"Voluptuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blaze of orient sky, 310 "Sweet MAY! thy radiant form unfold; "Unclose thy blue voluptuous eye, "And wave thy shadowy locks ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution. James II., the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colonies and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger our religion. The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Missionario. Antonio de Moraes, in this story, is not so strong in will as Taunay's vicar of sorrows. Antonio is a missionary "with the vocation of a martyr and the soul of an apostle," on duty in the tropics. The voluptuous magnetism of the Amazon seizes his body. Slowly, agonizingly, but surely he succumbs to the enchantment, overpowered ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... perspective of the whole is kept steadily in view. No part is disproportionate or inappropriate. The arresting overture describing the swift and sudden approach of the Red Death, the gay, thoughtless security of Prince Prospero and his guests within the barricaded abbey, the voluptuous masquerade held in a suite of seven rooms of seven hues, the disconcerting chime of the ebony clock that momentarily stills the grotesque figures of the dancers, prepare us for the dramatic climax, the entry of the audacious guest, the Red Death, and his struggle with Prince Prospero. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... and it was like the music of a hundred chiming bells. There was a tremor of the bow, and I heard a flute play, and a harp, and a golden-mouthed cornet; I heard the mirthful babble of happy voices, and peals of laughter ringing in the swelling tide of pleasure. Then I saw a vision of snowy arms, voluptuous forms, and light fantastic slippered feet, all whirling and floating in the mazes of the misty dance. The flying fingers now tripped upon the trembling strings like fairy-feet dancing on the nodding ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... in their slow progress with their helpless burden to the lace-canopied and snowy couch of the young gambler, it seemed almost a profanation of some feminine seclusion. Gideon, to whom such luxury was unknown, was profoundly troubled. The voluptuous ease and sensuousness, the refinements of a life of irresponsible indulgence, affected him with a physical terror to which in his late moment of real peril he had been a stranger; the gilding and mirrors blinded his eyes; even the faint perfume seemed to him an unhallowed incense, and turned him ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... is the Canticle of Canticles: beautiful, voluptuous poem of love literally, whatever be its mystic significance; glowing with the color, odorous with the spices, melodious with the voices of the East; sacred and exquisite and pure with the burning chastity of passion, which completes and exceeds the snowy chastity of virgins. This to me, but what ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... superior position for which he was designed, than by the interpretation of Bacon upon the legends of the Syren coast "When the wise Ulysses passed," says he, "he caused his mariners to stop their ears, with wax, knowing there was in them no power to resist the lure of that voluptuous song. But he, the much experienced man, who wished to be experienced in all, and use all to the service of wisdom, desired to hear the song that he might understand its meaning. Yet, distrusting his own power to be firm in his better purpose, he caused himself ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... peace, but more care, more trouble, than a man had in the first place when he was without them. And therefore Tullius says, in that book on Paradoxes, when execrating riches: "I at no time firmly believed the money of those men, or magnificent mansions, or riches, or lordships, or voluptuous joys, with which especially they are shackled, to be amongst things good or desirable, since I saw certain men in the abundance of them especially desire those wherein they abounded; because at no time is the thirst of cupidity quenched; not only are ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... an expression of anger. He rose from the table, and he looked round the room. Its appearance was singularly jarring, shattering as it did his dream of the cloister, and up-building in fancy the horrid fabric of marriage and domesticity. The room seemed to him a symbol—with the great bed, voluptuous, the corpulent arm-chair, the toilet-table shapeless with muslin—of the hideous laws of the world and the flesh, ever at variance and at war, and ever defeating the indomitable aspirations of the soul. ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... from the mouth to the heart, and thence lower down, with such delicate industry has nature prepared everything! The little glands of the lips, their spongy tissue, their velvety paps, the fine skin, ticklish, gives them an exquisite and voluptuous sensation, which is not without analogy with a still more hidden and still more sensitive part. Modesty may suffer from a lengthily savoured kiss ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... not, and you find this more in music than in any other phase of Spanish life. The Germans dance the gay and voluptuous waltz with a 'bock' in their hand, singing the Gaudeamus igitur, that students' hymn glorifying the material life free from care. The French sing amid rippling laughter, and dance with their free and elastic limbs, greeting with rapturous applause their fantastic and monkey-like movements. ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... have chosen better foils for her own voluptuous style than the three women, all angles—looking as she always did, as though she had been visiting Vulcan, and feeding on the red-hot coals beneath his hammer, while quenching her thirst from a cantharus given her by ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... poison by the help of man's chief nurse, sleep; and now he must work off the rest, grumbling at this the kind severity of his lot. Warm men, respectable men, among whom justices of the peace and other voluptuous disciplinarians, were tempted out of delicious beds by the fragrant berry, the balmy leaf, snowy damask, fire glowing behind polished bars—in short, by multifarious comfort set in a frame of gold. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... lean face and sharp Greek profile, his long, lank, unpowdered locks, his simple uniform, and awkward seat in the saddle, he looked like a new human type, neither angel nor devil but an inscrutable apparition from another sphere. To officers and men the voluptuous city extended wide its arms, and the shabby soldiery were incongruous figures where their entertainers were elegant and fastidious beyond what the guests had dreamed. With stern impartiality the liberator repressed all excess in his army, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... too was fantastically ornate, surely the most extraordinary hotel on earth, with a high roof of a gray severity which ironically frowned down upon gilded balconies and nude plaster women who supported them, robustly voluptuous creatures who faded into foliage below the waist, like plump nymphs escaping the rude pursuit of gods. Their bareness and boldness startled the convent-bred girl, even horrified her. She was the last to leave the omnibus, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... philosophical schools. On the other hand, the homely, domestic joys of the average Jew and his intense devotion to the service of the temple and to the faith of his fathers seemed contemptible to those familiar with the brilliant, voluptuous life of the Hellenic cities. Hellenism protested against the narrowness, barrenness, and intolerance of Judaism; Judaism protested against the godlessness and immorality of Hellenism. Both were right in their protests, and yet each in a sense ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... a moment of the voluptuous joy of suddenly finding myself in the hyperborean regions with the cold thirty degrees ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the afternoon Lucien was still sleeping, cradled in this voluptuous paradise. He had caught glimpses of Coralie's chamber, an exquisite creation of luxury, a world of rose-color and white. He had admired Florine's apartments, but this surpassed ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... glove, and a delicate hand, and a winning smile, and you have secured your passport to the satin and brocade of her mansion. A spring is heard to tick, a whisper of caution to some one within follows, and a block broad enough to admit your hat swings open, disclosing the voluptuous splendor of a great hall, the blaze of which flashes upon your senses, and fills you instinctively with curious emotions. Simultaneously a broad, cheerful face, somewhat matronly in its aspect, and enlivened with an urbane smile, darkens the space. After a few moments' ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... had encounters with the fierce Figian; the savage New Caledonian; both addicted to the horrid habit of anthropophagy. He has been a spectator to the voluptuous dances of Samoa, and looked upon the daughters of Otaheite, Owyhee, whose ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... voluptuous light Filled the warm southern night; The moon, clear orbed, above the sylvan scene Moved like a stately Queen, So rife with conscious beauty all the while, What could she do but smile At her own perfect loveliness below, Glassed in the tranquil flow Of crystal fountains ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... ran the sensuous surface fires of her dream-wrought limbs. Upon my face the weird magnetic lure of ever-nearing, never-kissing lips made soundless music. Like a sister, like a mother she caressed me, lazy with the huge feast; and yet, a drowsy, half-voluptuous joy shimmered and rippled ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... investigated that question, the great object of moral philosophy, how men might be rendered happy in the present world. In the first place, he refutes the opinion of the voluptuous, who make happiness to consist in corporal pleasures. "Not only," said he, "are these pleasures fleeting, they are also succeeded by disgust; and while they enfeeble the body they debase ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... Here, when wearied with the dust and toil of the city, they loved to retreat, and solace themselves with the society of their favorite concubines, wandering amidst groves and airy gardens, that shed around their soft, intoxicating odors, and lulled the senses to voluptuous repose. Here, too, they loved to indulge in the luxury of their baths, replenished by streams of crystal water which were conducted through subterraneous silver channels into basins of gold. The spacious gardens were stocked with numerous ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... trowe ye the peple eek al aboute Wolde of it seye? It is ful light to arede. 1570 They wolden seye, and swere it, out of doute, That love ne droof yow nought to doon this dede, But lust voluptuous and coward drede. Thus were al lost, y-wis, myn herte dere, Your honour, which that ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... you wretch! And yet we poor women," she went on, "are forbidden pleasures far less voluptuous than this. There is no flesh in the world as soft as these. None. When M. Verdurin did me the honour of being madly jealous... come, you might at least be polite. Don't say that you never ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the great Herod, a voluptuous, murderous tyrant; and, from some source or other, he had inherited a very weak nature. Perhaps, if he had come under strong, wholesome influences, he would have lived a passably good life; but it was his misfortune to fall under the influence of a beautiful fiend, ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... was one of those lovely days so peculiar to the sunny regions of favoured Australia. The sky was without a cloud to vary its unbroken and immaculate azure, and the sun shone with a voluptuous lustre, which rendered the atmosphere warm, though not oppressive, and the face of the country smiling and cheerful. The people around the place—men, women, and children, clean and neatly clad—assembled in an orderly manner; while the sombre stillness of the bush tended to impress ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... this book-faking. Wouldn't Thackeray have lambasted the best sellers? A fancy picture of a girl on the cover, something doing all the time, and a happy ending—that's the recipe. Or else be as voluptuous as velvet. Wait till my novel, 'Three Minutes,' comes out. Order ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... were beat with great exactness and uniformity. The dances, however, consisted more in wanton gestures than in muscular exertion or graceful attitudes. The ladies vied with each other in displaying the most voluptuous movements imaginable. ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... were only that butterfly!" At that moment the luxurious vagrant, in the midst of its careless sports, and voluptuous banquet, became entangled in a web woven by a great black spider, which sat with eager impatience waiting until it had wound itself into the toils by its fruitless exertions, that he might seize and devour his prey. The heart of Adakar melted with pity; starting up from the spot where ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... amalgamation with a rival company in 1787. Thus was created the famous "Northwest Company," which for a time held a lordly sway over the wintry lakes and boundless forests of the Canadas, almost equal to that of the East India Company over the voluptuous climes and magnificent ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... has generally reached that state when the greatest natural pleasure is found inside rather than outside of a sleeping-bag. But in spite of the general detestation in which De Aar is held, the neighbouring hills furnish, in the quickening light of dawn, studies in changing colour so voluptuous, varied, and fantastic that the wonder is that all the artists in the world have not fore-gathered at the place. But familiarity with all this beauty reduces it to a commonplace. It just becomes part of the monotony of your daily life, especially if you have, as we had that morning, ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium's capital had gather'd then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell; But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes a ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... fascinating woman," continued the major. "That Juno-like beauty which so distinguishes her on the stage scarcely shows itself in the drawing-room. On the stage she is queenly—in private, soft, voluptuous and winning as a houri. I don't wonder that she has crowds ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... rare adorned and strange jewels, Reposed on a billowy nest, A prey to voluptuous longing, Tamara awaited ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... sitting-room had been arranged by the artist who had done the house, as a perfect bower of Italian Sixteenth Century art. Mr. Jephson, the artist, had assured her that this period would make a perfect background for her fresh and rather voluptuous coloring; it had not become so banal as any of the French Louis'. And so Arabella had been instructed to drum into her head the names of the geniuses of that time, and their works, and she could now babble sweetly all about Giorgione, ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... sex to use them. "Sellae" was the name of seats common to both sexes. The use of the "speculum," or mirror, was also confined to the female sex; indeed, even Pallas or Minerva was represented as shunning its use, as only befitting her more voluptuous fellow-goddess, Venus.] ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... distant corner a Turco, wearing his red fez upon his head, sat with his chin on his knees amid an improvised bivouac of bed-clothes and looked on uncomprehendingly. The rest smoked cigarettes and toyed with the voluptuous pages ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... resembled her mother, the beautiful Catharine, but was voluptuous and weak. She abandoned herself to puerile amusements and degrading follies. And she was as superstitious as she was debauched. She would continue whole hours on her knees before an image, to which she spoke, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... 1787: the poet, accompanied by his future biographer, Professor Walker, went, when close on twilight, to this romantic scene: "he threw himself," said the Professor, "on a heathy seat, and gave himself up to a tender, abstracted, and voluptuous enthusiasm of imagination. In a few days I received a letter from Inverness, for the poet had gone on his way, with the Petition enclosed." His Grace of Athole obeyed the injunction: the picturesque points are ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... palace must have been inimitable. The display of counter-fascinations between these two tigers; their voluptuous natures mutually attracted; their hatred giving to each that deep interest in the other which so often turns to mutual passion while it incites to conquest; the grace and finish of their manners, concealing a ruthless ferocity; the splendor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... of the table sat the Chief. His features were swarthy but elegant. He was splendidly dressed in new clothes, and had that voluptuous, dreamy air of grandeur about him which would at once rivet the gaze of folks generally. In answer to a highly enthusiastic call he arose and delivered an able and eloquent speech. We regret that our space does not permit us to give this truly great speech in full—we can merely ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... too far," he retorted. "To appear half nude on the stage and in some voluptuous scene exhibit one's personal charms to those who in an hour or so take their leave as they would of some courtesan after paying the usual fee! A ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... this man in the white coat had removed one tortoise-shell comb and then another; that his fingers were fumbling clumsily with unfamiliar hairpins; that this hair, this wonderful hair of hers, was going—she would never again feel its long voluptuous pull as it hung in a dark-brown glory down her back. For a second she was near breaking down, and then the picture before her swam mechanically into her vision—Marjorie's mouth curling in a faint ironic smile ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... artist, she would have presented him with his nephew! How different a figure did the same prince make in a reign of dissimilar complexion! The philosophic warrior, who could relax himself into the ornament of a refined court, was thought a savage mechanic, when courtiers were only voluptuous wits. Let me transcribe a picture of Prince Rupert, drawn by a man who was far from having the least portion of wit in that age, who was superior to its indelicacy, and who yet was so overborne ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... soldier and the indifference of the patrician. In France the wealth was the accumulation of an immense commerce and the varied labors of the most industrious nation on the earth diverted by a brilliant and corrupt court, a profligate and chivalrous nobility, and a rich and voluptuous capital. ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... heal— To that small life beneath my heart reposing! Man, man, the wild beast for its young can feel! Proud flew the sails—receding from the land, I watch'd them waning from the wistful eye, Round the gay maids on Seine's voluptuous strand, Breathes the false incense of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... twitch, as if dazed. Then she looked up at her husband with a queer smile, puckering the corners of her eyes. He looked at the cigarettes, not at her. His face had the blunt voluptuous gravity of a young lion, a great cat. She kept him standing for some moments impassively. Then suddenly she hung her long, delicate fingers over the box, in doubt, and spasmodically jabbed at the cigarettes, clumsily raking ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... panting tow'rds the sky, A foil'd ascent, while adverse fortune flings Her strong link'd meshes o'er his flutt'ring wings, Sinks, while exalted Ignorance supine, Unheeded slumbers like the pamper'd swine; Obsequious slaves in his voluptuous bowers Young pleasures warble, while the dancing Hours In sickly sweetness languishingly move, Like new-waked virgins flush'd with dreams of love— Him, when by Death's dark angel swept away From sloth's embrace, in premature decay, Surviving friends, donation'd into grief, Shall mourn with ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... day: Voluptuous July held her lover, Earth, With her warm arms, upon her glowing breast, And twined herself about him, as he lay Smiling and panting in his dream-stirred rest. She bound him with her limbs of perfect grace, And hid him with her trailing robe ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... at the bed; it stood in an alcove on the side of the room furthest from where she was. It was long, low, and gilded; plum-coloured curtains rose in voluptuous folds till they were joined near the ceiling by a pair ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... o'er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose, with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... have stated what were the characteristics which enabled her to hold the pleasure-loving cardinal so surely and to secure her recognition as the mother of several of his acknowledged children. We may imagine her to have been a strong and voluptuous woman like those still seen about the streets of Rome. They possess none of the grace of the ideal woman of the Umbrian school, but they have something of the magnificence of the Imperial City—Juno and ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... performing an extremely disagreeable task. Shudderingly she looked into the unpleasant bedroom, and comprehending all of the sordidness of the tragedy, spent half an hour with her teeth set hard together while she dragged out dingy blankets and hung them over the fence under a voluptuous plum-tree. The next hour was so disagreeably employed that she wondered afterward how even her sympathy could have driven her to the things she did. She carried more water, after she had scrubbed that bedroom, and opened the window with the aid of the hammer, and set the tea-kettle on to heat ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... her tiny ears, and clustered low at the back of her slender, well-shaped neck. Where the rays of light caught the coiled tresses they had the sheen of burnished gold. In the shadow they commingled those voluptuous tints by which the magic of Rubens has immortalized one fair woman, Isabella Brant, in every gallery of note ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... with an evident tendency to curl, if he had not worn it so short on account of the heat of the season, that a curl was rendered impossible; a heavy dark brown moustache, worn without other beard; a sunny hazel eye that seemed made for laughter, and a full, red, voluptuous lip that might have belonged to a sensualist; while the eye could really do other things than laughing, and the lip was quite as often compressed or curled in the bitterness of disdain or the earnestness of close thought, as employed to express any ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Tacitus, parts of the tragedians, at school, but now he had it in his power to study a great author entire, and as a whole. Never before did he fully appreciate the "thunderous lilt" of Greek epic, the touching and voluptuous tenderness of Latin elegy, the regal pomp of history, the gorgeous and philosophic mystery of the old dramatic fables. Never before had he learnt to gaze on "the bright countenance of truth, in the mild and dewy air of delightful studies." Those who decry ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the same heart whose wild pulse is thrilled by the adventurous interests of the huntsman and the wanderer, can beat in unison with the gentlest truth of deep devotion, is shown in "When other Friends are round Thee." "I love the Night" has the voluptuous elegance of the Spanish models. Were we to meet the lines "Oh, think of me!" in an anthology, we should suppose they were Suckling's—so admirably is the tone of feeling kept down to the limit of probable sincerity—which is a characteristic that the cavalier style of ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... into a higher life. An average slave-character, not difficult to govern, but without instinct to improve, filled the colony. A colonist would hardly suspect the fiery Africa whose sun ripened the ancestors of his slaves, unless he caught them by accident in the midst of their voluptuous Calenda, or watched behind some tree the midnight orgy of magic and Fetichism. A slave-climate gnawed at the bold edges of their characters and wore them down, as the weather rusted out more rapidly than anywhere else all the iron tools and implements ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... full-lipped. Here was none of smiling prettiness, for these eyes were grave and thoughtful, these lips, despite their soft, voluptuous curves, were firmly modelled like the rounded chin below, and, in all the face, despite its vivid youth, was a vague and ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... sang and smiled, and at the same time her face wore an expression of gravity, almost of sternness ... a token of perfect rapture! She smiled ... and Praxiteles' Faun, indolent, youthful as she, effeminate, and voluptuous, seemed to smile back at her from a corner, under the branches of an oleander, across the delicate smoke that curled upwards from a bronze censer on an antique tripod. The beautiful singer was alone. Spell-bound by the music, her beauty, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... boy's family was at that time very hard pressed for money, he travelled with thirty-five horses and sumpter mules. The princesses of the blood, each surrounded by a group of highborn and graceful ladies, accompanied the King; and the smiles of so many charming women inspired the throng of vain and voluptuous but highspirited gentlemen with more than common courage. In the brilliant crowd which surrounded the French Augustus appeared the French Virgil, the graceful, the tender, the melodious Racine. He had, in conformity with the prevailing fashion, become devout, had given up writing ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Listen whilst I try And say. I joy to see the sunset slope Beyond the weak hours' hopeless horoscope, Leaving the heavens a melancholy calm, Of quiet colour chaunted like a psalm, In mildly modulated phrases; thus Your life shall fade like a voluptuous Vision beyond the sight, and you shall die Like some soft evening's sad serenity ... I would possess your dying hours; indeed My love is worthy of the gift, I ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... the inner side of the world; he wakens and strikes the strings for a dance, such as the world has never heard (Allegro Finale). It is the World's own dance; wild delight, cries of anguish, love's ecstacy, highest rapture, misery, rage; voluptuous now, and sorrowful; lightnings quiver, storm's roll; and high above the gigantic musician! banning and compelling all things, proudly and firmly wielding them from whirl to whirlpool, to the abyss.— He laughs at himself; for the incantation was, after all, but play ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... of a more intellectual and less voluptuous cast than that of the Queen; but impatience and anxiety had given her countenance a glow which it sometimes wanted, and her mien had a character of energetic dignity that imposed silence for a moment even on ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... vases on the mantel-tree; the figures on the hangings, and the print of Apollo and the Sibyl, taken from Salvator, and hung over the chimney. I eyed my own shape and garb in the mirror, and asked how my rustic appearance would be regarded by that supercilious and voluptuous being to whom I was ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... illusion reigns despotically; perhaps it wakes at nightfall! Is not illusion a sort of night to the mind, which we people with dreams? Illusion then unfolds its wings, it bears the soul aloft to the world of fancies, a world full of voluptuous imaginings, where the artist forgets the real world, yesterday and the morrow, the future—everything down to its miseries, the good and the ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... native energy upon these shores and realized in the history of their colonies the myth of Ulysses' comrades in the gardens of Circe. Hannibal was tamed by Capua. The Romans in their turn dreamed away their vigor at Baiae, at Pompeii at Capreae, until the whole region became a byword for voluptuous living. Here the Saracens were subdued to mildness, and became physicians instead of pirates. Lombards and Normans alike were softened down, and lost their barbarous fierceness amid the enchantments ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... general, I have observed throughout Germany that the women in the lower ranks degenerate far less from the ideal of a woman, than the men from that of man. The dances were reels and waltzes; but chiefly the latter. This dance is, in the higher circles, sufficiently voluptuous; but here the emotions of it were far more faithful interpreters of the passion, which, doubtless, the dance was intended to shadow; yet, ever after the giddy round and round is over, they walked to music, the woman laying her arm, with confident affection, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... rather long wait. A distinctly long wait. Bell lighted a cigarette and seemed to become mildly bored. He regarded a voluptuous small statuette with every appearance of pleased interest. A subtly decadent painting seemed to amuse him considerably. He did not seem to notice that no windows at all were visible, and that shaded lamps lit this room, even ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... the talkative Annette, that this young man was making a change for the worse, and could not forbear silently lamenting, that he should be drawn from the innocence and beauty of these scenes, to the corrupt ones of that voluptuous city. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... long uninterrupted leisure; I read my manuscript, and filled in some occurrences which I had forgotten, but which my diary enabled me to place in their proper order. This will account for the difference in style in places, which I now observe; and a very needless repetition, of voluptuous descriptions, which I had forgotten, had been before described; that however is inevitable, for human copulation, vary the incidents leading up to it as you may, is, and must be, at all times, much ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... all sections of society an ever-increasing lateness of retiring at night, coupled with a growth of indolence caused by every kind of sensual indulgence, not the least of which was gluttony. Music of a sensuous, voluptuous character formed a chief part of the brief Sunday services, and every item was loudly applauded as though the whole affair had been a performance rather than ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... the Spaniard, if not by nature indolent, is prone to luxury. The earth producing by handfuls, the colonists saw little necessity of laborious exertion. They accordingly degenerated from the spirit and enterprise of their ancestors, and fell into habits of voluptuous idleness. Agriculture was neglected, and the mines deserted. Contenting themselves with a bare supply of the wants of nature, they sank into such a state of indolence, that many of their slaves had no other employment than to swing them in their hammocks the livelong day. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... authority of the Press of England. Occasionally, when a publisher or author makes too free with the good name of an English citizen, the restraint of a prison cell is imposed upon the audacious libeller. Sometimes when a book offends against the public morals, and contains the outpourings of a voluptuous imagination, its author is condemned to lament in confinement over his indecorous pages. The world knows that Vizetelly, the publisher, was imprisoned for translating and publishing some of Zola's novels. Nana and L'Assommoir ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... Jerome, commenting on Matt. 11:8, "Behold they that are clothed in soft garments are in the houses of kings," says: "Hence we gather that an austere life and severe preaching should avoid the palaces of kings and the mansions of the voluptuous." But the needs of secular business induce men to frequent the palaces of kings. Therefore it is unlawful for religious to occupy themselves ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... earthly joy, the chants d'amour, or hymns to pleasure, sung by Armida's ministers (xiv. 60-65, xvi. 12, 13). Boiardo and Ariosto had painted the seductions of enchanted gardens, where valor was enthralled by beauty, and virtue dulled by voluptuous delights. It remained for Tasso to give that magic of the senses vocal utterance. From the myrtle groves of Orontes, from the spell-bound summer amid snows upon the mountains of the Fortunate Isle, these lyrics with ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... short in stature and inclined to corpulency; his head was large and round, with an ample forehead; his eyes were gray and very pleasant in their expression; his mouth was voluptuous, and upon his lips there usually lurked a smile, humorous in its threatening, provoking a pleasing dimple upon his cheek. In society, in his extreme old age, for I only knew him then, he was less gay than the general ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... manners of the day in gay society. His style was remarkably felicitous, and it is said that he adorned all that he touched. Most of his poems are quite short, and their subjects range from a touching outburst of genuine grief for a brother's death to a fugitive epigram of the most voluptuous triviality. His verses display ease and impetuosity, tumultuous merriment and wild passion, playful grace and slashing invective, vigorous simplicity and ingenious imitation of the learned stiffness and affectation ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... a man would say at first, second, or third sight of Angelique des Meloises. She was indeed a fair girl to look upon,—tall, and fashioned in nature's most voluptuous mould, perfect in the symmetry of every part, with an ease and beauty of movement not suggestive of spiritual graces, like Amelie's, but of terrestrial witcheries, like those great women of old who drew down the very gods from Olympus, and who in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... glorious essence as a God, Unmeasured space our chainless footsteps trode— All Nature our abode! Round us, in waters of delight, for ever Voluptuous flow'd the heavenly Nectar river; We were the master of the seal of things, And where the sunshine bathed Truth's mountain-springs Quiver'd our glancing wings. Weep for the godlike life we lost afar— Weep!—thou and I its scatter'd fragments are; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... torment; but now the place was bare and empty and the door stood ajar. So came Beltane thither, bearing the torch, and stepped softly into the room beyond, a wide room, arras-hung and richly furnished, and looking around upon the voluptuous luxury of gilded couch and wide, soft bed, Beltane frowned suddenly upon a woman's dainty, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... theatre excellently well, but in a style quite different to ours, and the women very fat and plain. And though Moll, being but a slight slip of a lass, in whom the warmer passions were unbegotten, could not give the bolero the voluptuous fervour of the Spanish dancers, yet in agility and in pretty innocent grace she did surpass them all to nought, which was abundantly proved when she danced it in our posada before a court full of Spaniards, for there they were like mad over her, casting their silk handkerchiefs at her feet in ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... at the rich table, and at the glittering chandelier overhead (albeit the lamps thereof were inferior to his own), and at the expanses of soft carpet, and at the silken-textured walls, and at the voluptuous curtains, and at the couple of impeccable gentlemen in-waiting, and at Joseph, who knew his place behind his master's chair—he came to the justifiable conclusion that money was a marvellous thing, and the workings of commerce mysterious and beautiful. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... such as Rossini can give us. If he was ever justified in giving vent to that flowery, voluptuous grace for which Italian music is blamed, is it not in this charming movement in which each person expresses joy? The enslaved people are delivered, and yet a passion in peril is fain to moan. Pharaoh's son loves a Hebrew woman, and she must leave him. What ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... and dephlogisticated music of the future, to be sure, will never appeal to the mob, which will keep on demanding its chance to gloat over gaudy, voluptuous women, and fat, scandalous tenors. The mob, even disregarding its insatiable appetite for the improper, is a natural hero worshiper. It loves, not the beautiful, but the strange, the unprecedented, the astounding; ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... it must be understood that Caesar, in his early youth, was not wasting his gifts in what seemed to be a half-voluptuous, half-adventurous, wholly careless life, but was accumulating strength by absorbing into himself the forces with which he came in contact, exhausting the intelligence of his companions in order to stock his own, learning everything simultaneously, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Liszt tells of the capricious life infused into its courtly measures by the Polish aristocracy. It is at once the symbol of war and love, a vivid pageant of martial splendor, a weaving, cadenced, voluptuous dance, the pursuit of shy, coquettish woman ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... burning tropical sun, shooting above the eastern horizon as suddenly as the volcanic cone had been lifted above the fog. This hot sun burned away the mists in a few minutes and there, stretching below us, in all its oriental beauty was the sinewy, voluptuous form of the silver sand ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... eyes, as though gazing in fancy upon the glossy draperies and rosy flesh of those voluptuous ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... This, and That, freely and boldly, that so by thy thoughts it may presently appear that in all thee is sincere, and peaceable; as becometh one that is made for society, and regards not pleasures, nor gives way to any voluptuous imaginations at all: free from all contentiousness, envy, and suspicion, and from whatsoever else thou wouldest blush to confess thy thoughts were set upon. He that is such, is he surely that doth not put off to lay hold on that which is best indeed, a very priest and ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... around this stem when she stood to greet Ulysses, and knew not that he had the saving herb in his palm. Goneril may have sent this green and gilded shape to Regan. Fair Rosamond may have drunk from it while the Queen watched her. At some voluptuous feast, Caesar Borgia and his sister, sitting crowned with roses, side by side, may have pressed it upon a reluctant guest, who had, perhaps, a treasure of his own. I dare swear Rene, the Florentine, hath fingered many ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... time; he would effect a moral eclipse of its influence. He loved Henrietta Temple. She should be his. Who could prevent him? Was he not an Armine? Was he not the near descendant of that bold man who passed his whole life in the voluptuous indulgence of his unrestrained volition! Bravo! he willed it, and it should be done. Everything yields to determination. What a fool! what a miserable craven fool had he been to have frightened himself with the flimsy shadows of petty worldly ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... the future life as that here set forth, it is plain, was strikingly adapted to win and work fervidly on the minds of the imaginative, voluptuous, indolent, passionate races of the Orient. It possesses a nucleus of just and natural moral conviction and sentiment, around which is grouped a composite of a score of superstitions afloat before the rise of Islam, set off with the arbitrary drapery of a poetic ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... understood? It is breathed in the air; but does it penetrate the heart? Your poetry, in which love performs so principal a part, possesses considerable grace, and much imagination; it is ornamented with brilliant pictures, whose colours are lively and voluptuous. But where will you find that tender, melancholy sentiment, which animates our poetry? What have you that can be put in comparison with the scene between Belvidera and her husband, in OTWAY; or with that in SHAKESPEARE, between ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... one of the noblest of the nobility of France, alike in birth and in spirit. In his youth a voluptuous liver, he had afterwards undergone a genuine and solemn conversion. While in Switzerland, the news of the guillotining of his brother gave him such a shock, that it revolutionized his motives and his life. The gay, impassioned, fascinating man of the world became an austere and fervent Christian. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... may say 'summer' now that September is deep and that we are cool as people hoped to be when at hottest.... Do tell me your full thought of the commonwealth of women.[168] I begin by agreeing with you as to his implied under-estimate of women; his women are too voluptuous; however, of the most refined voluptuousness. His gardener's daughter, for instance, is just a rose: and 'a Rose,' one might beg all poets to observe, is as precisely sensual as fricasseed chicken, or even boiled beef and carrots. Did you read Mrs. Butler's 'Year of Consolation,' and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... of this world are fame, pleasure and wealth, and the love of these is the strong passion of the heart. But it is the most prolific source of individual, social and public misfortune, the most mischievous, contentious and demoralizing passion. The ambitious, the voluptuous, the rich and the great are not necessarily happy. Alexander wept upon the throne of the world because there was not another world for ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... greenish-grey eyes fringed by long black lashes under curved dark brows contrasting with the warm auburn tint of the hair that showed under her sunhat. Her complexion was dazzlingly fair. Her mouth was rather large and voluptuous with full red lips and even white teeth. Bewitching dimples played in the pink cheeks. Even from a man like Wargrave, fresh from England and consequently more inclined to be critical of female beauty than were his comrades, who for many months had seen so ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven—an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... had arrived at the fulfilment of his wishes. In the retirement of his fairy-like palace by the lake he could enjoy voluptuous pleasures to the full. But already seventy-eight years had passed over his head, and old age had laid the burden of infirmity upon him. His dreams were dreams of blood, and vainly he sought refuge in chambers glittering with gold, adorned with arabesques, decorated with costly armour ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sect have not two properties, fear it not; for it will not spread. The one is the supplanting, or the opposing, of authority established; for nothing is more popular than that. The other is the giving license to pleasures, and a voluptuous life. For as for speculative heresies (such as were in ancient times the Arians, and now the Armenians), though they work mightily upon men's wits, yet they do not produce any great alterations in states; except it be by the help of civil occasions. There be three manner of plantations of new sects. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... after they be used, their verdure departeth, which showeth well that they be but deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures; and that it was the novelty which pleased, not the quality; and therefore we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, but satisfaction and appetite are ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... intellective; So by reason of thine understanding, Thou hast dominion of other beasts all, And naturally thou shouldst desire cunning To know strange effects and causes natural; For he that studieth for the life bestial,[12] As voluptuous pleasure and bodily rest, I account him never better than ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... nothing along with them but an impudent front, some vulgar trifles and foolish scholastic technicalities, unworthy of respect even at the crossing of the highways. This is the unworthy, vagrant, voluptuous race, fitter for the hog sty (haram) than the altar (aram), that basely prostitute divine literature; these are they who fill the pulpits, creep into the palaces of our nobility after all other prospects of existence fail them, owing to their imbecility of body and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior |
