"Clear-cut" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is afoot, I, at least, am innocent. I have noticed this since boyhood, the phenomenon being most conspicuous when I was least deserving; whereas, with Alb, it is the other way round. His darkly handsome face, with its severely clear-cut features, his black hair and brows, his somber eyes, are the legitimate qualifications of the stage villain. Even the well-known cigarette is seldom lacking; therefore, if I wished for revenge, I have often had it. When I am to blame for anything, Alb ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... expressions embody those varying attitudes of mind which the child may successively assume in any critical experience of its young life. The clear-cut profile of the lower face at the left suggests the face of the child in the Age of Innocence who first confronts the problem of life. The one just above has the thoughtful poise of the little girl Simplicity, pondering ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... resigned himself, "that if Melisande were still spared to us in the flesh, she really would have talked this way, except that she would have used a few more dots. But one is an idealist. One is jarred. If you could recite, in your soft, clear-cut voice that is so admirably adapted for poetry, a few stanzas ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... highborn English woman has pale blue eyes, a fine complexion and a clear-cut, rather expressionless face with a profile suggestive of the portraits seen on English postage stamps of the early Victorian period; but in the arranging of her hair any French shopgirl could give her lessons, and any smart American woman could teach her a lot about the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... to and fro, And clear-cut crystal's creamy flow, Where vied with velvet Veuve Clicquot, ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... many less philosophical minds, the justification of morality by its utility has seemed unworthy. Morality is much more ultimate and imperious. The pursuit of happiness is not binding; morality is. The way to attain happiness is dubious and variable; the commandments of morality are clear-cut and certain. Different people find happiness in different activities; the laws of morality are universal and changeless. Morality, therefore, is prior to the pursuit of happiness; its dictates are known by an independent faculty. There ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... overacting, though, in what Joanna did. Nobody would have dreamed that she was playing any kind of part, or interested in anything at all except the coppers that she begged for. She squatted in the roadway, ink-black and clear-cut in the now blazing sunlight, alternately flattering them and pretending to a knowledge ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... little woman, with clear-cut features, and brown hair drawn backward under a cap of lace very stiffly starched. Her tight fitting dress of blue taffeta was open in front, and looped up behind in order to show an elaborately quilted petticoat of light-blue camblet. Her white wool stockings were ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... cabin like a giant buff-tinted orange, dark-splotched by seas and jungles, on the third of his semi-annual voyages for the harvest of horn. Away to the left, scintillating and flaming in the blackness of space, whirled Saturn, his rings clear-cut and brilliant, his hard light filling the control cabin. Carse was staring unseeingly at the magnificent spectacle when the giant negro standing nearby at ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... opening of the discussion Webster's object had been to "force from Hayne or his supporters a full, frank, clear-cut statement of what nullification meant; and then, by opposing to this doctrine the Constitution as he understood it, to show its utter inadequacy and fallaciousness either as constitutional law or as a practical working scheme."[10] In the Southerner's First ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the darkness, "Mac is all right. HE can take care of himself." But for all that she had a clear-cut vision of her husband's body, bloated with seawater, his blond hair streaming like kelp, rolling ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... discordant in character, who partake of the nature and even of the frailty of man, though their might is greater than his, and their life far exceeds the span of his ephemeral existence. Their sharply-marked individualities, their clear-cut outlines have not yet begun, under the powerful solvent of philosophy, to melt and coalesce into that single unknown substratum of phenomena which, according to the qualities with which our imagination invests ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... much younger and a blonde. Amabel is—let us call things by their names in the seclusion of this snug fireside—Amabel is scrawny; Violet was ethereal. Amabel is sharp-featured; Violet's face was delicate and clear-cut. I say was, because she has grown much stouter. We have known them since they first came to Florence, and have been friends without being passionately attached. They are Americans, but had lived in Paris since Violet was a baby. They came here, orphans, because it is cheaper. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... a woman! The plot well conceived and worked out, the characters individualized and clear-cut, and the story so admirably told that you are hurried along for two hours and a half with a smile often breaking out at the humor, a tear ready to start at the pathos, and with unflagging interest, till the heroine's release from all ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... very clear-cut and distinct responsibility in supporting the whole movement of the organized farmers in Western Canada; for this means that you are improving not alone your own environment and condition, but also creating ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... moved nearer to the window, her embroidery frame in front of her, and her beautiful clear-cut profile showing to advantage against the light. She looked as though she had nothing to do with what was about to ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... way the vault can be opened. Its lock is sensitized to respond to a thought. That's what I said—a thought. I have selected a single, definite, clear-cut thought to which the ...
— Mr. Chipfellow's Jackpot • Dick Purcell
... pale, clear-cut features flushed; "it makes me feel as if I were there and saw the whole dreadful sight. Don't cry any more, Mary dear. Uncle Tom is ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... could see the tall, white tower of Cloomber standing out clear-cut and sharp against a dark cloud-bank which rose behind it. I thought how any traveller who chanced to pass that way would envy in his heart the tenant of that magnificent building, and how little they would guess the strange terrors, the nameless dangers, which were gathering about ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he answered, promptly, looking at her clear-cut face with its frame of red hair under her sailor hat, and ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... Norman, Lord Arleigh, who had succeeded his father at the early age of twenty, all this good gift of fame, fortune, and wealth had now fallen. He had inherited also the far-famed Arleigh beauty. He had clear-cut features, a fair skin, a fine manly frame, a broad chest, and erect, military bearing; he had dark hair and eyes, with straight, clear brows, and a fine, handsome mouth, shaded by a dark mustache Looking ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... the Notes, the editor has indicated such corrections as are necessary to prevent the student from thinking that in reading Defoe he is drinking from a "well of English undefiled." The art of writing an English prose at once scholarly, clear-cut, and vigorous, was well understood by Defoe's great contemporaries, Dryden, Swift, and Congreve; it does not seem to have occurred to Defoe that he could learn anything from their practice. He has his reward. "Robinson Crusoe" may continue to hold the child ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... open, flashed shut again, a voice that was undeniably the voice of breeding and refinement said quietly: "Gentlemen, my compliments. Here are the diamonds and here am I!" and the figure of a man, faultlessly dressed, faultlessly mannered, with the slim-loined form, the slim-walled nose, and the clear-cut features of the born aristocrat, ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... friend, wise and sympathetic. Her clear-cut thinking sheared away accidental things, fringes of irrelevancy. I was so glad to get her opinion on the various things that perplexed me. She advised me to make the best fight I could against Fortescue. After that come to Chicago whatever the result. We parted with a clasp of the ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... who appeared to doubt the apparitions sworn to by this Englishman, declared that no theory could explain them, Gevingey perorated, "Permit me, messieurs. We have the choice between two diverse, and I venture to say, very clear-cut doctrines. Either the apparition is formed by the fluid disengaged by the medium in trance to combine with the fluid of the persons present; or else there are in the air immaterial beings, elementals as they are called, which manifest themselves under very nearly determinable conditions; or else, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... the way of the Federal Amendment, the goal of the National Association for nearly fifty years. Mrs. Catt knew that it would be utterly useless to ask for a plank favoring this amendment and so she asked simply for a clear-cut endorsement of the principle of woman suffrage. This was secured, after women had been appealing to national Republican conventions since 1868, and although it was weakened by the qualifying declaration, she realized that an immense ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... ancient temple—before the branches, sweeping outward and downward, met, making a whispering, living canopy overhead, through which the sunshine fell in tremulous shafts, upon the shining coats and gleaming harness of the horses, upon Ormiston's clear-cut, bronzed face and upright figure, and upon the even, straw-coloured gravel of the road. The said road is raised by about three feet above the level of the land on either side. On the left, the self-sown firs grow in close ranks. The ground below them is bare but for tussocks of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... head did not appear till he was past sixty. After that, I have little doubt, it was the finest head this age or country has seen. Every artist who saw him was instantly filled with a keen desire to sketch him. The lines were so simple, so free, and so strong. High, arching brows; straight, clear-cut nose; heavy-lidded blue-gray eyes; forehead not thrust out and emphasized, but a vital part of a symmetrical, dome-shaped head; ear large, and the most delicately carved I have ever seen; the mouth and chin hidden by a soft, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... that although one may lose one's best, yet one's worst is made better. The women will find that the characters of their men will become softened. The clear-cut essentials of a life of war must make the mind of man direct. It may be brutal in its simplicity, but it is clear and frank. Yet to counteract this, the continual sight of suffering bravely borne, the deep love and humility that the devotion of others unconsciously produces, bring about this charity ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... tainting themselves with earthly affections, thus compelling their divorce from Heaven. Clouds signify the veil of the Most High. Torches, shew-bread, horses and horsemen, harlots, precious stones, in short, everything named in Scripture, has to them a clear-cut meaning, and reveals the future of terrestrial facts in their relation to Heaven. They penetrate the truths contained in the Revelation of Saint John the divine, which human science has subsequently demonstrated and proved materially; such, for instance, as the following ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... with a rose of any kind, but she was not the less charming to look at. Such was the unspoken reflection of a man who was well able to be a judge in such matters. His name was Hubert Marien. He was a great painter, and was now watching the clear-cut, somewhat Arab—like profile of this girl—a profile brought out distinctly against the dark-red silk background of a screen, much as we see a cameo stand out in sharp relief from the glittering stone from which the artist has fashioned it. Marien ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... slightly indefinite. The edges are, as it were, too much softened off into the background. The figure before Barwood was fresh, distinct, clear-cut,—pre-Raphaelitish, to take a word from painting. In all the details, from the ribbon in her feathery brown hair to the pretty buttoned boot, there was the ineffable aroma of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... graceful, strong—for strength alone bestows such easy perfection of movement, such equipoise of step as belonged to him—with a fine, clear-cut face and well-shaped head, nobly placed on his straight, square shoulders—wide for a man so slight—dark eyed, dark haired, with a mouth somewhat concealed by a long silken mustache, then an unusual coxcombry in ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... soiled shreds are cast aside. Briefly, by means of violent tugs of the fangs, which pull, and broom-like efforts of the legs, which clear away, the Lycosa extricates the bag of eggs and removes it as a clear-cut mass, free ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... asks for a job in your department there may be reasons why you hate to give him a clear-cut refusal, but tell him frankly that you see no possibility of placing him, and while he may not like the taste of the medicine, he swallows it and it's down and forgotten. But you say to him that you're very sorry your department is full just now, ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... is one of the handsomest of moths, because of its graceful, clear-cut shape and the variegated grays and yellows of its dress. Look on poplar, cotton-wood, plum, and pine trees, and on tobacco plants for relatives of the tomato worm, the large green larvae whose chrysalis and adult forms resemble those of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... quality found in such purity as among the true, rustic Yankees, whose clear-cut, homely phrases and sharp localisms are not as entirely extinct as is supposed. Country life has a way all its own of preserving the best traits of a people, and in more than one old-fashioned farm-house, and among the haymakers in more than one sunny meadow, may be heard the witty ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... for a library, speaking of the book as to its wearing qualities and as to the comfort of its users, is printed on paper which is thin and pliable, but tough and opaque. Its type is not necessarily large, but is clear-cut and uniform, and set forth with ink that is black, not muddy. It is well bound, the book opening easily at any point. The threads in the back are strong and generously put in. The strings or tapes onto which it is sewn ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... with eyes of such blazing light, that before Bob was aware, he shot out his hand and stood waiting the blow. The school never, in all its history, received such a thrill as the next few moments brought; for while Bob stood waiting, the master's words fell clear-cut upon the dead silence, "No, Robert, you are too big to thrash. You are a man. No man should strike you—and I apologize." And then big Bob forgot his wonted sheepishness and spoke out with a man's voice, "I am sorry I spoke back, sir." And then ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... two, and there was just sufficient resemblance in the clear-cut features to recall the relationship. De Catinat was sprung from a noble Huguenot family, but having lost his parents early he had joined the army, and had worked his way without influence and against all odds to his present position. His father's younger brother, however, finding every path to ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shall hereinafter seek to become acquainted with general stand-points that give systematic unity to the issues which have been enumerated. Such stand-points are not clearly defined by those who occupy them, and they afford no clear-cut classification of all historical philosophical philosophies. But system-making in philosophy is commonly due to the moving in an individual mind of some most significant idea; and certain of these ideas have reappeared so frequently as to define more or less clearly marked tendencies, or continuous ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... clear-cut visage and flashing eye, his face written all over with battle lines, his voice running the entire gamut from rage to mirth, and you have a mental picture of Chief Runs-the-Enemy, a tall, wiry Teton Sioux whose more than sixty-four ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... eyes grew fixed and filled with utter amazement. Down the street, on a black horse that arched his curving neck and danced on light, fleet feet, rode a man in a uniform of green and gold. He sat erect, his clear-cut profile toward her. The next instant his horse, side-stepping at a blowing paper, turned his face into view. It was ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... their morals are an angry series of unexplained commands, and that their worship does not include that fringe of half-reasonable, wholly pleasant things which the true worship of a true God must surely contain. All is as clear-cut as their rocks, and as unfruitful as their dry valleys, and as dreadful as their brazen sky; "thou shalt not" this, that, and the other. Their God is jealous; he is vengeful; he is (awfully present and real to them!) a vision of that demon of which we in our happier countries make ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... write, now, of those strange days, already they seem remote and unreal. But, where other and more dreadful memories already are grown misty, the memory of that evening in my rooms remains clear-cut and intimate. It marked a crisis in ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... a little daunted by the thought of Lady Dawn. Everything that he had heard about her, including his first meeting with her, had served to daunt him. He pictured her as a woman with a conscience clear-cut as a cameo—a woman, infallible and unsubdued, impatient of foolishness and gentle in her spirit with the cold tranquillity of a landscape under ice. How would she receive him, coming out of nowhere, unheralded and unexplained? And how ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Aunt Martha's management from what they had been under Cecilia's. For the rest, he lived in a world of books and abstractions; and, therefore, although his clothes were seldom brushed, and although the Glen housewives concluded, from the ivory-like pallor of his clear-cut features and slender hands, that he never got enough to eat, he ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a minute. She stood gazing at all that was visible of the pale face below the darkened eyes. It was so clear-cut, so refined in feature, and the lips under the sweeping blonde moustache, though set and compressed, were delicate and pink. He turned his head eagerly towards the parade; but Sam was still far away. The music had scattered, and was leading ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... she was speaking to Thomas Jefferson, the President of the United States, man of affairs as well, man of firm will and clear-cut decision. ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... she was the petted child of fortune and luxury. Her beautiful eyes were like limpid pools of water reflecting the azure sky; her lips were wreathed with smiles; there was not a shadow of care upon her delicate, clear-cut face. ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the sun, they were less bright than the terrestrial moon, but they shone with a marvellously pure pale light. The larger contained the exact features of a man. There was the somewhat aquiline nose, a clear-cut and expressive mouth, and large, handsome eyes, which were shaded by well- marked eyebrows. The whole face was very striking, but was a personification of the most intense grief. The expression was indeed sadder than that of any face they had ever seen. The other contained the profile of a surpassingly ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... to the horizon and four thousand feet beneath us. There lay San Francisco Bay like a great placid lake, the haze of smoke over the city, the Golden Gate, the ocean fog-rim beyond, and Mount Tamalpais over all, clear-cut and sharp against the sky. Directly below us I could see a buggy, apparently crawling, but I knew from experience that the men in it were lashing ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... punishment. That terrible old teaching! Thank God we are outgrowing much of it. I must say that the descriptions They give, when They give any, of Their place of being, do not sound very cheerful—but it cannot at all resemble the old-fashioned place of torment, it sounds so much less clear-cut and definite than that, more like London ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... Shadows came. Acuter than the tick of a watch, they were there, the cold mother with the haunting eyes, the dead wife with the sullen mouth, visible as stars. And empty as air was the space Claire-Anne should have occupied, with her clear-cut beautiful features, her understanding eyes. Three ghosts, and the ghost that was missing was the most terrible ghost of all ... He could not stand them any more.... ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... eyes unwillingly. In the boy's beautiful clear-cut face the sudden intensity of expression compelled her—held her ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said the queen to Tancred, looking at a statue in golden ivory, and then at the young Englishman, whose clear-cut features and hyacinthine locks curiously resembled those of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... form a book of nature as wide and mysterious as Life," says Frederic Harrison in his Alpine Jubilee, in one of those clear-cut and well-measured passages of mountain homage, which are balm to the tormented hearts of those who feel themselves afloat on the clouds of mystery. "To know, to feel, to understand the Alps is to know, to ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... "Your distinctions are wonderfully clear-cut," she said; "but why do you wish to talk of me? I suppose you want to know why I am Mother Superior of the House ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... turned his face to the front, but I could see that he was agitated, and was holding himself under with a strong hand. As I walked beside him and noted his fine physique, the well-set head and clear-cut features, I felt genuinely attracted toward the manly fellow, and wondered what was the secret of his interest in that lovely girl, whom he had yet shunned; for, looking back upon the events of the previous ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... serenity, the supreme calm, the tranquil harmony of her noble features. Natacha was twenty. Heavy brown hair circled about er forehead and was looped about her ears, which were half-concealed. Her profile was clear-cut; her mouth was strong and revealed between red, firm lips the even pearliness of her teeth. She was of medium height. In walking she had the free, light step of the highborn maidens who, in primal times, pressed the flowers as they passed without crushing ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... found in the Arte, is applied to the entire complex of "spelling" rules which Rodriguez introduces into his description. While no clear-cut influences can be established, it is generally held by Doi and others that these rules are based upon Kanazukai no chikamichi or some similar work. See Kokugogaku taikei, Vol. ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... had first known of her royal destiny, problems of rights of governments had never been put before her in unpartisan, clear-cut lines of white and black—as right and wrong: her judgment had been intentionally befogged by those who should have been her teachers, until she found herself Queen by coronation and inheritance, consecrated in her right by the awful seal of ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... not mean, however, that he must confine himself to plain statement of fact, with no manifestation of feeling or earnestness. Men are still influenced and persuaded by impassioned speech. There is nothing incompatible between deep feeling and clear-cut speech. A man having profound convictions upon any subject of importance will always speak on ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... rapid work should be avoided. The designs of the old writing with their strokes sometimes broken, sometimes continuous, sometimes thick, and sometimes thin, wearied the writer and took much time, and at last it came about that the clay was attacked in a number of short, clear-cut triangular strokes each similar in form to its fellow. As these little depressions had all the same depth and the same shape, and as the hand had neither to change its pressure nor to shift its position, it arrived with practice at an extreme ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... open, flashed shut again, a voice that was undeniably the voice of breeding and refinement said quietly, "Gentlemen, my compliments. Here are the diamonds and here am I!" and the figure of a man, faultlessly dressed, faultlessly mannered, and with the clear-cut features of the born ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... possible as she swooped quickly down the stairs. Another instant, and she was at his side, her eyes gleaming like fiery coals, her face burning, her lips firm, set, and determined. He was too much startled to speak. It was she who broke the silence, in words clear-cut and distinct yet ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... to be sure, but what a change! The little maiden with the dark braids of hair hanging far below her waist had developed into a tall, slender girl, with clear-cut, oval face, crowned by a mass of dark tresses. Her heavy, low-arching brows spanned the thoughtful, deep, dark-brown eyes that seemed to speak the soul within, and the beautiful face was lighted up with a smile that showed just a peep of faultless white teeth, gleaming through ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... Throned on high sat the president, Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, in his grand robes, and before him in rows sat his robed court—fifty distinguished ecclesiastics, men of high degree in the Church, of clear-cut intellectual faces, men of deep learning, veteran adepts in strategy and casuistry, practised setters of traps for ignorant minds and unwary feet. When I looked around upon this army of masters of legal fence, gathered here to find ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sunlight with brilliant red and purple. The valley seemed filled with a delicate haze, almost like smoke. White Slides Ranch was hidden from sight, as it lay in the bottomland. The gray old peak towered proud and aloof, clear-cut and sunset-flushed against the blue. The eastern slope of the valley was a vast sweep of sage and hill and grassy bench and aspen bench, on fire with the colors of autumn made molten by the last flashing of the sun. Great black slopes of forest gave ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... that a genuine humility did not prevent it, and did survive it) a lord and conqueror of the sex. He had done his pretty bit of mischief, all in the way of honour, of course, but hearts had knocked. And now, with his bright white hair, his close-brushed white whiskers on a face burnt brown, his clear-cut features, and a winning droop of his eyelids, there was powder in him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... obedient lid flew back, and the long-hidden thought "sprang full-statured in an hour." She saw how love and beauty and freedom lay floating vaguely and aimlessly in a million minds till the poet came and crystallized them into clear-cut, prismatic words, tinged for each with the color of his own fancy, and wrought into a perfect mosaic, not for an age, but for all time. Led by a strong hand, she trod with reverent awe down the dim aisles of the Past, and saw how the soul of man, bound in its prison-house, had ever struggled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... never pleased. This way of her own, of which she was so fond, was not intrinsically offensive—it was just unmistakeably distinguished from the ways of others. The edges of her conduct were so very clear-cut that for susceptible persons it sometimes had a knife-like effect. That hard fineness came out in her deportment during the first hours of her return from America, under circumstances in which it might have seemed that her first ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... of tongs fixed to the windlass of a bench by a long leather strap through graduated holes in a strong steel plate. Next, it was branded, by means of certain steel punches, with the goldsmith's private marks, and afterwards it was bent with pliers into a circle, and its clear-cut ends were ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... his words chosen, yet they expressed a withering indignation and contempt which were plainly the culmination of months of bewilderment—now replaced by a clear-cut determination. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... this one proof to complete the evidence. Lawrence Armitage was regarding Mignon with perplexed brow. "That is not the costume you wore last night, Miss La Salle," he said with cold abruptness. Scrutinizing her closely, amazement began to dawn on his clear-cut features. ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Greek mythology, that naive poem of Nature, the product of the artistic impulse of the race to stamp its impressions in a beautiful and harmonious form, so in the clear-cut comparisons in Homer, the feeling for Nature is profound; but the Homeric hero had no personal relations with her, no conscious leaning towards her; the descriptions only served to frame human action, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... which would have approached that of the New Comedy or even the Elizabethan stage, and would perhaps have done without a Chorus altogether. In Aeschylus Greek tragedy had been a thing of traditional forms and clear-cut divisions; the religious ritual showed through, and the visible gods and the disguised dancers were allowed their full value. And Euripides in the matter of outward formalism went back to the Aeschylean ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... expression of great power both of intellect and of character in a face which, in ordinary social commune, might rather be noticeable for an aspect of hardy frankness, suiting well with the clear-cut, handsome profile, and the rich dark auburn hair, waving carelessly over one of those broad open foreheads, which, according to an old writer, seem the "frontispiece of a temple dedicated ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her easy-chair with half-closed eyes, her clear-cut features in silhouette against the glow of the fire, her soft gray curls nestling in the filmy lace that fell about her temples, she expressed, in every line of her face and figure, that air of graceful repose which only comes to those highly ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Before them the head of the calm gulf is filled on most days of the year by a great body of motionless and opaque clouds. On the rare clear mornings another shadow is cast upon the sweep of the gulf. The dawn breaks high behind the towering and serrated wall of the Cordillera, a clear-cut vision of dark peaks rearing their steep slopes on a lofty pedestal of forest rising from the very edge of the shore. Amongst them the white head of Higuerota rises majestically upon the blue. Bare ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... His clear-cut, sarcastic lips sought to assume the well-bred curves of conformity to the environment of entertainers who valued him so far as to demand a series of his own lectures; but the cynic of his temperamental revolt from us, or, to be exact, from the thing which he supposed us ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... speak thus to him. What had his lies to do with her? She had been told a thousand, had heard a thousand told to others. Her life had been passed in a world of which the words of the Psalmist, though uttered in haste, are a clear-cut description. And she had not thought she cared. Yet really she must have cared. For, in leaving this world, her soul had, as it were, fetched a long breath. And now, at the hint of a lie, it instinctively ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... and the nation at large. He was a broad and profound speculative thinker, and the papers which he occasionally wrote, and which appeared now and then in the more prominent magazines, never failed to attract general and wide-spread attention. His intelligence, clear-cut and vividly operating, instead of leading him into the quicksands of scepticism, had never left the hard rock of earnest religious belief inherited from ten generations of Puritan ancestors. Nevertheless, though his ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... not instructing his classes, in a comfortable but plain room across the hall—a room whose windows look out across the valley of the Saale on an exquisite mountain landscape, with the clear-cut mountain that Schiller's lines made famous at its focus. As you enter the room a big, robust man steps quickly forward to grasp your hand. Six feet or more in height, compactly built, without corpulence; erect, vigorous, even athletic; ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... an opportunity to observe the personal characteristics of the Russian Baron. He was a young man of about thirty-five, with exceedingly handsome and clear-cut features, but a peculiar head. The peculiarity of his head was that it seemed to be perfectly round on top—that is, its diameter from ear to ear appeared quite equal to its anterior and posterior diameter. The curious effect of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... backwards and forwards. Lancaster's eyes rested on him thoughtfully. The man had altered during the last few weeks—altered incredibly. He was a stone lighter to start with, and his blond, clear-cut face had the worn look born of mental conflict. His eyes were red-rimmed as ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... christening, which took place at Sandhurst Church, a mile or two away, to which we walked by the pine-clad hill of Edgebarrow and the heathery moorland known as Cock-a-Dobbie. Mr. Parsons was the clergyman—a little handsome old man, like an abbe, with a clear-cut face and thick white hair. I am afraid that the ceremony had no religious significance for me at that time, but I was deeply interested, thought it rather cruel, and was shocked at Hugh's indecorous outcry. He was called Robert, an old ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the Commonwealth. There will be no time for second thoughts or for suspension of judgment. The first choice of the people will be final on this head. The first parliament must be either protectionist or anti-protectionist, and its first great work an Australian tariff. That is the clear-cut issue. The risk is that a proportion of the representatives may be returned upon other grounds, as the electors as a whole may not realise all that is at stake or make the necessary sacrifices or opinion and preferences to ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... man will be heard from one of these days," was the unanimous verdict of those who listened to his clear-cut and finished sentences, and noted the maturity ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... numerous buildings. Tall and graceful minarets, Hindoo temples and Mohammedan mosques, symmetrical in shape and gorgeous in colouring, appeared interspersed in endless numbers among the densely-packed houses inside the city, their domes and spires shining with a brilliant radiance, clear-cut against the sky. Above all, in the far distance towered the Jama Masjid, or Great Mosque, its three huge domes of pure white marble, with two high minarets, dwarfing into insignificance the buildings by which it was surrounded—surely, the ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... projected. The duke, whose chief fault was not to know that time had brought him into a novel age, defended himself with the haughty truism, then just ceasing to be true, that he had a right to do as he liked with his own. This clear-cut enunciation of a vanishing principle became a sort of landmark, and gave to his name an unpleasing immortality in our political history. In the high tide of agitation for reform the whigs gave the duke a beating, and brought their man ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... outline of features which one often sees in a Roman in middle life, when easy living and habits of sensual indulgence begin to reveal their signs in the countenance, and to broaden and confuse the clear-cut, statuesque lines of early youth. Evidently, that is the head of an easy-going, pleasure-loving man, who has waxed warm with good living, and performs the duties of his office with an unctuous grace as something becoming and decorous to be gone through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... the classical period. Compositions of this kind are to be found in the sonatas and symphonies of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and even further back in the suites of Bach. Accordingly the Paderewski "Minuet," in keeping with the form, is simple and clear-cut and gracefully melodious. At the same time, however, it is modern in the brilliant ornamentation introduced in the middle part of the composition which in a minuet is ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... tone of Branasko's quivering voice, and their giant shadows which stood out on the smooth crystal like silhouettes. So clear-cut were they, that, in his own shadow, the American could see his breast heaving and in Branasko's the quivering of the Alphian's ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... was of a different calibre. Still apparently in the early thirties, tall, and with clear-cut aristocratic features, he was decidedly good to look upon. His face, fair as that of a woman, was perhaps slightly marred by the expression of weakness which lurked round the finely-moulded lips; but for all that it was stamped with ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... seemed likewise dumb. There was a growing strangeness about her which had been puzzling Hollister for days. At night she would snuggle down beside him, quietly contented, or she would have some story to tell, or some unexpectedness of thought which still surprised him by its clear-cut and vigorous imagery. But by day she grew distrait, as if she retreated into communion with herself, and her look was that of one striving to see something ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Mr. Fox, in that clear-cut, decisive tone, that betokens resolute purpose, and a little anger also "I must request you to give me your undivided attention for a little time, and surely what I am about to say is important enough to make it worth ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... healthful, Greek simplicity and moderation are of the very essence of good art in all ages. We can no more revive the exact conditions under which art arose than we can import into England the clear air, the bright sun, the clear-cut shadows of the Greek landscape. But we can still look up to the philosophy, the poetry, and the art of Greece as classical, as a revelation of what is most pleasing and most enduring in human nature. And if we neglect them and reject them from the education of our children, we shall destroy ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... not object to speaking for the Administration. To him Stevens' idea of subjecting the South to the discipline and tutelage of Congress was repulsive, and his ringing voice filled the spacious hall of the House with clear-cut sentences. He denied that the Southern States had ever been out of the Union. "If they were," he asked, "how and when did they become so? By what specific act, at what precise time, did any one of those States take itself out of the American Union? Was it by the ordinance ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... and a time came, under George III, when it seemed that they were exhausted. It was then that another and a more glorious Revolution, infinitely more definite and clear-cut, with a stronger grasp of principle, and depending less on conciliation and compromise, began to influence ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... him; and as he looked at her clear-cut aquiline face, her steady eyes, her resolute mouth, her carriage, masterly in its self- possessed poise, he saw that there was no further hope for him. There was no love ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... at all into the night to meet him. Now it was against him that the violence of my anger would vent itself. Now it was against myself, and I cursed myself for an idle, dreaming fool. Then came over me, overwhelming me, a sense of my own utter loneliness, and against it Tim stood out so bold and clear-cut and strong; that I felt myself crying out to him not to desert me and let a woman take him from me. I thought of the old days when he and I had been all in all to each other, and I hated the woman who had come between us, who had lured me from him, who had lured ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... high and clear-cut bank, crowned with flowering kine-grass, our steamer lies, the silently-flowing river gurgling and bubbling under our keel. The water is quite still, and repeats every detail of the opposite shore, behind which, rising terrace upon terrace, are the wooded "Yomas," in whose ravines and ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... In a life of tense intellectual effort a certain smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the candle at both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that was being done; he pressed Mrs. Jenkin to restrain her husband from too frequent visits; but here was one of those clear-cut, indubitable duties for which Fleeming lived, and he could not pardon even the suggestion ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and stared fixedly up over my head into the air. The lamp beat upon his face, and so intent was it and so still that it might have been that of a clear-cut classical statue, a personification ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... When our opponents hear us repeat this statement of Paul, they make it appear as if we taught that governments should not be honored, as if we favored rebellion against the constituted authorities, as if we condemned all laws. Our opponents do us a great wrong, for we make a clear-cut distinction ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... down to her waist. Unlike Pati-lima's daughters, whose heads were encircled by wreaths of orange blossoms, Manogi wore neither ornament nor decoration. She knew that her wavy hair drooped gracefully down her clear-cut, olive-hued face like the frame of a picture, and set off her bright eyes and white teeth to perfection; and that no amount of orange blossoms could make her appear more beautiful. So in the supreme and blessed consciousness of being the best-dressed ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... which these psychotic manifestations engraft themselves. Thus he divided his prison psychoses into groups like the "simple degenerative", "hysterical degenerative", "phantastic degenerative", etc. Siefert undoubtedly overshot the mark in his clear-cut differentiation between the various types, but he unquestionably contributed a most important ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... these crows, their incessant cawing, far or near, and their countless flocks and processions moving from place to place, and at times almost darkening the air with their myriads. As I sit a moment writing this by the bank, I see the black, clear-cut reflection of them far below, flying through the watery looking-glass, by ones, twos, or long strings. All last night I heard the noises from their great roost in ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Dangerfield. A flash Shot from their depths:—a sudden blaze of light Like that swift followed by the thunder's crash, Which said, "Suspicion is confirmed by sight," As they fell on the pleasant door-way scene. Then o'er his clear-cut face, a cold white look Crept, like the pallid moonlight o'er a brook, And, with a slight, proud bending of the head, He stepped toward us haughtily and said, "Please pardon my intrusion, Miss Maurine: ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Mr. Aldrich has published a collection of short descriptive, reminiscent, and half-historic papers on Portsmouth,—'An Old Town by the Sea'; with a second volume of short stories entitled 'Two Bites at a Cherry.' The character-drawing in his fiction is clear-cut and effective, often sympathetic, and nearly always suffused with an agreeable coloring of humor. There are notes of pathos, too, in some of his tales; and it is the blending of these qualities, through the medium of a lucid and delightful style, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... he preached in the University Church, on Eternal Punishment, is not likely to be soon forgotten by those who heard it. I, unfortunately, was not of that number, but I can well imagine how his clear-cut features would light up as he dwelt lovingly upon the mercy of that Being whose charity far exceeds "the measure of man's mind." It is hardly necessary to say that he himself did not believe in eternal punishment, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... deservedly popular: there was a frankness and a directness about her almost boyishly clear-cut face which inspired confidence, and the girls who brought their difficulties to her found in her a wise and sympathetic counsellor. Eleanor was not beautiful like Catherine, not brilliant like Patricia—in fact it was ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... of black-and-white check trousers, varnished boots, and a necktie with a huge pearl pin in it, the pearl itself representing the forehead of a human skull. His hands were like ivory, his face was like a clear-cut cameo. With the aid of a gold-headed cane that had once belonged to Voltaire he gently evicted a cat, so that I might occupy the chair next to him, and said, in the language of Brummell's time, that he was ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... 'occasional' into the 'classic'," and the phrase happily expresses the truth. The vivacious character of his nature readily lends itself to work of this sort, and though the printed page gives the reader the sparkling epigram and the graceful lines, clear-cut always and full of soul, the pleasure is not quite the same as seeing and hearing him recite his own poems, in the company of congenial friends. His songs are full of sunshine and heart, and his literary manner wins by its simplicity and tenderness. Years ago, Miss Mitford said that she knew no ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... spread speedy wings and departed, leaving her wholly forlorn. Curtains were falling behind her, but curtains were also rising in front. She had looked forward vaguely, and now the position was suddenly defined by the arrival of Joe's letter, with all its future phases clear-cut, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... to be definite and clear-cut to the point of hardness. She did not know the meaning of over-wrought nerves, nor the difficulties of a nature more imaginative than her own. She had found her will-power sufficient to meet all the emergencies of her life, and she was disposed to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... and throughout classical literary criticism there is a clear-cut distinction between poetic and rhetoric. Aside from the metrical form of poetic, accepted by all but Aristotle as a distinguishing characteristic, and the non-metrical form of rhetoric, the essentially practical nature of rhetoric marked it off to the Greeks and Romans as something ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... imaginative story, with its buoyant humor, clear-cut characterization, prodigality of invention, tenderness and pathos, is on many accounts one of the most distinguished works of fiction of the ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... remained gripped in his hand. His eyes had become riveted upon a low hill far out across the valley. It looked as though it rose sheer out of the forest below, but the watching man knew full well that it was only a spur of the giant that backed it. It was the summit of this clear-cut hill, and what was visible upon it, that held his fascinated attention. Suddenly a half-whispered word escaped him and Ralph was beside him ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... this she had returned and Annixter had come upon her suddenly one day in the dairy, making cheese, the sleeves of her crisp blue shirt waist rolled back to her very shoulders. Annixter had carried away with him a clear-cut recollection of these smooth white arms of hers, bare to the shoulder, very round and cool and fresh. He would not have believed that a girl so young should have had arms so big and perfect. To his surprise he found himself thinking of her after he had gone to bed that night, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... test of conduct and economics, their attitude in the matter is entirely right. Men work to all given points in straight, clear-cut, logical lines only to find women at the point of results waiting for them, with unforeseen culminations, which would have been ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... almost wizened, the thin shoulders round with an habitual stoop, the lean shanks were encased in a pair of much-darned, coarse black stockings. It was the figure of an old man, with a gentle, clear-cut face furrowed by a forest of wrinkles, and surmounted by scanty white locks above a smooth forehead which looked yellow and polished like ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... sensitive ear for the imaginative harmonies, the unresolved discord annoyed him. The effort to eliminate it brought him face to face with a blunt demand, a query that was almost psychic in its clear-cut distinctness. Why did these forecastings of the future always lead him up to the closed door of this young woman's ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... well back, and his soft felt hat, wide-brimmed, was pulled down over the brows. His deep chest, square shoulders, erect carriage and straight muscular legs all told of days and years in the field, and every word he uttered had about it the crisp, clear-cut ring of command. It was safe to bet that no mere company was the extent of this soldiers authority, and Sancho, keen observer, had put him down for a lieutenant-colonel at least. Full colonels were mostly older men, and Arizona had but one in "the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... clearness, was too beautiful to last. By noon the gold had paled. The high wind which had prevailed earlier in the day subsided; but the swelling waves, which broke with thud after thud upon the shelving beach, gave evidence of a gale still whirling somewhere off the coast. The clear-cut lines of the distant cliffs faded to dim, quiet masses. Far out on the horizon rose a line of phantom hills,—a line which, as night drew in, moved slowly shoreward, rising as it came, shutting out sail after sail, point ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... lightning rapidity; the brute masses of the logs; the swift decisive forays of the "nigger," the unobtrusive figures of the other men handling the logs far in the background; and the bright, smooth, glittering, dangerous saws, clear-cut in outline by their very speed, humming in anticipation, or shrieking like demons as they bit—these seemed to him to swell in the dim light to the proportions of something gigantic, primeval—to become forces beyond the experience of to-day, typical ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... round, he saw that the chair on the arm of which he had been sitting was already occupied by the slumbering form of a youngish man with clear-cut features and a ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... the Holy War are not as a rule nearly so clear-cut or so full of dramatic life and movement as their fellows are in the Pilgrim's Progress, and Bunyan seems to have felt that to be the case. He shows all an author's fondness for the children of his imagination ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... at once joyous and melancholy, a little later, when twilight falls, when the sky seems one vast veil of yellow, against which stand the clear-cut outlines of jagged mountains and lofty, fantastic pagodas. It is the hour at which, in the labyrinth of little gray streets below, the sacred lamps begin to twinkle in the ever-open houses, in front of the ancestor's ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... stain across its roads of merriment, or leave a telltale blot upon one of its perennially beautiful and ever-odorous flower-beds. But now, as he reviewed those past weeks of hesitation and inward struggle, a sense of relapse crept over him. As he recalled the picture of the clear-cut profile between the floating purple curtains, a vague indifference as to the final outcome of things ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... then paused and looked back at them. Sudden illumination came to her as she scanned their faces, the man's clear-cut, determined, eager—Carol's shy, and scared, and—hopeful. She turned quickly back toward her sister, pain darkening her eyes. Carol was the last of all the girls,—it would leave her alone,—and he was too old ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... sitting in a box on four low wheels, in a little room in a small street in Westminster; his age was some fifteen or sixteen years; his face was clear-cut and intelligent, and was altogether free from the expression either of discontent or of shrinking sadness so often seen in the face of those afflicted. Had he been sitting on a chair at a table, indeed, he would have been remarked as a handsome and ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... leaving the market now. A tall mulatto girl, following her mistress, her basket on her head, crossed the street just below, and looked up. She was laughing; but, when she caught sight of the haggard face peering out through the bars, suddenly grew grave, and hurried by. A free, firm step, a clear-cut olive face, with a scarlet turban tied on one side, dark, shining eyes, and on the head the basket poised, filled with fruit and flowers, under which the scarlet turban and bright eyes looked out half-shadowed. The picture caught his eye. It was good to see a face like that. He would try to-morrow, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... in the large frightened eyes that were turned upon him. They saw a young man bowing low over the unresisting hand he had taken. His face was clear-cut and unmistakably English. Jennie saw his closely-cropped auburn head, and, as it raised until it overtopped her own, the girl, terrified as she was, could not but admire the sweeping blonde moustache that ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... it possible that the dignified man, with the grave, stern, clear-cut, scholarly face and snow-white hair, was but forty-five years old when he began to direct my studies; for, spite of his erect bearing and alert, movements, he seemed to me at that time a venerable old man. There was something in the aristocratic reserve of his nature ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... man who made the suggestion above recorded was fair and clean-shaven, tall and well-made, with clear-cut feature; in fact, he was very good-looking—good-looking as almost only an Englishman can be. Under a reserved, dandified manner, he tried unsuccessfully to conceal the fact that he was too intelligent for his type. He did not, however, quite attain his standard ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... for Providence alone knew what fault of a superb vital energy. Her eyes sparkled as she spoke, and every gesture betokened rather the grand young creature that she was than the valetudinarian going forth for healing. Her cheek, turned now and again, showed a clear-cut and untouched soundness that meant naught but health. It showed also the one blemish upon a beauty which was toasted in the court as faultless. Upon the left cheek there was a mouche, excessive in its size. Strangers might have commented on it. Really ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... than the messenger-boy that stood before her; a fair, white face; calm, gray eyes; hair with a glint of golden brown, which waved and rippled about a low, broad brow, and was gathered in a great shining coil behind; and a mouth clear-cut and firm, but now drawn and quivering with deep emotion. The comely head was finely poised upon the slender neck, and in the whole figure there was an air of self-reliance and power that accorded well with the position which ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... artistic portrayal meant. In voice, manner, action, in each minute detail of face and figure, she was truly the very woman she represented. It was an art so fine as to make the auditors forget the artist, forget even themselves. Her perfect workmanship, clear-cut, rounded, complete, stood forth like a delicate cameo beside the rude buffoonery of T. Macready Lane, the coarse villany of Albrecht, and the stiff mannerisms of the remainder of the cast. They were automatons as compared with a figure instinct ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... venerable priest and honors him for the gathering tears he sees there; no wonder his own turn proudly, fondly, down on her as her soft hand is placed in his nervous palm, and Blake sets his teeth to repel the gasp of delight with which he hears the clear-cut enunciation of every word of his solemn troth. For the life of him he cannot help thinking how many a time he has heard that voice in the wild days on the frontier, in Indian battle or in garrison debate, and marked the same ring of determination when he was deeply moved. "By gad, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... very much more intelligible in its beginnings—to its chronicler, at least—than it becomes when it is, so to speak, overhead. We all know the clear-cut magnificence of the great thundercloud against the sky, its tremendous deliberation, its hills and valleys of curdling mist, fraught with God knows what potential of destruction in volts and ohms; the ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan |
