"Beholder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Eton College suggests nothing to Gray which every beholder does not equally think and feel. His supplication to father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself[197] His epithet, "buxom health," is not elegant; he seems not to understand ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... were placed at equal distances on the banks of the canals: the walks lay betwixt great plots of ground, planted with straight and bushy trees, among winch were thousands of birds, whose notes formed a melodious concert, and entertained the beholder by sometimes flying about, at others by playing together, and sometimes by fighting ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... "He that is infinitely above thee makes himselfe be to thee [visibly] what He is in thee."[73] Christ is the universal revealer of God to all who see Him, just as the portrait of a human face seems to fix and follow the beholder from any position in the room, while at the same time it does the same to all other beholders from whatever angle ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... treatment of their subjects, neither devoid of beauty of form nor of color, but which make neither the pulse quiver nor the eye wet; and then such a sweeping judgment is arrested by a work like the 'St. Jerome' in the Vatican, from which a spirit comes forth so strong and so exalted, that the beholder, however trained to examine, and compare, and collect, finds himself raised above all recollections of manner by the sudden ascent of talent into the higher world of genius. Essentially a second-rate composer,* Donizetti struck out some first-rate things in a happy ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... into his bedroom next door, and arrayed himself in his summer Hightums; a fresh (almost pearly) suit of white duck, a mauve tie with an amethyst pin in it, socks, tightly braced up, of precisely the same colour as the tie, so that an imaginative beholder might have conjectured that on this warm day the end of his tie had melted and run down his legs; buckskin shoes with tall slim heels and a straw hat completed this pretty Hightum. He had meant to wear it for the first time ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... toward stoutness, brown hair with just a single streak of silver discernible here and there amongst it, a complexion still in fairly good preservation, a pair of keen but kindly grey eyes, an excellent set of teeth, shapely hands and feet, and a pleasant smile which at once prepossessed the beholder in its possessor's favour. Of the three younger women, two, aged respectively twenty-one and nineteen, were sisters; whilst the third, aged twenty-five, was their cousin, the elderly lady ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of Messina. A person standing on the shore sees the images of men, houses, ships, and other objects, sometimes in the air, sometimes in the water, the originals frequently magnified, passing like a panorama before the beholder. The vapory masses above the strait may cause the pictures to be surrounded by a colored line. When the peasants see it, ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... here, it would seem that she wishes the sole credit of this superb panorama. The massive aqueduct alone attests the existence of man. Looming up in its mighty grandeur—the imperishable monument of a departed civilization, and the only one of its kind—the beholder feels that it is no unworthy rival ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... COURAGE; on TRANQUILLITY, or equanimity of mind, in the midst of pain, sorrow, and adverse fortune; on BENEVOLENCE in the aspect of an agreeable spectacle; and lastly, on DELICACY of Taste, as a merit. As manifested to a beholder, all these qualities are engaging and admirable, on account of the immediate pleasure that they communicate to the person possessed of them. They are farther testimonies to the existence of social sympathy, and to the connexion of that with our sentiment ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... rather mass of features, which enchain the beholder, is a whole-length portrait of a gentleman (par excellence) seated in a luxuriating, Whitechapel style of ease, the envy, we venture to affirm, of every omnibus cad and coachman, whose loiterings near this spot afford them occasional peeps at him. He is most decidedly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... is divine, which is the abstract of beauty absolute, gives to the beholder a shock of astonishment and delight,—not unmixed with melancholy. Very few works of art give this, because very few approach perfection. But there are marbles and gems which give it, and certain fine studies of them, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... what they think the character) of the being they fervently adore: thus, as in the noblest exhibitions of the stage, though that which is contemplated be but a fiction, it may be realized in the mind of the beholder; and, though grasping at a cloud, he may become worthy of possessing a real goddess. Many a generous sentiment, and many a virtuous resolution, have been called forth and matured by admiration of one, who may herself ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... surrounded by minor edifices of nondescript shapes. The magnitude of these buildings forms their sole claim to admiration; they are profusely decorated with sculpture, but of so rude a description as to afford no satisfaction to the beholder. The great temple of Juggernaut was erected in the twelfth century. The idols are of huge size and hideous shape. Krishna, the chief, in intended as a mystic representation of the supreme power; for the Hindoos assert ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... golden youth, and the interminable revolution of ages hurrying after ages, and one generation treading upon the flying footsteps of another; whilst all the while the overruling music attempers the mind to the spectacle, the subject to the object, the beholder to the vision. And, although this is known to be but one phasis of life,—of life culminating and in ascent,—yet the other (and repulsive) phasis is concealed upon the hidden or averted side of the golden arras, known but not felt; or is seen but dimly in the rear, crowding ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... vigour. A handsome old boy he was, ruddy, hale, with the zest of a juicy old apple, slightly withered but still sappy. It should be mentioned that he had a dimple in his cheek which flashed unexpectedly when he smiled. It gave him a roguish—almost boyish—effect most appealing to the beholder. Especially the feminine beholder. Much of his spoiling at the hands of Ma Minick had doubtless been due to this mere depression ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... determine the choice and use of line, the degree of relief and emphasis, for these and the direction of the line itself are the syllables and the words which will convey the purport of the work to the mind of the beholder. ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... knowledge of whether the object met with were of human or animal origin. A dam across a stream, and the appearance of the stumps of trees which entered into its formation, would suggest design quite irrespective of and antecedent to the considerable knowledge or experience which would enable the beholder to decide whether this was the work of men or of beavers. Why, then, should the judgment that any particular structure is a designed work be thought illegitimate when attributed to a higher instead ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... quality alone we can, by means of it, achieve feats not otherwise feasible. How else could we have raised to its sublime height that stupendous bridge which spans the Menai Straits, and which is the wonder of the beholder, as it is the boast of the designer? It stands where it does by the help of some mechanism indeed, but the true giant that lifted it on his shoulders and bore it to its airy elevation was the incompressible force of water, a fluid which is, strangely, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... evolved. Shall it be one of beauty, or of deformity; an angel, or a devil? Will you shape it into a statue of beauty which will enchant the world, or will you call out a hideous image which will demoralize every beholder? ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... on the ceiling, and in this lattice work was twined smilax most lavishly. Bay trees and tall palms had been used to make recesses like little rooms, in several places, and these each seemed to fairly shriek at the beholder, "Do come and sit out a dance in me! That's just what I was put ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... vivacity, which to many seemed scandalous as well as astonishing. Amalia was in her seventeenth year, and to cultivated and sprightly powers of mind, added those French graces, which, if they do not constitute beauty, are still more effectual than beauty itself in seducing the beholder. Alvise saw her when she was presented to the Doge, and regarded her as a being more than human. He gazed on her as if beside himself; and what female could have beheld him without admiration? Amalia ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... the mortification which is in store for her, or wilfully shuts her eyes to the peril. Alas! Her hand is resting, even now, upon the destroyer of all her present enjoyment, the beautiful, fragrant, treacherous peach. With a nonchalance really shocking to the anxious beholder, she raises it, and breaks it open, talking the while, and scarcely bestowing a thought upon what she is about. Dexterously done; but—O luckless maiden!—the fruit is ripe, and rich, and juicy, and the running drops fall, not into ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... open space, which, however, has been miserably encroached upon by petty shops, called the Flower Gardens, is before this western front; so that it has some little breathing room in which to expand its beauties to the wondering eyes of the beholder. In my poor judgment, this western front has very few elevations comparable with it—including even those of Lincoln and York. The ornaments, especially upon the three porches, between the two towers, are numerous, rich, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... attaining the height of four or five feet. The night being very dark, these weeds could be seen standing between the fire and the guards. As the flames swayed past the weeds, the impression was very naturally produced upon the mind of a timid beholder that the weeds were moving in the opposite direction. This optical illusion caused some of the guards to believe that the Indians had set fire to the grass, and were moving in immense numbers between them and the fire with ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... plan was changed repeatedly, but in its final form the building is a Latin cross surmounted by a great dome, one hundred and thirty-eight feet in diameter. The dimensions and proportions of this greatest of all churches never fail to impress the beholder with something like awe. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... away; "She could not turn it; and by small degrees "The stony hardness of her breast was spread "O'er all her limbs. Believe not that I feign, "For Salamis the figure of the nymph "Still keeps; and there a temple is high rear'd "Where Venus, the beholder, they adore. "Mindful of this, O dearest nymph! lay by "That cold disdain, and join thee to a spouse. "So may no vernal frosts thy budding fruits "Destroy, nor sweeping storms despoil thy flowers." When this the god, to various shapes in vain Transform'd, had utter'd; he assum'd again The youth, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the scene was of a nature deeply to impress the imagination of the beholder. Towards the west, in which direction the faces of the party were turned, the eye ranged over an ocean of leaves, glorious and rich in the varied and lively verdure of a generous vegetation, and shaded by the luxuriant tints which belong to the forty-second degree of latitude. The ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... support incumbent floor or roof, For corbel is a figure sometimes seen, That crumples up its knees unto its breast, With the feign'd posture stirring ruth unfeign'd In the beholder's fancy; so I saw These fashion'd, when I noted well ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... addition of a cloth guard) to the inside of the cloth case or cover, and the book is done, after a final pressing. By these rapid machine methods a single book-manufacturing house can turn out ten thousand volumes in a day, with a rapidity which almost takes the breath away from the beholder. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... never any night in June which nature planned the more adroitly. Soft and warm and windless, lit by a vainglorious moon and every star that ever shone, the beauty of this world caressed and heartened its beholder like a gallant music. Our universe, Mr. Wycherley conceded willingly, was excellent and kindly, and the Arbiter of it too generous; for here was he, the wastrel, like the third prince at the end of a fairy-tale, the master of a handsome wife, and a fine house and fortune. Somewhere, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... autograph, and marr'd the jet Of glassy locks, with hollow eyes forlorn, And lips that curl'd in bitterness and scorn— Wretched,—as they had breathed of this world's pain, And so bequeathed it to the world again, Through the beholder's heart in heavy sighs. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... and periodicals of the day. It is a bonmot of contemporary studio life that Hawthorne rather than Story created the "Cleopatra," and one ingenious spirit suggests that as Mr. Story put nothing of expression or significance into his statues, the beholder could read into them anything he pleased; finding an empty mould, so to speak, into which to pour whatever image or embodiment he might conjure up from the infinite realm of imagination. One of the ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... of the mantelpiece screened his face, and enabled him to look directly into Ah Ben's eyes, now fixed upon him with strange intensity. There was a power behind those eyes that was wont to impress the beholder with a species of interest which he felt might be developed into awe; and yet they were neither large nor handsome, as eyes are generally counted. Deep set, mounted with withered lids and shaggy brows, their power was due to the manifestation of a spiritual ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... of the same stone. The bluish tint of balsam firs stood out against the darker foliage of the evergreens that surrounded it, and such trees as cut off the superb view from the piazza had been removed, leaving vistas which were an exaltation to the beholder. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... the heart of his friend Cheesacre, when he joined that gentleman. He was a well-made man, nearly six feet high, with dark hair, dark whiskers, and dark moustache, nearly black, but of that suspicious hue which to the observant beholder seems always to tell a tale of the hairdresser's shop. He was handsome, too, with well-arranged features,—but carrying, perhaps, in his nose some first symptoms of the effects of midnight amusements. Upon the whole, however, he was ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... it, as reducing the number of mouths to be fed, in case the siege were renewed; but malice is not prudent, and, instead of letting the hated Jeremiah slip quietly away home to Anathoth, and so getting rid of his prophecies and him, Irijah ('the Lord is a beholder') arrested him on a charge of meditating desertion to the enemy. It was a colourable accusation, for Jeremiah's constant exhortation had been to 'go out to the Chaldeans,' and so secure life and mild treatment. But it was clearly false, for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Countless numbers of men and women have gazed at that picture, a multitude that must have covered the whole range of human virtues and vices; but it has never failed to carry the same message to every beholder. Do you think that my poor reproduction ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... them showing them the way, until all the first day had passed, and the second, and the third. They then came to a high hill, at which they looked, and lo, upon it was a horseman of brass, on the top of whose spear was a wide and glistening head that almost deprived the beholder of sight, and on it was inscribed, O thou who comest unto me, if thou know not the way that leadeth to the City of Brass, rub the hand of the horseman, and he will turn, and then will stop, and in whatsoever direction he stoppeth, thither proceed, without fear and without difficulty; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... come all those things, over and above mere subsistence, which astonish the beholder, when he reflects that this colony has been planted little ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... was just the inexplicable part of her which governed her whole being, and rendered her so indescribably attractive. And she was not without beauty—or perhaps it should be termed loveliness rather,—of an exquisitely suggestive kind, which provoked the beholder into questioning where and how the glamour of it fell. In her eyes, perhaps, the secret lay,—they were violet- grey in hue, and drowsy-lidded, with long lashes that swept the delicate pale cheeks in a dark golden fringe of shadow, through which the sparkle of vision ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... high, noble, and bold—thin and compressed lips—a mild, clear, blue eye—a large and prominent chin, and a general expression of countenance in which fearlessness and courage sat enthroned, and which told the beholder at a glance, what he had been, and was ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... from Padua, beside Venice, in the great Byzantine mosaic of Torcello, can be seen a last reflection of antique equanimity. Here the main character of the judgment-scene is its grand solemnity; and from this comes the impression of awe left on the beholder; the idea of rule and law predominates, a fatal law against which nothing can prevail; fate seems to preside, as it did in the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... free mutinous spirit in a muslin frock and sash. Not malignant by nature, her language was not so bitter as it was racy, and the expressive little face gave a piquancy to every phrase which held a beholder's interest captive. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... whole neighborhood there would not be seen, at the first settlement of the country, a single article of dress of foreign growth or manufacture. Half the year, in many families, shoes were not worn. Boots, a fur hat, and a coat with buttons on each side, attracted the gaze of the beholder, and sometimes received censure and rebuke. A stranger from the old States chose to doff his ruffles, his broadcloth, and his queue, rather than endure the scoff and ridicule ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... since the restoration of art, varieties of style have been introduced, and individual beauty has been more cultivated. It is the boundless expanse of opulence, street after street, square after square, that most impresses the beholder, and makes him wonder from what miraculous horn of plenty such a tide of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... lips, and brows stood forcibly out to seize the attention and engross it. There was in this fairness, this blanched delicacy, something almost pathetic, which assisted the completion, in the mind of a not too astute beholder, of the impression already begun to be made by the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... endless tune Aristono's voice wavers among the roses, Level and unimpassioned, Telling them how of nothing love is fashioned, How it is but a movement of the mind, Bidding Celia mark That light skirts fluttering in the wind, Or white flowers stuck in dark Glistening hair, have fired the dull beholder, Or telling Anais That faint indifference ere now hath bred a kiss Denied to flaunted ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... the skies with impassioned hallelujahs,—who can as yet tell! But it must be that each soul in heaven being for ever full of love, will for ever be full of praise. Every new sight of grandeur or of beauty, and every new contrivance of the Creator's wisdom or power, will but prompt the beholder to praise the wondrous Creator. Every intellectual height reached in the infinite progress of the soul, onward and upward, must awe it into a profounder sense of the glory of the great Intelligence. Every active ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... beneath their foliage many a cheerful group, the merchant's stone villas, seen amongst their bowers, the high shelving grassy banks, and the lively bustle that is ever going forward, has so animated an effect that the beholder cannot but catch the infection and feel his spirits elevated by the enlivening spectacle. But what a contrast on entering the city; the streets narrow, dark, and with no foot pavement, have a mean and gloomy appearance, but many of them being built mostly of wood, carved into ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... their numberless twinkling chandeliers, the raw tranchant colors of the new banners, wreaths, bees, N's, and other emblems dotting the place all over, and incessantly puzzling, or rather BOTHERING the beholder. ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... appearances; some horrible, some odd, some commonplace, and some fantastical, and altogether, a medley of strange, undecipherable, yet impressive combination of devices, well calculated to excite a feeling of awe, and, with the timid, of terror, in the mind of the beholder. Into this singular assemblage Hurd was ushered, a wilderness of confused images before him. He was taken through a course introductory to the more serious parts of the formula of induction into the order, which were intended to increase the first bewildered impressions on entering the cave, ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... surprise more than to entertain the beholder. The avalanche promised disaster to the participants in it. Tons upon tons of sand, undulating and sinuous in appearance, traveled faster and yet faster behind the old gray mare and the gray old sea captain. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... breeze freshened, and brought us within ten miles of the island, by the close of day. St. Thomas is high, and possesses strong features. One landmark is so singular as to strike every beholder most forcibly. It is a rock, apparently not less than five hundred feet high, and shaped like a light-house, towering into the air, about a third of the distance from the southern extremity of the island. We are now within a few miles of the equator; and sundry jokes, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... by Zeus the Beholder, whoever ye are, to be kindly and to help us in our need. For fierce tempests, falling on the sea, have shattered all the timbers of the crazy ship in which we were cleaving our path on business bent. Wherefore we entreat ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... to something not themselves, and to see whether they could not understand a little of the true purport of that mystery which we call life upon earth." It was perfectly natural, as well as perfectly right, that as the beholder caught a glance of the Infinite Beyond, the image impressed itself upon his sensorium, as would be the case from looking at the sun, and he would as a result perceive that Infinite in all that he looked upon. ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... on the older woman's beauty, a wandering eye and a scar on the soft cheek, she took her own peculiar method of ignoring, thus completely and effectively discounting any unfavorable opinion in the mind of the beholder. Consequently, she frequently referred to them, never as blemishes, but as slight but significant evidences of a distinctive and ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... with a love of the picturesque can afford to pass it by. Airily, nay, coquettishly perched on its smiling, green eminence, and still possessed of an antique stateliness, in striking contrast with the busy little trim town that has sprung up at his feet, Provins captivates the beholder by virtue alike of its uniqueness and poetic charm; I can think of nothing in my various travels at all like this little Acropolis of Brie and Champagne, whether seen in a distance in the railway, or from the ramparts that still encircle it as in the olden time. ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... supply water to many thousands of homes and the quietude of its shores and water breathes a kind of cleanliness and purity, which imparts to the lake a character quite its own. An unique feature of it is the causeway which bisects it, forming twin lakes, as it seems to the nearby beholder. But from a distant elevation this straight clean roadway across the very center of the lake stands out in bold relief, having none of the appearance of a bridge nor yet of a dam. From this causeway people are permitted to fish and their good luck is contemplated ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... of these stands to examine it more curiously, I discovered that there were two projections from the top, resembling eye-pieces, as though inviting the beholder to gaze into the inside of the stand. Then I thought I heard a faint metallic click above my head. Raising my eyes swiftly, I read a few words written, as it were, against the dark velvet of the heavy curtains in dots of flame that flowed one into the other and melted ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... passed that it was borne in upon her that 'Rastus remained oblivious not only to her just wifely resentment, but to most other things and emotions in life as well. He did his work, but he ate little and slept less, and the flesh of his prosperous years seemed to drop from him even as the startled beholder gazed. In despair Dinah sought Haddon Brown and laid ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... spoke of was the strange delicacy of the physical nature and composition of Beatrice. Never, he declared, in all his long experience as a physician, had he met with any case like to hers. Although she seemed to the beholder to carry the colors of health in her cheeks and the form of health on her body, he asserted that she was of so ethereal a creation that the vital essence was barely housed by its tenement of flesh, and could, as he fancied, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in their dumbness, language in their very gesture; they looked, as they had heard of a world ransomed, or one destroyed: A notable passion of wonder appeared in them; but the wisest beholder, that knew no more but seeing, could not say, if the importance were joy, or sorrow;—but in the extremity of the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... like clear springs renewed by flowing, that she seemed the perfect flowering of a day in June, for these are phrases. Does Nature know her wonders when she shines in her strength? Does a woman know the infinite meanings her beauty may have for the beholder? I cannot tell. Nor can I tell if I saw this girl as she may have seemed to those who read only the letter of the book and are blind to its spirit, or in the deepest sense as she really was in the sight of That which created her and of ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... chords of sound. Not always, however, does he need even this excuse; his "conversation-pieces" are often merely composed of persons placed with indescribable grace in exquisite surroundings, governed by a mood which communicates itself to the beholder. ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... commonwealth. And both these heads are taken while they were at an early age, and so thin as to be still beautiful. This head of Napoleon is of a stern beauty. A head must be of a style either very stern or very chaste, to make a deep impression on the beholder; there must be a great force of will and withholding of resources, giving a sense of depth below depth, which we call sternness; or else there must be that purity, flowing as from an inexhaustible fountain through every lineament, which drives far ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... The Cathedral of Cologne is the most splendid structure of the kind in Europe, and Jerome and Clotelle viewed with interest the beautiful arches and columns of this stupendous building, which strikes with awe the beholder, as he gazes at its unequalled splendor, surrounded, as it is, by villas, cottages, and palace-like mansions, with the enchanting Rhine winding ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... handkerchief, representing a whole parterre of flowers, fell in loose curls upon her shoulders, and down her back: she wore a short black velvet jacket, embroidered with gold lace; trowsers of sky blue silk; an under-jacket of pink crape, and one of those beautiful transparent shirts which ravish the beholder, and "half reveal the charms they fain would hide." A magnificent Persian shawl encircled her waist, which had nature's own form, never having been compressed by the cruel ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... King Arthur, Tennyson has patently purposed painting the figure of a perfect man. How well he has executed his design depends on himself much, on the beholder much. Onlookers differ in opinion. Painters have their clientage. Poets are not omniscient; neither are we, a thing we are prone to forget. For myself, I confess not to see with those who deride the king, nor yet with those ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... with a toothache. Toward morning of the night in question, too restless for sleep, he had gone out upon the sea wall. Even now, his face was swollen, and he made a determined effort to show the court the particular tooth which had made him an unwilling beholder of the tragedy. Overcome by exhaustion, he had fallen asleep after a time, and he was awakened by the sounds of a quarrel. On opening his eyes, he saw two Americans, one of whom was Senor Cortlandt, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... seemed near him, though it rose afar off from the bosom of the Lauterbrunner Thal. There it stood, holy and high and pure, the bride of heaven, all veiled and clothed in white, and lifted the thoughts of the beholder heavenward. O, he little thought then, as he gazed at it with longing and delight, how soon a form was to arise in his own soul, as holy, and high, and pure as this, and like ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... this bodily grace is to prepossess the beholder. First impressions are received through the eye. Before a word is spoken, the pose and carriage convey a significant announcement ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... view amid these changing spectra in the eye, must seem to move in a contrary direction; as the moon sometimes appears to move retrograde, when swift-gliding clouds are passing forwards so much nearer the eye of the beholder. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Wilks had what is called an expressive face, and he had worked his sandy eyebrows, his weak blue eyes, and large, tremulous mouth into such an expression of surprise at the finding of the Court, that he had all the appearance of a beholder of visions. He changed the bag to his other hand as they left the town behind them, and regarded with gratitude the approaching ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... 342 by Pope Liberius, on the spot precisely marked out by a miraculous fall of snow, in the month of August, and it has undergone many alterations since his time. But it is very fine, and gives the beholder the idea of vastness, which seems harder to attain than anything else. On the right hand, approaching the high altar, there is a chapel, separated from the rest of the church by an iron paling; and, being admitted into it with another party, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... several times, fell over a grimy pail of soap-suds, stopped, gazed in enraptured enchantment with parted lips and outstretched arms as if he had begun to suspect what it was before him. To the eye of the beholder, however, he gazed as yet only on vacancy, but just as I was about to attempt self-explanation he was gone, tearing away down the hill as fast as his legs could carry him, the ragged remains of his father's trousers flapping gently in the breeze. As I rose to leave crackers frightened my pony, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... their poisons upon him; they had tortured him hideously, they had burned him up as with vitriol. As a public force he was no longer a human being at all—he was a deformity, a spectre conjured up to bring fright to the beholder. And through it all he was utterly helpless—as much at their mercy as an infant in the hands of savages. And what had he done? Why had the torture been visited ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... done so the art of deciphering hieroglyphics or even phonetic or demotic writing is not yet assured enough to allow of absolute trust being put in it. Happily the Egyptians performed a work of such mightiness that it amazes the beholder. By the side of the hieroglyphic inscriptions they carved on the walls of palaces and temples, on the sides of pylons, the faces of the corridors and the bays of funeral chambers, on the faces of the sarcophagi and on the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Judith," laughed Patricia, flinging an arm about the young sage. "My word, but you're a crafty young one! I'd have raved about it till even Michael Angelo or Raphael couldn't have satisfied the expectations of the beholder. How do you come by ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... of those cool, gray-eyed, ivory-skinned brunettes who always remind the beholder of white lilies blooming in the dark. Her lips were full, faintly pinkly purple, and affirmative, not beseeching. She stood with one hand upon the knob behind her, bent a little forward, the skirt of her white dress blown by the wind through ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... itself a moral quality; but the taste for good pictures is. A beautiful painting by one of the great artists, a Grecian statue, or a rare coin, or magnificent building, is a good and perfect thing; for it gives constant delight to the beholder. ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... the son, a loyalty equal to any strain. The hired man, Jim, was lighter and finer of feature, and his white teeth gleamed against the nut-brown of his face in a quiet smile that refused to be displaced in any emergency, and at times left the beholder in considerable doubt as to ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... middle, sinking thence to the haunches, while the angry tail makes a strong curve along the ground to the right. The whole figure is tense and compact with restrained and waiting power; the expression is stealthy, pitiless, and terrible; it at once fascinates and astounds the beholder. While Mr. Kemeys was modelling this animal, an incident occurred which he has told me in something like the following words. The artist does not encourage the intrusion of idle persons while he is at work, though no one welcomes intelligent inspection ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... situated on a lofty range of thickly wooded hills, and commands an extensive view of the ocean, for fifty miles both north and south. A view from the top of it, at once convinces the beholder that it would be impossible to select a place more convenient for the haunt of a gang of pirates; as all vessels bound in and out of the harbors of Boston, Salem, and the adjacent ports, can be distinctly seen from its summit. Saugus river meanders among the hills a short distance to the south, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... making puns, making epigrams, making extempore verses, mimicking the company, mimicking a style, etc.... Accomplishments are certain external graces, which are to be learnt from others, and which are easily displayed to the admiration of the beholder, viz. dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on.... Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends on application and industry, such as writing a criticism, making a speech, studying the law."[9] These innocent ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... and gaiters." Not that it is exclusively an Old Folks' entertainment; for, as the critics say of portentously dull juvenile books, "it will be found as interesting to the young as to the old." Though the dullest of dramas, it is so brightened by brilliant legs that it dazzles every beholder. Why, then, should the stern advocate of the legitimate drama refuse to acknowledge that the Twelve Temptations has its redeeming legs? How runs the ancient proverb, "Singed milk is better than it looks;" or that equally ancient philosophical maxim, "There is ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... road, and Almira reentered the room with the expression of one who had penetrated the inscrutable and solved the riddle of the Sphinx. She had been vouch-safed one of those gleams of light in darkness which almost dazzle the beholder. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as if he did it on purpose and to be irritating. His fat head was big enough to make a dwarf of, hunchback and all. His mottled cheeks were vast and pendulous to that degree that they inspired the imaginative beholder with terror, as reminding him of avalanches and landslides which might slip their hold at the slightest shock and plunge downward in a path of destruction. One puffy eyelid drooped in a sinister way; obviously that ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... gratitude, natural affection and public spirit, or whatever proceeds from a tender sympathy with others, and a generous concern for our kind and species. These wherever they appear seem to transfuse themselves, in a manner, into each beholder, and to call forth, in their own behalf, the same favourable and affectionate sentiments, which they exert on ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... are to believe our informant; the vegetation is of a primitive delicacy and beauty unequaled elsewhere; the fruits are fabulously abundant and of the most perfect flavor; the water bubbles forth from springs of crystal purity, and the flora is so lovely as to inspire the most indifferent beholder with delight. "It is called the Garden of Cuba," said the American Consul of Cienfuegos, "but many go further, and declare it to be the location of the original Paradise." Certain it is that the few Americans who have sought ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... their far-away dreaminess, as though the possessor were looking onward and outward beyond the surroundings visible to others; and beneath the calm determination of the expression was an underlying sweetness, which shone out from time to time in the sunny smile which always won the heart of the beholder. The figure was rather that of a man than a lad — tall, strongly knit, full of grace and power; and a faint yellow moustache upon the upper lip showed the dawn of manhood in the youth. There was something in his look which seemed to tell ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... this, that I Sleeping, shall be colder, And in waking presently, Brighter to beholder! Differing in this beside (Sleeper, have you heard me? Do you move, and open wide Eyes of wonder toward me?)— That while I draw you withal From your slumber, solely,— Me, from mine, an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... influence of Wesley's and Whitefield's preaching were in all points exactly the same as those of which the annals of imaginative and excited religious feeling have in every age been full. Swoons and strange convulsive agitations, however impressive and even awe-inspiring to an uninformed beholder, were undistinguishable from those, for example, which had given their name to English Quakers[615] and French Convulsionists,[616] which were to be read of in the Lives of Guyon and St. Theresa,[617] and which were a matter of continual occurrence when Tauler preached in Germany.[618] It ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... day. Denver, standing on her high plateau under a thrilling green-blue sky, is masked in snow and glittering with sunlight. The Capitol building is actually in armor, and throws off the shafts of the sun until the beholder is dazzled and the outlines of the building are lost in a blaze of reflected light. The stone terrace is a white field over which fiery reflections dance, and the trees and bushes are faithfully repeated in snow—on every black twig a soft, blurred line of white. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... foot, of which the fair owner (the lovely wife of a well-known banker) used to present the model either in bronze or in marble to her numerous admirers. Her face was, not beautiful, nor even pretty; but her features were such as one seldom forgets; for, at the first glance, they startled the beholder like a flash of lightning. Her forehead was a little high, and her mouth unmistakably large, notwithstanding the provoking freshness of her lips. Her eyebrows were so perfect they seem to have been drawn with India ink; but, unhappily the pencil had been ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Soma, didst become in wisdom wisest; In skill[28] most skilful, thou, obtaining all things. A bull in virile strength, thou, and in greatness; In splendor wast thou splendid, man-beholder. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... in the picture, obviously, is Saint Gaudens's great group, splendid in its golden elegance and doing more for the scene (by thus giving the beholder a point of such dignity for his orientation) than all its other elements together. Strange and seductive for any lover of the reasons of things this inordinate value, on the spot, of dauntless refinement of the Sherman image; ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... the last of the rapids two immense rocks appear, which look like two ancient stately towers of some Gothic potentate, rearing their heads above the surrounding trees. From their situation and their shape, they strike the beholder with an idea of antiquated grandeur, which he will never forget. He may travel far and wide and see nothing like them. The Indians have it that they are the abode of an evil genius, and they pass in the river ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... strength of Brunhild to each beholder shown. Into the ring by th' effort of panting knights a stone Was borne of weight enormous, massy and large and round. It strain'd twelve brawny champions to heave ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... heart to the miniature of the out-land princess. Until I knew him better this puzzled me much—the link was so missing between his sensibility and his type. He was of course bewildered by my sketches, which implied in the beholder some sense of intention and quality; but for one of them, a comparative failure, he ended by conceiving a preference so arbitrary and so lively that, taking no second look at the others, he expressed ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... using a fan. A clumsy woman makes an implement of this plaything, flourishing it to emphasize her talk, or, what is worse, pointing with it like an instructor before a blackboard. But in graceful hands it is unobtrusive, a mere bit of decoration that teases and fascinates the beholder's eye. ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... and freshness of this glacial landscape cannot fail to excite the attention of every beholder, no matter how little of its scientific significance may be recognized. These bald, westward-leaning rocks, with their rounded backs and shoulders toward the glacier fountains of the summit-mountains, and their split, angular fronts looking ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... (copied from that of Trajan at Rome) to commemorate the victories of Buonaparte, and his army in Germany. The execution of the bas reliefs reflects credit on the state of sculpture in France, and cannot fail to claim the approbation of the beholder. ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... in great Piles of Building, some Parts are often finish'd up to hit the Taste of the Connoisseur; others more negligently put together, to strike the Fancy of a common and unlearned Beholder: Some Parts are made stupendously magnificent and grand, to surprize with the vast Design and Execution of the Architect; others are contracted, to amuse you with his Neatness and Elegance in little. So, in Shakespeare, we may find Traits that will stand ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... for personal gratification, but from a devotion to his country's welfare. Possessing a desirable stature, an erect frame, and, superadded, a lofty and sublime countenance, he never appeared in public without arresting the reverence and admiration of the beholder; and the stranger who had never before seen him, was at the first impression convinced it was the President ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... then, the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of D——, and so consistent of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document—these things, together with the hyperobtrusive situation of this document, full in the view of every visitor, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... stood in a vanishing point; yet a little while, and he was still a man, and had eyes and apprehension; yet a little longer, and with a last sordid piece of pageantry, he would cease to be. And here, in the meantime, with a trait of human nature that caught at the beholder's breath, he was tending a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and their unrivalled sheet dotted with sails, rigged, as it might be, expressly to produce effect in a picture, form a sort of world apart, that is replete with charms which not only fascinate the beholder, but which linger in the memories of the absent like visions of a ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... studied by the objective method it is a branch of psychology. Aesthetic facts are mental facts. A work of art, no matter how material it may at first seem to be, exists only as perceived and enjoyed. The marble statue is beautiful only when it enters into and becomes alive in the experience of the beholder. Keys and strings and vibrations of the air are but stimuli for the auditory experience which is the real nocturne or etude. Ether vibrations and the retina upon which they impinge are nothing more than instruments for the production of the colors which, together ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... aspect more drear and desolate than that of a burnt prairie. The ocean when its waves are grey—a blighted heath—a flat fenny country under a rapid thaw—all these impress the beholder with a feeling of chill monotony; but the water has motion, the heath, colour, and the half-thawed flat exhibits variety in its mottling of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... bandy-legged, broad-shouldered, and bull-headed, ugly, and villanous of look; yet with an impudent, swaggering, joyous self-esteem traced in every feature and expressed in every action of body, that rather disposed the beholder to laugh than to be displeased at his appearance. An old blanket-coat, or wrap-rascal, once white, but now of the same muddy brown hue that stained his visage—and once also of sufficient length to defend his legs, though the skirts had long ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... In one thing Bermuda is eminently tropical—was in May, at least—the unbrilliant, slightly faded, unrejoicing look of the landscape. For forests arrayed in a blemishless magnificence of glowing green foliage that seems to exult in its own existence and can move the beholder to an enthusiasm that will make him either shout or cry, one must go to countries ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... beside a table, on which were fruit and wine; the room was a small one, and in its furniture exhibited nothing remarkable. Over the mantelpiece, however, hung a small picture with naked figures in the foreground, and with much foliage behind. It might not have struck every beholder, for it looked old and smoke-dried; but a connoisseur, on inspecting it closely, would have pronounced it to be a Judgment of Paris, and a masterpiece of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... bedroom of Miss Blanche Amory, were similarly adorned with floral ornaments, and the whole exterior face of the house presented the most brilliant aspect which fresh new paint, shining plate-glass, newly cleaned bricks, and spotless mortar, could offer to the beholder. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... went this morning was what they called a Calvary: a horrible, ghastly image of a Christ in a tomb, the figure of the natural size, and of the livid color of death; gaping red wounds on the body and round the brows: the whole piece enough to turn one sick, and fit only to brutalize the beholder of it. The Virgin is commonly represented with a dozen swords stuck in her heart; bleeding throats of headless John Baptists are perpetually thrust before your eyes. At the Cathedral gate was a papier-mache church-ornament shop—most of the carvings and reliefs of the same dismal character: one, ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... canvas touches of none but the seven colours juxtaposed [Claude Monet has added black and white] and leave the individual rays of each of these colours to blend at a certain distance, so as to act like sunlight upon the eye of the beholder." This is called dissociation of tones; and here is a new convention; why banish all save the spectrum? We paint nature, not ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... in the semi-gloom, with that faint smile still on her lips, she watched them calmly as they danced the famous Ghost Dance of the Academy about her, omitting no gruesome detail that would be calculated to affright the dismayed beholder, chanting and groaning horribly ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... extent that the cataract muffled its own voice, but the earth trembled. The gorge below offered a superb prospect. After the invariable flatness and tameness of the shores above, the sudden cleft in the world impressed the beholder stunningly. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... Now, in my bed, That any beholder Might fancy me dead,— Might start at beholding me, Thinking ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... this, the half-dirty attire—the unshaven beard of the men, and the unkempt locks of the women—produce further revolting sensations. It is not till past mid-day that the noise of labour ceases, and that the toilette is put into a complete state for the captivation of the beholder. By four or five o'clock the streets become half thinned. On a Sunday, every body rushes into the country. The tradesman has his little villa, and the gentleman and man of fortune his more capacious rural domain; and those, who aspire neither to the one or the other, resort to the Bois de Boulogne ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... imitative arts, is always in motion, and to follow it requires an intensity of concentration and an accuracy of memory which can be acquired, but for which, like most good things, we have to work. We all know the adage that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and that any work of art must be recreated in the imagination of the participant. The difficulty of this process of recreation, as applied to music, is that we have, derived from our ordinary daily experiences, so little to help us. Anyone can begin, at least, to understand ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... would have remembered long. The haven of Troezene, noblest in Peloponnesus, girt by its two mountain promontories, Methana and the holy hill Calauria, opened its bright blue into the deeper blue of the Saronic bay. Under the eye of the beholder AEgina and the coasts of Attica stood forth, a fit frame to the far horizon. Sun, sea, hills, and shore wrought together to make one glorious harmony, endless variety, yet ordered and fashioned into a divine whole. "Euopis," "The Fair-Faced," the beauty-loving dwellers ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... structure, with four pearl-white eggs, looking out upon some wild scene and overhung by beetling crags. After all has been said about the elaborate, high-hung structures, few nests, perhaps, awaken more pleasant emotions in the mind of the beholder than this of the pewee,—the gray, silent rocks, with caverns and dens where the fox and the wolf lurk, and just out of their reach, in a little niche, as if it ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... is not the same as in England, these being in their Verdure all the Winter long; which appears here, when you stand on the Ridge, (where our Path lay) as if it were one pleasant, green Field, and as even as a Bowling-green to the Eye of the Beholder; being hemm'd in on one Side with these ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... monument erected in memory of Francis Scott Key. This, aside from its significance, is one of the finest statues our country affords. The grace and beauty of that figure, as if still pointing toward his country's glorious emblem, causes the heart of the beholder to swell with emotion. We seemed to catch from those lips the grave question: "O! Say, does the Star Spangled Banner yet wave, o'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?" Something in this monument made ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... hair, that flowed in shining ringlets adown her snowy neck. The contour of her face was oval; her forehead remarkably high; her complexion clean and delicate, though not florid; and her eyes were so piercing, as to strike the soul of every beholder. Yet, upon this occasion, one half of their vivacity was eclipsed by a languishing air of melancholy concern; which, while it in a manner sheathed the edge of her beauty, added a most engaging sweetness to her looks. In short, every feature was elegantly perfect; and the ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... over and hid from view her lovely bosom. Gazing into the depths of her strange blue eyes, when she was in a contemplative mood, they seemed most placid yet unfathomable; but when illuminated by some lively emotion, they beamed upon the beholder like stars. The hands of Fayaway were as soft and delicate as those of any countess; for an entire exemption from rude labour marks the girlhood and even prime of a Typee woman's life. Her feet, though wholly exposed, were as diminutive and fairly shaped as those ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... him a certain cheerfulness and kindliness, like sunshine touching the ruggedness of a granite bowlder. An old portrait of him presents a full and ruddy countenance, without a beard, and with large eyes which gaze sternly out upon the beholder. When the Massachusetts Company was formed, it contained many men of pith and mark, such as Saltonstall, Bellingham, Eaton, and others; but, by common consent, Endicott was chosen as the first governor of the new realm, and he sailed ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... majesty. The sides of the mountains were occasionally bare and rugged, but for the most part they were clothed with forests of fir; while above, pointed summits and fantastic crags everywhere met the eye, and filled the beholder with admiration and awe. ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... a perfect palm-tree but that, with a subtlety all its own, it assumes a presence for itself, and makes a poet of the beholder. This is the explanation of the honors it has received, beginning with the artists of the first kings, who could find no form in all the earth to serve them so well as a model for the pillars of their palaces and temples; and for the same reason ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... and watched with interest this pleasing spectacle. The varied and intricate evolutions made by these gray-clad figures, as they expanded into broad platoons, and then, as if by magic, fell again into groups of two, four, or six, was, to the unaccustomed beholder, a strange ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... the top! Like Injun-slaying youngsters in America, the doughty Afghan warriors seem to delight in having their weapons loaded, their sidearms sharp, and their bayonets fixed, and seem anxious to impress the beholder with the fact that they are real warriors, and not mere make-believe soldiers. The colonel wears a dark-brown uniform profusely trimmed with braid, a Kashgarian military hat, and English army shoes. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the sky outside; here in the quiet, white-curtained room another dawn had come, not quiet, but with gleam of sun alternating with cloud and tempest, making the beholder wonder what the day would ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... the plan of this tomb, but the size, that compels the admiration of the beholder. He stands, as it were, within a vast cave lighted only from its narrow end, the roof far above his head. The rough surface of the blocks lends colour to the feeling that this is the work of Nature and not of man. Here, even if not in Stonehenge, he will pause to marvel at the patient ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... had been achieved by much experimenting before the little mirror over her soap box. The mirror had a wave in it which gave the beholder two noses, but Nance had kept her pink and white ideal steadily in mind, and the result was a golden curl over a bare shoulder. The curl would have been longer had not half of it remained in a burnt wisp around ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... ancient stately towers of some Gothic potentate rearing their heads above the surrounding trees. What with their situation and their shape together, they strike the beholder with an idea of antiquated grandeur which he will never forget. He may travel far and near and see nothing like them. On looking at them through a glass the summit of the southern one appeared crowned with bushes. The one to the north was quite bare. The Indians ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... hostile ocean, is rarely navigated by ships from our world. [14] Then, besides the danger of a boisterous and unknown sea, who would relinquish Asia, Africa, or Italy, for Germany, a land rude in its surface, rigorous in its climate, cheerless to every beholder and cultivator, except a native? In their ancient songs, [15] which are their only records or annals, they celebrate the god Tuisto, [16] sprung from the earth, and his son Mannus, as the fathers and founders of their ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... marble columns in the jambs and numerous archivolts. Then its high, narrow windows, and the low, square towers, pierced with loopholes, give to it that air of the fortress which immediately impresses the beholder. Without doubt it was built like so many other churches of the same stormy and uncertain period, to be used as a place of refuge in case of danger. The entrance to the principal tower is artfully ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... But the hardships of his life had not quenched his jovial spirits, which were, indeed, irrepressible. A laughing greeting for every one he met, Mexican or Indian, was his habit, one that might have begotten a measure of contempt in the beholder, had the Father not possessed a sternness, latent for the most part, it is true, but which could, on occasion, be evoked to prop up the apparently tottering respect due him. Father Uria was fond, too, of company, not only for its own sake, but because it gave ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... Coggswell fountain is probably the most eccentric squirt, and one which at once rivets the eye of the beholder. I do not know who designed it, but am told that it was modeled by a young man who attended the codfish autopsy at the market daytimes and gave ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... him, the more his features seemed to breathe vitality and spirit, and the firmer grew the conviction that this was an exceptional being—a rare and strange phenomenon. Once accustomed to his apparent pale and sickly homeliness, the beholder soon saw it transformed into a fascinating beauty such as we admire on the antique Roman cameos and old imperial coins. His classical and regular profile seemed to be modelled after these antique coins; his forehead, framed in on both sides with fine chestnut hair, was high and ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... witness the services of the evening, and brighter eyes than a city assembly could boast, flashed in the lamp-light. The garlands were more beautiful in this subdued light than they had been in the glare of day, and their richness was like a magic spell of beauty to enthrall the senses of the beholder. Clara and I were seated in one of the pews directly in front of the altar, occasionally looking back to see the new arrivals, and return the greetings of friends from other villages. Suddenly the organ swelled in a rich ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... effigies suspended in early Christian churches, to commemorate a person or an event, became in time objects of worship to the vulgar, so, in Egypt, the esoteric or spiritual meaning of the emblems was lost in the gross materialism of the beholder. This esoteric and allegorical meaning was, however, preserved by the priests, and communicated in the mysteries alone to the initiated, while the uninstructed retained only the grosser conception."—GLIDDON, Otia Aegyptiaca, ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... dimly seen through a vast pictorial tube, rapidly receding behind us, variegated with furrows, and intersected with roads running in all directions; the whole reduced to a scale of almost graphic minuteness, and from the fleecy vapour that still partially obscured it, impressing the beholder with the idea of a vision of enchantment, which some kindly genius had, for an instant, consented to disclose. Scarcely had we time to snatch a hasty glance, ere we had passed over the spot, and the clouds uniting gradually ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... have great power to touch the heart of the beholder. I mean such things as a man ploughing a field, or sowing or reaping; a girl filling a pitcher from a spring; a young mother with her child; a fisherman mending his nets; a light from a lonely ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... more animating scenes than those which were presented to the beholder at the seasons of the year when Judea poured forth her inhabitants in crowds to attend the solemn festivals appointed by Jehovah, and observed with punctilious exactness by the people. Our present study leads us to contemplate ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... forest oak less strong and majestic because spring drapes its branches with thousands of blossoms, or are those blossoms less truly flowers because their hue is too like that of the foliage to strike a careless beholder? Maccabeus, with his thoughtful reserved disposition, would as little have talked of his affection for Zarah as he would of the pulsations of his heart; but both were a part of his nature, a ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... whole thought by their waving movements. Such was the man in his stalwart frame. But, in front of the face, one forgot the framework. The speaking countenance, from which it was impossible to detach one's gaze, both charmed and fascinated the beholder. His hair floated over the forehead in large locks; his black eyes pierced like arrows blunted by benevolence; they entered yours confidently as if they were friends; his cheeks were full, rosy, and strongly coloured; the nose was well modelled, yet a trifle long; ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Africa and Egypt; the inner meaning of this old ritual could not be revived, and we must own that all this restoration of the old caerimonia must have appealed rather to the eye than the mind of the beholder. It was necessary to put some new element into it to give it life. Here we come upon a most important fact in the work of Augustus, which will become apparent if we take a rapid glance at the work and history of the Fratres, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the banks of the river, it is a conspicuous object from every quarter, and is as beautiful in its proportions when seen from a distance as in its details when more closely and minutely inspected: an unfailing source of gratification to the beholder, it well merits repeated visits. In its vastness, in its costly material, in its beautiful proportion, and in its delicacy of detail, it stands a noble monument of the talent which devised, and of the skill which ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... or reading or sewing, it's right To sit, if you can, with your back to the light; And then, it is patent to every beholder, The light will ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... cavalry, to the complete astonishment of both armies, and came into battery on the right of the 46th Indiana. "The bringing off of the section of Nims's battery, commanded by Lieutenant Marland," says Washburn, "after the regiment sent to its support had surrendered, extorted the admiration of every beholder." ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... fame in thine, like lesser current, 's lost; Thy nobler streams shall visit Jove's abodes, To shine among the stars,[5] and bathe the gods. Here Nature, whether more intent to please Us or herself with strange varieties, (For things of wonder give no less delight To the wise maker's, than beholder's sight; 200 Though these delights from sev'ral causes move; For so our children, thus our friends, we love), Wisely she knew the harmony of things, As well as that of sounds, from discord springs. Such was the discord, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... dozen more stories above this story. You walk from chamber to chamber, and in answer to inquiry learn that the rent of this one suite-among so many-is over thirty-six thousand dollars a year! And you reflect that, to the beholder in the street, all that is represented by one narrow row of windows, lost in a diminishing chess-board of windows. And you begin to realize what a sky-scraper is, and ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... serpent crept, the more lowering grew the heavens, and it seemed almost as if the reptile dragged after it in its course the masses of thick, black clouds that appeared to follow in its wake, Not long afterward, just as a white stone flung into deep water gradually vanishes from the eyes of the beholder, so it, too, vanished from my sight. Then the heavens became darker and darker, and I thought that the sun had suddenly withdrawn and night had surely returned, as it had erstwhile returned to the Greeks because of the crime of Atrcus. Next, flashes of lightning ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the tufts or clusters in which the Pineapple Pholiotas grow will attract the attention of an ordinarily unobservant beholder. The scales on the cap seem to contract and rise from the surface and sometimes disappear with age. The caps of mushrooms should not ordinarily be peeled before cooking, but it is better to ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard |
