone, something more vile than mere cruelty. She glanced quickly over her shoulder and saw the girl raise her two hands to her head, then let them fall again on her lap. Fyne in front of the fire ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... entrusted his ship more and more to the ever swelling current of the political parties of the proletariat, and hoped to find his profit where, in a half-hearted way, his convictions lay. He exhibited a rebel's front to the middle-classes, and held out a hand of unctuous fellowship to the toiler. He knew how to make his way! Many an insignificant shop-keeper had been known to exchange his musty rooms for a villa in the suburbs, to furnish it pretentiously, and to send ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... having been entrapped, through an unconscious expression, in the meshes of some antiquated law, was doomed to administer in some measure to their need by the payment of a penalty and costs. The fat old fellow who presided as judge, and beneath whose robe of office an unctuous leathery surtout was all too visible, peered in vain through a pair of massive horn-spectacles into a huge timber-swathed volume in search of the act, the provisions of which I had violated. At length, the schoolmaster—a meagre, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... pity," Mrs. Madgwick was remarking in her unctuous voice. "I always felt there was something just a little—well, what shall I call it?—second-rate about the girl. Mr. Rose being a gentleman in every sense of the word makes the whole ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... forced himself to be as respectful as he was tender. With that intention, in the interests of his passion and the desires with which Juana inspired him, he was caressing and unctuous in language; he launched the young creature into plans for a new existence, described to her the world under glowing colors, talked to her of household details always attractive to the mind of girls, ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... taking root there; the roof torn into shapeless rents; the shutters hanging about the windows in rags of rotten wood; before its gate, the stream which had gladdened it now soaking slowly by, black as ebony, and thick with curdling scum; the bank above it trodden into unctuous, sooty slime: far in front of it, between it and the old hills, the furnaces of the city foaming forth perpetual plague of sulphurous darkness; the volumes of their storm clouds coiling low over a waste of grassless fields, fenced from each other, not by hedges, but by slabs ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... latter were entirely brown and dead, and rattled around me with an ominous sound, as I climbed to the level of the prairie, leaving the bed of the muddy Illinois below. Peck's hoofs sank deeply into the unctuous black soil, which resembled a jetty tallow rather than earth, and his progress was slow and toilsome. The sky became more and more obscured: the sun faded to a ghastly moon, then to a white blotch in the gray vault, and finally retired in disgust. Indeed, there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... read far in Spenser without taking a rest—as we farmers lean upon our spades, when the digging is in unctuous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... pancakes, griddle-cakes, dough-nuts, gravies, and sauces, all struggled for precedence; the land and the sea waged internecine war for place, through their representative fries of steak and mackerel; and as the unctuous pork—no nursling of the flock, but seasoned in ripe old age with salt not Attic—rooted its way into the front rank, I thought of the wisdom of Moses. All these were, so to speak, the mere outlying flakes, the feathery curls, of the balmy cirro-cumulus, whose huge bulk arose out of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... done by using water as the medium of ablution. It is a well-known physiological law that it is necessary, in order to enable the skin to carry on its healthful action, to have washed off with water the constant cast of scales which become mingled with the unctuous and saline products, together with particles of dirt which coat over the pores, and thus interfere with the development of the hairs. Water for ablution can be of any temperature that may be acceptable and agreeable, according to the custom and condition ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... Goolsby smiled an unctuous and knowing smile. "Maybe you think I ain't a-comin'," he exclaimed, with the air of a man who has invented a joke that he relishes. "Well, sir, you're getting the wrong measure. I was down in 'Zalia Monday was a week, and I'm a-goin' ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... Cross, in the simplicity of his nature, never dreamed of this, but, on the contrary, when our adventurer dilated in the fatherly manner already adverted to, be looked upon himself as particularly favored of Heaven, in falling upon a youth, as a pupil, of such unctuous ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... only in the skin and mucous membrane. They secrete an oily, unctuous substance, which mixes with the transpiration, and lubricates the skin. At the root of each hair there is a minute follicle, which secretes the fluid that oils the hair. The wax in the passage of the ear is ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... sooner sat down than the doctor started the conversation by asking, in an unctuous tone of voice, several questions about my trip—"Whether, ah, it was really true that I had, ah, travelled all the way to Mars and back again in, ah, a vessel of our ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... although the system may not have been degenerate in itself. The cause is to be found in the very prosperity of monachism, which brought to the religious houses wealth and all its responsibilities. Wealth always imposes fetters, as every rich man, from Seneca downwards, has declared with unctuous lamentation. But what first strikes the student who compares early English monachism with the later is, that whereas the monks of the first period were most concerned with their monastic duties, their religious observances, and their scribing and ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... 'King Charles, 1648,' was opened at the head. A second Charles I, coffin of wood was thus disclosed, and, through this, the body carefully wrapped up in cere-cloth, into the folds of which a quantity of unctuous or greasy matter, mixed with resin, as it seemed, had been melted, so as to exclude, as effectually as possible, the external air. The coffin was completely full; and, from the tenacity of the cere-cloth, great difficulty was experienced ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... black pall which Herbert described, a plain leaden coffin was found, with the inscription 'King Charles, 1648.' Within this was a wooden coffin, much decayed, and the body carefully wrapped in cerecloth, into the folds of which an unctuous matter mixed with resin had been melted, to exclude the external air. The skin was dark and discoloured—the pointed beard perfect—the shape of the face was a long oval—many of the teeth remained—the hair was thick at the back of the head, and in appearance nearly black—that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... his engine with an unctuous glee. He was boyishly happy because he and the Home Secretary had done them out of the Car of Victory and the ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... saw were copper and iron; both which, particularly the latter, were in such plenty, as to constitute the points of most of the arrows and lances. The ores, with which they painted themselves, were a red, brittle, unctuous ochre, or iron-ore, not much unlike cinnabar in colour; a bright blue pigment, which we did not procure; and black-lead. Each of these seems to be very scarce, as they brought very small quantities of the first and last, and seemed to keep them with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... pleasant expression of countenance, and men who were well acquainted with him said that he had, though not so long of arm, an extensive reach for whisky. He was of impressive size, with a sort of Napoleonic head; and when hot on the trail of a drink, his voice held a most unctuous solicitude. He was exceedingly annoying to some people and was a source of constant delight to others. At one time he had formed the habit of being robbed, and later on he was drugged; but no one could conjecture what he would next add to his repertory. His troubles were amusing, his ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... deep and unctuous voice, on the heels of Tess' declaration. "Wha's all dis erbout—heh! Glo-ree! Who done let dat goat intuh disher yard? Ain' dat Sam Pinkney's ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... off, pursued by a dozen of his comrades, eager to seize the booty." It needs no great stretch of fancy to picture the Doctor, bereaved of his gizzard, sitting open-mouthed and aghast at the foot of a gum-tree, his fingers still shining from the unctuous contact, the moisture of anticipation oozing from his lips, his eyes watching the flight of the felon kite, whilst the 'possum on the branch above grins at his mishap. The loss was the more serious, that game was not abundant just then. They had got into a flat, sandy, uninteresting country; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Joy Brightens his Crest; as when a wandering Fire, Compact of unctuous Vapour, which the Night Condenses, and the Cold invirons round, Kindled through Agitation to a Flame, (Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends) Hovering and blazing with delusive Light, Misleads th' amaz'd ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... done. But the remembrance of what you have been saved from should keep you meek and lowly in spirit, Bessie. I have been grieved to-day, deeply grieved, to see that you already begin to feel uplifted." Mr. Wiley dwelt in unctuous italics on his regret, and waved his head slowly in token of his mournfulness. Bessie turned scarlet ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... a little troublesome in their day, and in East Anglia they were more numerous than in London. It may be that they have helped to weaken Dissent in that part of the world. Men of independent intellect must have been not a little shocked by that unctuous familiarity with God and the devil which is the characteristic of that class. On a Sunday morning Jemmy Wells, as his admirers called him, would describe in the most graphic manner what the devil had said to him in the course of the week; and on one memorable occasion, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... you tempter!" he declared. "No more, you unctuous ambassador from the court of Gutenberg! Why, this one would take enough alfalfa at the present price a ton to bury your store under a haycock as high ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... I'm heartily glad the fellow has gone. I hate his supercilious manner, his superior tone, and his unctuous bearing. He's simply ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... boots, and trousers that invariably bagged at the knee and were a little short; he wore low collars, spats occasionally, and a tall black hat that was not of silk. His voice was alternately hard and unctuous; and he regarded theaters, ballrooms, and racecourses as the vestibule of that brimstone lake of whose geography he was as positive as of his great banking offices in the City. A philanthropist up to the hilt, however, no one ever doubted his complete sincerity; his convictions were ingrained, ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... ye be a-goin' to, down this part o' the world so late?" she heard the unctuous voice above ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... decorous response, and bowed in silence; but his wife resented the unctuous beaming of content on the other's wide countenance, and could not ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... with rage, and Mr. Gibney, springing at the nearest palm, shinned to the top of it in the most approved sailor fashion. A moment later, instead of cocoanuts, rich, unctuous curses began to descend on McGuffey ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... adrift, and the trails and wagon roads to Rough and Ready knee-deep in mud. The stage-coach from Sacramento, entering the settlement by the mountain highway, its wheels and panels clogged and crusted with an unctuous pigment like mud and blood, passed out of it through the overflowed and dangerous ford, and emerged in spotless purity, leaving its stains behind with Rough and Ready. A week of enforced idleness on the river "Bar" had driven the miners to the more comfortable recreation of the saloon bar, its mirrors, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his way leisurely to Canal Street, and thence diagonally through the old French quarter toward the French Market. In a narrow alley giving upon the levee he finally found what he was looking for; a dingy sailors' barber's shop. The barber was a negro, fat, unctuous and sleepy-looking; ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... {and} it takes fire at the concussion, the winds {once} calmed, the caverns will become cool; or, if the bituminous qualities take fire, or yellow sulphur is being dried up with a smouldering smoke, still, when the earth shall no longer give food and unctuous fuel to the flame, its energies being exhausted in length of time, and when nutriment shall be wanting to its devouring nature, it will not {be able to} endure hunger, and left destitute, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... knotted ends over his knees. Around his open neck was hung a string of black ebony beads, hooked on to a heavy gold cross, which rested on his capacious breast, and which the wearer was continually feeling, and occasionally pressing to his lips. His face was dark and sensual—thick, unctuous lips, a flat nose, and large black eyes—while a glossy fringe of raven hair went like a thick curtain all around his head, only leaving a bluish-white round patch on the shaved crown. This individual was the Padre Ricardo, who, for some good reasons ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... tall, distingue woman, with powdered hair and imposing presence, who presented a striking contrast to the meagre personage engaged in conversation with her. The Duke de Riancourt was a small, nervous man of thirty years or thereabouts, with a sanctimonious, unctuous mien, shifting eyes and long, smooth hair, carefully parted near the middle of the forehead, and a rigidity of movement that showed ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... watching beside the gate he made no sign. His fat shoulders, commonly so erect, were bowed as if he had suddenly grown old. His face had lost its unctuous smile and was haggard with care; and for once he paid no heed to George Fox's un-Quakerlike gambols, fraught with danger to the open buggy he drew. A pale-faced woman in the orthodox attire of the birthright Friends ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... Moses, who "took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch" (Exodus, ii. 3), bitumine ac pice in the Vulgate. Bitumen, or mineral pitch, was regularly applied to this purpose, even by Elizabethan seamen. Failing this, anything sticky and unctuous was used, e.g., clay or lime. Lime now means usually calcium oxide, but its original sense is anything viscous; cf. Ger. Leim, glue, and our bird-lime. The oldest example of the verb to caulk is about ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... near she had perceived herself tower to camel size, the entrance to Paradise shrink to the circumference which refuses to receive a thread manipulated by an unsteady hand. Yes, yes; they began to expand in unctuous conjecture that merged into deliberate assertion, when some one remarked that Mrs. Errington had died in exactly three minutes of the rupture of a blood-vessel on the brain. So this comfortable theory was exploded. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... The curiously unctuous gesture grew menacing, brutal. Don Anastasio twitched and trembled before it. Under the towering and prismatic Fra Diavolo he cowered, an insignificant figure. The unrelieved black of his attire accorded with his meagre ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Arabs. A contagious disease; the skin is thickened, wrinkled, rough, unctuous, destitute of hair, without any sensation of touch in the extremities of the limbs; the face deformed with tubercles; the voice hoarse, and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... be rescued from this here imprisonment!" he cried with unctuous joy. "Thought they'd pinned me here for best part of a week, no doubt, while they could get theirselves quietly away—far away! But it's my experience 'ut them as has served the Lord's never deserted, Mr. Vickers, and if you live ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... mean; before there was any such place as New York and Manhattan Island was occupied mostly by woods, and had a funny little Dutch town, known as New Amsterdam, sprouting out of the southern end of it. Those were the days of solid comfort, of mighty pipes, and unctuous doughnuts. Winter had not yet been so much affected by artificiality as he is now-a-days, and was contented to be what he is, not trying to pass himself off for Spring; and Christmas—well, it was Christmas. Do ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... reached its elevation, and was made fast in almost less time than it has taken to relate it, and instantly a pile of faggots which had been raised a short distance in front if it, and steeped in oil or some other unctuous ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... do, sir?" he said in a fat, unctuous voice. "The cousin of our lamented Mayor, poor gentleman, of whose terrible fate we have this moment learned, sir. I can assure you, Mr.—Brent, I think?—and whatever other relations there may be, of our sincere ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... fine gravel in which these pebbles and boulders are found to be tightly packed, is of a light-blue color, which gives the name to the lead. Much of this clay is remarkably fine and free from coarse particles, and is smooth and unctuous to the touch. It is said to be strongly impregnated with arsenic, as was shown by chemical analysis, and contains large quantities of iron and sulphur in solution, for pyrites and sulphurets of iron are deposited ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... unctuous and soft outwardly, Monsieur Grandet's nature was of iron. His dress never varied; and those who saw him to-day saw him such as he had been since 1791. His stout shoes were tied with leathern thongs; he wore, in all weathers, thick woollen stockings, short breeches of coarse maroon ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... exception, when, through the cracks in the floor from the room of a frugal freshman who boarded himself, came the overwhelming stench of cooking onions, and a wag brother who was quoting scripture to the Lord in prayer, suddenly opened his eyes, and sniffing the unctuous odors, shouted: "Brethren, let us now sing 'From whence doth this onion (union) arise?'" and roars of laughter would put an end to the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... doubt in the world that you are doing well in that greasy Flanders; living probably on the fat of the unctuous land; sitting like a black-haired, tawny-skinned, long-nosed Israelite by the flesh-pots of Egypt; or like a rascally son of Levi near the brass cauldrons of the sanctuary, and every now and then plunging in a consecrated hook, and drawing out of the sea, of broth the fattest of heave-shoulders ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the corner above Julia's, as he passed, a hoarse and unctuous voice, issuing out of an undistinguishable lawn, called his name: "Noble! Noble Dill!" And when Noble paused, Julia's Uncle Joseph came waddling forth from the dimness and rested his monstrous arms upon the top ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... of the mineral called talc, unctuous to the touch, of a greenish color, glossy, soft, and easily scratched, and leaving a silvery line, when drawn on paper. It is used for marking on cloth, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... (Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy); And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber Headed with diamant and carbuncle. My footboy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons, Knots, goodwits, lampreys. I myself will have The beards of barbels served; instead of salads, Oiled mushrooms, and the swelling unctuous paps Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce, For which I'll say unto my cook, 'There's gold: Go ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... an Amen that lasted five minutes; and the priest, in an unctuous voice, murmured some Latin words, of which one could hear only the sonorous endings. He then walked round the boat, sprinkling it with holy water, and next began to murmur the "Oremus," standing alongside the boat opposite the sponsors, who remained motionless, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... neither take The topmost shoots for cuttings, nor from the top Of the supporting tree your suckers tear; So deep their love of earth; nor wound the plants With blunted blade; nor truncheons intersperse Of the wild olive: for oft from careless swains A spark hath fallen, that, 'neath the unctuous rind Hid thief-like first, now grips the tough tree-bole, And mounting to the leaves on high, sends forth A roar to heaven, then coursing through the boughs And airy summits reigns victoriously, Wraps all the grove in robes of fire, and gross With pitch-black ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... fat, unctuous, and florid, and lived well. His wife's nose was much too long, and her bones much too prominent, but she loved him with all her heart, and made him little sweetmeats. A perfect congeniality of sentiment united this charming couple. They talked with each other with ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... discourse was holding, Trotty made no pause in his attack upon the savoury meat before him, but cut and ate, and cut and drank, and cut and chewed, and dodged about, from tripe to hot potato, and from hot potato back again to tripe, with an unctuous and unflagging relish. But happening now to look all round the street—in case anybody should be beckoning from any door or window, for a porter—his eyes, in coming back again, encountered Meg: sitting opposite ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... These consist of unctuous remedies, such as cerates and ointments, and any materials that combine heat with moisture,—poultices of bread, bran, linseed meal, carrots, and turnips. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... shrilly. And only when I had moved my chair, and thrown down my book, had the laughter and unctuous whispering died away, and given place to a ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... which the generality of mankind have fallen, owing to their ignorance of the laws of life and health. Agility and constant vigor of body are the effect of health, which is much better preserved by a herbaceous, aqueous, and sparing tender diet, than by one which is fleshy, vinous, unctuous, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... books, or cheque books, or bills, or such tokens of wealth rolling in from day to day?' said old Sol, looking wistfully at his nephew out of the fog that always seemed to hang about him, and laying an unctuous ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... eyes shone like stars. She still carried the blackthorn from which most of the blossoms had fallen. The fragrant wallflowers were fragrant still. And far away, softened by the distance, the Whortley band, performing publicly outside the vicarage for the first time that year, was playing with unctuous slowness a sentimental air. I don't know if the reader remembers it that, favourite melody ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... was resorted to, of course, by Roswell's orders. Lamps were burned with great freedom; not little vessels invented to give light, but such torches as one sees at the lighting up of a princely court-yard on the occasion of a fete, in which wicks are made by the pound, and unctuous matter is used by the gallon. Old canvass and elephants' oil supplied the materials; and the spare camboose, which had been brought over to the house to be set up there, while the other galley was being ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... like more circumstantiality in the account of this dinner, which united many perfections. It was handsome, but not splendid,—orderly, but, not stately,—succulent, but not unctuous. It kept the word of promise to the smell and did not break it to the taste. It was a dinner such as we shall wish only to our best friends, not to those acquaintances who ask how we do when they meet us, and wish we were dead before we part. As for particulars, we should be glad ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... "r's" with unctuous joy And, preening, wonders whom he may annoy, Then imitates a hen, a water-fowl And next the "Be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... was pure Phlegm, which dropt for about two Hours; a little white unctuous Matter swam on ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... reducing friction is to apply oil, or some other unctuous substance, to the parts which move upon each other. Some disadvantages attend this expedient, but till a better is suggested they have to be endured. The cost of the oil expended in maintaining in proper condition the axles of the machinery in a foundery, or of the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... laughter. The innkeeper was in a high fever. Just then Grimaud showed himself behind his master, his carbine on his shoulder, and his head shaking like that of the drunken satyr in some of Rubens' pictures. His clothes were smeared with an unctuous liquid, which the host immediately recognized ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... headquarters and saw the commandant. It was evident that they had been hauled over the coals for the way they had behaved when Jack was there, for I never saw such politeness in any headquarters. I was preceded by bowing and unctuous soldiers and non-commissioned officers, all the way from the door to the Presence, and was received by the old man standing. He was most solicitous for my comfort and offered me everything but the freedom ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... blows, and other mechanical injuries, the condition is more common in the ox in connection with the comparative inactivity of the parts. The sheath has a very small external opening, the mucous membrane of which is studded with sebaceous glands secreting a thick, unctuous matter of a strong, heavy odor. Behind this orifice is a distinct pouch, in which this unctuous matter is liable to accumulate when the penis is habitually drawn back. Moreover, the sheath has two muscles (protractors) which lengthen ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... hippopotamus; the chain that is to deck this neck must be twice as long as that worn by a well-fed Egyptian priest. In this mirror I see a man, who is moulded out of a sturdy clay, baked out of more unctuous and solid stuff than other folks; and if the fine creature there on the bright surface wears a transparent robe, what have you to say against it, Cleopatra? The Ptolemaic princes must protect the import trade of Alexandria, that fact was patent even to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... &c adj.; unctuosity^, lubricity; ointment &c (oil) 356; anointment; lubrication &c 332. V. oil &c (lubricate) 332. Adj. unctuous, oily, oleaginous, adipose, sebaceous; unguinous^; fat, fatty, greasy; waxy, butyraceous, soapy, saponaceous^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... minute panting for breath, and then ventured to draw back the curtains of the bed—my mother was not there! but there appeared to be a black mass in the centre of the bed. I put my hand fearfully upon it—it was a sort of unctuous, pitchy cinder. I screamed with horror—my little senses reeled—I staggered from the cabin and fell down on the deck in a state amounting almost to insanity: it was followed by a sort of stupor, which lasted ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... woke Ausonia from her sleep. Forth swarm Footmen and horsemen, and in wild career Whirl up the dust. "Arm," cry the warriors, "arm!" With unctuous lard their polished shields they smear, And whet the axe, and scour the rusty spear. Their banners wave, their trumpets sound the fight. Five towns their anvils for the war uprear, Crustumium, Tibur, glorying in her might, Ardea, Atina strong, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... having passed through its settlements seeking prayerfully to bear an evangel unto that stiff-necked people. Friend, thou hast an honest face, and I will say in confidence I have been ofttimes blessed of the Spirit in the conversion of souls; yet this people laughed at my unctuous speech, making merry regarding that head-covering with which the Almighty chose to adorn his servant. Dost thou know the French settlement ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... up doubtfully, and there, sure enough, on the roof of the sepulchre, was a peculiarly unctuous and sooty mark, three feet or more across. Doubtless it had in the course of years been rubbed off the sides of the little cave, but on the roof it remained, and there was ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... passed from one dead shade to another, until, at last, they gleamed like alabaster from afar with a diamond brilliancy almost painful to the eye. Thus the sun rose like some mighty caldron of fire mounting into the cloudless azure of a perfect sky, showering unctuous rays of light and heat upon the chilled life that was ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... such cases and revolting to the ear. Mlle. Alboni's vocalization is wonderfully easy, and few sopranos possess such facility. The registers of her voice are so perfectly united, that in her scales you do not feel sensible of the passage from one to another; the tone is unctuous, caressing, velvety, melancholy, like that of all pure sopranos, though less somber than that of Pisaroni, and incomparably more pure and limpid. As the notes are produced without effort, the voice yields itself to every ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... The mountains seemed to echo them always. "Wake up, Davy! Do something; be somebody; get out of the valley." Here was my shibboleth. I must do something; I must be somebody; I must get out of the valley! And then I should go to Penelope Blight, and a hundred urbane, unctuous uncles could not defraud me of my right ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... Canal the Htel des Bains and the Restaurant Parisien. A cabine (bathing-house), including costume and linen, costs 1 fr. Leave the train at the Plage station. 3m. from Montpellier, in the retired valley of the Mosson, is the mineral water establishment of Foncaude. Water saline, unctuous, and sedative. Good for indigestion and nervous disorders. 12m. north from Montpellier is the Pic du Loup, rising from the village St. Mathieu (pop. 500) to the height of 680 ft., commanding an extensive view, and having on the top ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... suppose that Christian love is mere sentiment. I shall have to speak a word or two about that presently, but I would fain lift the whole subject, if I can, out of the region of mere unctuous words and gush of half-feigned emotion, which mean nothing, and would make you feel that it is a very practical commandment, gripping us hard, when our Lord says to us, 'Love ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... smoking a peculiarly mellow and unctuous cigar on deck when I got there. I don't believe he smoked it because he enjoyed it. He did not look as if he enjoyed it. I believe he smoked it merely to show how well he was feeling, and to irritate people who were ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... unctuous, patronizing gentleness. He seemed to approach her with the feeling that she might say a great deal that would be damaging to the defendant if she had a mind to do it, but with gentle adroitness she could be managed to his advantage. Led by a question here, a helping reminder there, Ollie ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... I (replied Harrington), how unctuous you are! Forgive my laughing; but it does so remind me of Douce Davie Deans. I will make you professor of ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... happened to think just here of the injunction against throwing pearls before swine, and so turned to Humphreys, who made his heart glad by witnessing a good confession, in soft and unctuous tones, and couched in the regulation phrases which have ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... replied the chairman, in his most unctuous tones. "It is not easy to know what to do in the position which has suddenly been forced upon me—a condition without precedent, so far as I know, in the whole country. If I have failed in my duty, I ask your pardon; but with so many local issues—so many details at loose ends ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... Atonement," is perhaps the most flagrant violation of historical verisimilitude in the whole epic. A hoary priest of Balder actually performs the wedding ceremony in the restored temple, and pronounces a somewhat unctuous wedding oration, which differs from those which Tegner himself had frequently delivered chiefly in the substitution of pagan for the Christian deities. As a matter of fact, marriage was a purely civil contract among the ancient Norsemen, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... they are. They're crazy over it," said Clown with an unctuous smile. Strange that whatever Clown says, it makes me itching mad. "But, if you don't look out, there is danger," ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... of having been spotted by another capper, if not Bill Brady himself (for the voice was not Colonel Sunderson's unctuous tones) I saw Jim of the Sidney station platform ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... the damper preferred to dip in a rolling valley between my extended arms, or hang over them like a tablecloth, rather than keep its desired form. But with patience, and the loan of one of Dan's huge palms, it finally fell with an unctuous, dusty "whouf" into the opened-out bed ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... interfere with slavery in the Southern States. Now Lincoln himself—whether for good reasons or bad must be considered later—thoroughly disapproved of the actual agitation of the Abolitionists; and the resolutions in question, but for one merely theoretical point of law and for an unctuous misuse of the adjective "sacred," contained nothing which he could not literally have accepted. The objection to them lay in the motive which made it worth while to pass them. Lincoln drew up and placed on the records of ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... time-clock. Una admitted to herself that she didn't see how it was possible to get so many employees together promptly without it, and she was duly edified by the fact that the big chiefs punched it, too.... But she noticed that after punching it promptly at nine, in an unctuous manner which said to all beholders, "You see that even I subject myself to this delightful humility," Mr. S. Herbert Ross frequently sneaked out and ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... may be homogenous and uniformly moist, and the heap is again raised to about three feet. About six days later the operation is repeated, and in about three days the manure should be ready for the beds. It is then of a dark brown color mixed with white, free from objectionable odor. It is unctuous, elastic and moist, though not wet, and should not leave ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... the tinkling note of the muffin-bell strikes agreeably upon the ear, suggestive of fragrant souchong and bottom-crusts hot, crackling, and unctuous. Now ensues a delicate savour in the atmosphere of the terrace kitchens, and it is just at its height when Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson are seen walking briskly up the terrace. They all go in at Smith's, where the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... office was quiet, but none the less thrilling on that account. Mr. Raider received her cordially, and with a great deal of unctuous fatherly advice. He took her into his office, which was one corner of the press room glassed in by itself, and talked over her duties, which, as far as Lark could gather from his discourse, appeared to consist in ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... be, of this convict, this sickly, shrivelled bit of humanity standing there; wondering the nauseated life in his nostrils or soul claimed yet its share of God's breath. Society had taken the man like a root torn out of native unctuous soil, kept it in a damp cellar, hid out the breath and light. If after a while it withered away, whose fault was it? If there were no hand now to plant it again, do you look for it to grow rotten, or not? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... was given five years in the penitentiary. He was a demoralizing influence there, already a socialist with anarchical tendencies, and with the gift of influencing men. A fluent, sneering youth, who lashed the guards to fury with his unctuous, diabolical tongue. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and in his pink-striped shirtsleeves, sat upon the steps of his saloon as they went by. He wished them an unctuous good-evening. The oily smoothness of Mr. Saunders' voice cannot be described with plain pen and ink; it gurgled with sweetness, like molasses poured from a jug. This was not a special tone put on for the occasion; no one except his wife ever ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... oiled, moistened with diluted Cologne water, combed, brushed, parted, and tossed in wavy flakes over his head, and was as fragrant, glossy, and unctuous as the skill of ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... the words of a real spiritual teacher. Archbishop Thomson will never get within a million miles of their meaning; nor will anybody be deceived, by the unctuous "Oh that" with which he concludes his discourse, like a mental rolling of the whites of ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... gone off into language unseemly in a tram-conductor and a grandfather. He might have snatched Mrs Clayton Vernon's bonnet off and stamped on it. He might have killed Paul Ford (for it was certainly Paul Ford with whom he was the most angry). But he did none of these things. He said, in his best unctuous voice: ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... we have no rationale of sauces, or theory of mixed flavors: as to show why cabbage is reprehensible with roast beef, laudable with bacon; why the haunch of mutton seeks the alliance of currant-jelly, the shoulder civilly declineth it; why loin of veal, (a pretty problem,) being itself unctuous, seeketh the adventitious lubricity of melted butter,—and why the same part in pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it; why the French bean sympathizes with the flesh of deer; why salt fish points to parsnip, brawn makes a dead-set at mustard; why cats prefer valerian to heart's-ease, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... teaspoonful of flour spilled upon her biscuit board. Her gingham cuffs were always starched and stiff, her colourless hair smooth. She was a silent, dun-coloured creature, whose most violent expression was an occasional deep, unctuous laugh ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... beauty,—that small and light body, capable of being suspended for a great length of time in the air by those broad wings, so that, as a bird of prey, it should watch for its food without the aid of a perch; the feathers, supplied by an unctuous substance, to enable them to throw off the water and keep the body dry; the web-feet for swimming; and the long legs, which it uses as a kind of stay, by turning them towards the head when it bends the neck, to apply the beak—that beak, too, so admirably ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... Fire:—"Fire is the purest and noblest of all Elements, full of adhesive unctuous corrosiveness, penetrant, digestive, inwardly fixed, hot and dry, outwardly visible, and tempered by the earth.... This Element is the most passive of all, and resembles a chariot; when it is drawn, it moves; when it is not ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... the bill of fare was restricted to one dish, and this, as the receipt shows, could be prepared with little expenditure of culinary skill, yet it fully satisfied the simple guests. It was composed of bread, maize or pea-flour, and black plums, all boiled together; and, as the savages relish unctuous food, a few melted tallow candles and some rich pork were added for seasoning. On this dainty dish, as many as sixty or eighty Indians were occasionally regaled at a time, in what they considered splendid style. The Indians ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... fluttered the dovecotes of Cambridge would have sounded like the crash of doom to the cautious old tenants of the Hanover aviary. If there were any drops of false or questionable doctrine in the silver shower of eloquence under which they had been sitting, the plumage of orthodoxy glistened with unctuous repellents, and a shake or two on coming out of church left the sturdy old dogmatists as dry ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... might produce to this purpose, we may gather, that, when we grind and stir the Cacao, the divers parts, which Nature hath given it, doe artificially, and intimately mixe themselves one with another; and so the unctuous, warme, and moist parts, mingled with the earthy (as we have said of the steele) represses, and leaves them not so binding, as they were before; but rather with a mediocritie, more inclining to the ...
— Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke • Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma
... being invited to headquarters, suspicious but not certain of our status until we finally landed behind the iron doors. Without doubt Maastricht authorities were waiting for us even as we stepped off the train, showing that we were doomed from the time we left the border. Our captor, an unctuous, pink-cheeked politzei, made his appearance not far from the internment camp. Where ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... these sinister facts?" Charles was getting smoother, more unctuous, more happy, all the time. It was the little curl of his lip, so hateful, so familiar, with which he said these words, which seemed to snap something in Henry's brain. He pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet, breathless and dizzy and hot. He regarded not the cries of "Order," from ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... unctuous gossip of the devout—President Roosevelt saw the true answer to his own desire to know what was to become of his mighty personality after this world should have fallen away from him! He saw, in this faith, a possible continuation throughout eternity of the tremendous ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... a deep, hearty, unctuous laugh that came from the very depths of the man's chest. It was a laugh with no trace of merely superficial joy. He who uttered it laughed because his heart and soul were in it. It was a laugh of mirth, relief and triumph, all carried to ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... inward calm; while his mere presence carried with it a sacred authority. He was very fond of the Voltairean chevalier. Those two majestic relics of the nobility and clergy, though of very different habits and morals, recognized each other by their generous traits. Besides, the chevalier was as unctuous with the abbe as he was paternal ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... chair, and matched his hands together by the thumbs and by the forefingers, and by the other fingers, one by one; and little by little the musical, false voice of his lady, and the singularly gentle and unctuous tones of his host, Arnold de Curboil, blended together and lost themselves, just as the gates of dreamland ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... are better unspoken, except in case of necessity, that become soiled by common use. The too ready employment of them may savour indeed of that unctuous tone which makes ordinary Englishmen and boys squirm. "Conscience" is one. When a man speaks of his conscience you at once, and quite rightly, begin to suspect him. He is probably going to refuse some hard task which others are undertaking, to do something which is offensive to ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... quaint personality seemed once more to haunt the dank and dreary streets of the once dazzling Ville Lumiere. I seemed to see the shabby bottle-green coat, the nankeen pantaloons, the down-at-heel shoes of this "confidant of Kings"; I could hear his unctuous, self-satisfied laugh, and sensed his furtive footstep whene'er a gendarme came into view. I saw his ruddy, shiny face beaming at me through the sleet and the rain as, like a veritable squire of dames, he minced his steps ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... confess that I threw it down, and went hastily to bed. It is the most gruesome of all his writings, and so perfect that one can complain only of the slightly too obvious moral; and, again, that really Mr. Hyde was more of a gentleman than the unctuous Dr. ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... heavily. Then passion marked him for the thing he was. Garrison saw confronting him not the unctuous, plausible friend, but a hunted animal, with fear and venom showing in his narrowed eyes. And, curiously enough, he noticed for the first time that the prison pallor was strong on Crimmins' face, and that the hair above his outstanding ears ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... put up the pillow of his pious sentiment—a piece of cant, because he did not feel what he was saying—to deaden the cannon-ball of Christ's word, is only a pattern of a good many of us who think that to say, 'Blessed is he that eateth bread in the Kingdom of God,' with the proper unctuous roll of the voice, is pretty nearly as good as to take the bread that is offered to us. There are no more difficult people to get at than the people, of whom I am sure I have some specimens before me now, who bow their heads in assent to the word of the Gospel, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... agreed with unctuous righteousness in his plump face. "And to think of that scalawag, making a loan right in your face, after ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... was first introduced into Scotland by M'Ewan. The soil in his district was mostly a strong unctuous clay, free from stones. He constructed an immense plow, worked by 12 or 16 horses, by means of which a furrow-slice, 16 inches in depth, was turned out; and, by a modification of the plow, a second ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... a pamphlet by Professor A. Lasson, entitled Deutsche Art und deutsche Bildung, the adjective "deutsch" occurs 256 times in 42 pages—sometimes 13 times in one page, often 10 or 11 times—and always, of course, with a sort of unctuous implication that human language contains no higher term of eulogy. This enumeration does not include the constantly recurring "deutsch" in "Deutschland," nor the frequently repeated ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... anybody—not being a Wordsworthian and therefore out of reach of reason—doubt that Wordsworth's arrogance was inhuman? He, not unprovoked by scant gratitude on Coleridge's part for very solid services, and by a doubtless sincere but rather unctuous protest of his brother in opium-eating against the Confessions, told some home truths against that magnificent genius but most unsatisfactory man. A sort of foolish folk has recently arisen which tells us that because Coleridge wrote "The ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... cakes were lighter; and the pork less greasy. On this subject of grease, however, we could wish that a sense of right would enable us to announce its utter extinction in the American kitchen; or, if not absolutely its extinction, such a subjection of the unctuous properties, as to bring them within the limits of a reasonably accurate and healthful taste. To be frank, Dorothy carried a somewhat heavy hand, in this respect; but pretty Margery was much her superior. How this difference in domestic discipline occurred, is more than ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper |
