"Connoisseur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did. At least the Herr Consul at Sammtstadt informs me of a marriage-certificate issued to one Clinch of Chicago, and Kolnische of Koln; and there is an amusing story extant in the Verein at Sammtstadt, of an American connoisseur of Rhine wines, who mistook a flask of Cognac and rock-candy, used for "craftily qualifying" lower grades of wine to the American standard, for ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... opinion, consists in the beauty of its colouring rather than in its figuring. This ceramic ware, as my readers probably know, differs greatly in appearance, quality, and, I may add, in price according to the particular part of the country in which it is produced. It is not necessary to be an art connoisseur to grasp the fact that, say, the famous Satsuma ware is distinct in almost every respect from that of Imari, Kaga, Ise, Raku, Kyoto, &c. All these different wares have charms peculiar to each. It is really marvellous ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... notwithstanding the roughness of his aspect, was rather knick-knacky in his tastes; a great patron of small inventions, such as the improved ne plus ultra cork-screw, and the latest patent snuffers. He also trifled with horticulture, dabbled in tulips, was a connoisseur in pinks, and had gained a prize for polyanthuses. The garden was under the especial care of his pretty niece, Miss Susan, a grateful warm-hearted girl, who thought she never could do enough to please her good uncle, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... Though a great connoisseur of feminine charm and beauty, and superficially susceptible and excitable, with all this, as many women knew, Harry was as ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... a great connoisseur," opined the other heavily. His mouth had gone slack and he looked a perfect and grotesque imbecile under his wig-like crop of white hair. Positively I thought he would begin to slobber. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... honored me with a large attendance at my rooms, and sat late at night, and drank my wine and water, and smoked my cigars, with a relish that did me great credit, as it showed that I am something of a connoisseur in the choice of such luxuries. And then they laughed so loudly at my jokes, no matter how poor they were, that, for a few days after my arrival home, I really thought the air of Australia had improved and sharpened ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... seven years' residence partly in Berlin and partly in Dresden, he returned to Italy, living at Venice and then at Pisa, where he died on the 3rd of May 1764. Frederick the Great erected to his memory a monument on the Campo Santo at Pisa. He was a man of wide knowledge, a connoisseur in art and music, and the friend of most of the leading authors of his time. His chief work on art is the Saggi sopra le belle arti ("Essays on the Fine Arts''). Among his other works may be mentioned Poems, Travels in Russia, Essay on Painting, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... details, the enlivening effect was not diminished. There was no splendour, but there was taste everywhere, unusual taste—the taste, you would have said, of a travelled man, a scholar, and a gentleman. A series of Italian views decked the walls. Each of these was a specimen of true art. A connoisseur had selected them; they were genuine and valuable. Even by candle-light the bright clear skies, the soft distances, with blue air quivering between the eye and the hills, the fresh tints, and well-massed ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... book iii., chap. iv., Sec. 1 and 2. But Ingulph merits a more particular eulogium. The editors of that stupendous, and in truth, matchless collection of national history, entitled Recueil des Historiens des Gaules, thus say of him: "Il avoit tout vu en bon connoisseur, et ce qu'il rapporte, il l'ecrit en homme lettre, judicieux et vrai:" tom. xi., p. xlij. In case any reader of this note and lover of romance literature should happen to be unacquainted with the French language, I will add, from the same respectable authority, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six young children (he had left them in charge of a sister of his to come out there), and the passion of his life was pigeon-flying. He was an enthusiast and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons. After work hours he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a talk about his children and his pigeons; at work, when he had to crawl in the mud under the bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard of his in a kind of white serviette he brought ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... McAllister went to spend the summer at Baden-Baden. The Prince of Prussia, later the Emperor William, was there. It pained the young American to find that the royal visitor was no connoisseur, gulping his wine instead of sipping and lingering over it. But there is haste to express intense admiration. "His habit of walking two hours under the trees of the Allee Lichtenthal was also mine, and it was with ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... at present. The Adventurer, by Hawksworth, is completely trite and vapid, aping all the faults of Johnson's style, without any thing to atone for them. The sentences are often absolutely unmeaning; and one half of each might regularly be left blank. The World, and Connoisseur, which followed, are a little better; and in the last of these there is one good idea, that of a man in indifferent health, who judges of every one's title to respect from their possession of this blessing, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... forfeited the right to be loved long. She knew the time would soon come, when she could not hold nor attract men. It comes always to women who dissipate themselves among the many. Yet she loved the love of an hour; was a connoisseur of the love-tokens of men to her; no material loss was counted in the balance against a winning such as this promised to be. Here was a big intact passion which she called unto herself with every ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... bitterly, "is Schreckenheim, the greatest tattoo artist in the world. He is the king of them all. A connoisseur in tattooish art can tell a Schreckenheim as easily as a picture-dealer can tell a Corot. But no matter! Mr. Gubb, you are a detective and I believe what is told detectives is held inviolable. Yes. You—and all Riverbank—see in me an ordinary citizen, wealthy, perhaps, but ordinary. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... was presently absorbed in an artistic examination of a number of silver ornaments, crucifixes, relics and suchlike objects of virtu, which the Duchess had gathered together. He handled them like a connoisseur. Others of that institution had promised to attend the party but, on being overhauled by the conscientious Vice-President, were found to be unpresentable at ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... backwards by a menacing advance. He dodged, and with the dangerous iron tried to guard his head from a threatening fist. Mr. Baker ceased grunting for a moment.—"Good! By Jove," murmured appreciatively Mr. Creighton in the tone of a connoisseur.—"Don't tech me," snarled Donkin, backing away.—"Then go. Go faster."—"Don't yer 'it me.... I will pull yer up afore the magistryt.... I'll show yer up." Captain Allistoun made a long stride, and Donkin, turning ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... They were of different sizes, shapes, and colors, and she was laying them on in a pretty pattern of stars and crescents. She had just stopped to look at her work, her red lips shut together with the air of a connoisseur, and her head on one side, like a canary, ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... is the loveliest of arts, Painting—embracing as it does the beautiful, the great, and the pathetic, whatever charms the eye and moves the heart—we are sensible of more than common pleasure, and become soothed into dreams and visions of our own, even by the gentle garrulity of a connoisseur. Is there any one who pretends to acquaintance with literature, however uninitiated he may be in the mysteries of the arts, who has not read the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and who has not wished, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... evidence of having come from the brush of the master. But we cannot guarantee it. There is, however, a gentleman present who is amply qualified to pass upon the merits of this work. With his permission"—his eye sought Lanyard's—"I venture to request the opinion of Monsieur Michael Lanyard, the noted connoisseur!" ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... stigma was cast upon the noble family of swine. The words-of-three-letters lesson in the old blue spelling book begins with Piggy's biography. He was fat; he had the soul of a rat, the habits of a bat, and the magnanimity of a cat. . . He wore expensive clothes; and was a connoisseur in starvation. He could look at a shop-girl and tell you to an hour how long it had been since she had eaten anything more nourishing than marshmallows and tea. He hung about the shopping districts, and prowled around in department ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... nicest taffy I ever ate," answered Chester enthusiastically, as if he were a connoisseur in all kinds of taffies. The rosy ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... verily my adventure is wondrous and were it graven with needle-gravers on the eye-corners it would be a warning to whoso would be warned and a matter of thought to whoso would think. Learn, O Commander of the Faithful, that my father was a jeweller man, a connoisseur in gems, who owned no son save myself; but when I had increased in age and had grown in stature and Allah had given me comeliness and perfection and beauty and brilliancy and plenty and good fortune, and my sire had brought me up ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... He had filled their two glasses with champagne and was slowly emptying his own, with his eyes fixed on the statuette of Mercury. He turned it about on its pedestal and examined it with the eye of a delighted connoisseur: ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... building which forms the gateway is crowned by a pediment of stones, each 52 feet in length and three in thickness; all is vast, all is grand about this noble front, which is justly the admiration of every architectural connoisseur, no matter from what part of the ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... lines, were full of love and kindness. The throat was exquisitely round. The bust, well curved and carefully covered, attracted the eye and inspired reverie. It lacked, no doubt, the grace which a fitting dress can bestow; but to a connoisseur the non-flexibility of her figure had its own charm. Eugenie, tall and strongly made, had none of the prettiness which pleases the masses; but she was beautiful with a beauty which the spirit recognizes, and none but artists ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... chatty, easy-going, home-loving kind of body, such as I found Mrs. McIntyre to be. She was, as English and Scotch ladies are apt to be, very oddly dressed in very nice and choice articles. It takes the eye of the connoisseur to appreciate these oddly dressed Englishwomen. They are like antique china; but a discriminating eye soon sees the real quality that underlies their quaint adornment. Mrs. McIntyre was scrupulously, exquisitely ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Anton's benefit while he smoothed his hand over Bessie's back. Tresler followed suit, feeling for the impression of the saddle-cloth in the hair. It was there, and he went on inspecting the legs, with the air of a connoisseur. The other saddle-horse they treated in the same way, but the drivers were left alone. For some minutes they stood discussing the two animals and then passed out again. Anton had displayed not the least interest in their doings, although ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... forgotten the original cause of the turmoil, and now took a pleasing interest in proving to the young man that he was intoxicated—a great disgrace for an honorable painter. The stout, smiling gentleman from the arbor, who was—as I afterward learned—a great connoisseur and patron of Art, and who was always ready to lend his aid for the love of Science, had thrown aside his baton, and showed his broad face, fairly shining with good humor, in the midst of the thickest ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... him to take out the weapons and some little time was spent in handling them, George Washington examining them with the air of a connoisseur. The Major asserted that he had never seen a prettier spot, and George Washington, immediately striking an attitude, echoed the sentiment. He was, indeed, so transported with its beauty that he declared it ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... was worth knowing—medical, artistic, social. And amongst the rest was an Englishman called Lord Littimer, his son, and an exceedingly clever nephew of his, Henson by name, who was the son's tutor. Littimer was a savant, a scholar, and a fine connoisseur as regarded pictures. He was popularly supposed to have the finest collection of old prints in England. He would travel anywhere in search of something fresh, and the rumour of some apocryphal treasure in Amsterdam had brought him thither. He and I were friends from the ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... years, but it would take him six years to obtain head and beak." In Saxony the importance of the principle of selection in regard to merino sheep is so fully recognised, that men follow it as a trade: the sheep are placed on a table and are studied, like a picture by a connoisseur; this is done three times at intervals of months, and the sheep are each time marked and classed, so that the very best may ultimately be selected ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... The average man, who may exercise considerable taste in personal adornment, in the decoration of the home, or in the choice of poetry and painting, is at a loss when called upon to tell what art is or to explain why he calls one thing "beautiful" and another "ugly." Even the artist and the connoisseur, skilled to produce or accurate in judgment, are often wanting in clear and consistent ideas about their own works or appreciations. Here, as elsewhere, we meet the contrast between feeling and doing, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... had started a shop in the town, and kept it going by means of a manager. Even in that light it was a handsome old shop. The walls were lined with polished oak, so was the low ceiling, and there was an oak staircase leading from one storey to another which a connoisseur in staircases might have coveted. "Robinson's" was a positive feature in Redcross, and if it had been anything else than a good shop of its kind would have been greatly admired. The son of the founder of the shop was also reckoned, to begin with, as good as his professional neighbours. He was college-bred, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... OUTdo! I never saw anything like it!" The connoisseur patted it a little this way and a little that. "It is a dream! Did the hat ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... grave savage squatted by the track playing on a sort of mandoline-shaped instrument. It had two strings, and he twanged these alternately, without the slightest effort to change their pitch by stopping with his fingers. He bent his head sidewise, and listened with the meticulous attention of a connoisseur. We stopped at that place for fully ten minutes, but not for a second did he leave off twanging his two strings, nor did he even momentarily relax ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... talk about him, his figure, and his face. Madame Carre-Lamadon, who had known many officers and judged them as a connoisseur, thought him not at all bad-looking; she even regretted that he was not a Frenchman, because in that case he would have made a very handsome hussar, with whom all the women would ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... hell-glass of new spirit, violent assault liquefied, they want a drink that will catch them by the throat and assert its prerogative going down. What a beamy old imposition is that rich brown sherry of city banquets, over which the idiot of a connoisseur cunningly smacks his lips and rolls his moist eyes. If he were only told how much of it was real and how much artificial, would he not gasp and crimson! It would be unmerciful to inform him that ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... (1767-1841), critic and divine, was Rector of Harrietsham and Woodchurch, a Prebendary of Winchester and of Salisbury. He was Bampton Lecturer in 1802, and, soon afterwards, was appointed sub-preceptor to the Princess Charlotte of Wales. He was a connoisseur of architecture and painting, and passed much of his time in Italy and at Rome. When he was at Pisa he preached in a private room in the basement story of the house in Pisa where Shelley was living, and fell under ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... only used a couple of rooms; but these were furnished with luxury and good taste. A closet was filled with wine; the plate was of silver, the napery elegant; a good picture hung upon the walls, a gift (as Utterson supposed) from Henry Jekyll, who was much of a connoisseur; and the carpets were of many plies and agreeable in colour. At this moment, however, the rooms bore every mark of having been recently and hurriedly ransacked; clothes lay about the floor, with their ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... people who were not white, but with people who were not black enough to contrast grotesquely with white people,—who in fact were of that near approach to the ordinary American in race and color which leaves, at the last degree, every one but the connoisseur in doubt whether they are Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-African. Quite as striking as this novelty of the material was the author's thorough mastery of it, and his unerring knowledge of the life he had chosen in its peculiar racial characteristics. But ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... moved slowly, and the people shouted. From every window, burgher's or nobleman's, handsome women greeted the handsome cardinal who was known to be a connoisseur in female beauty. The crowd outside followed him to the palace-gates, and when his carriage stopped, they shouted so vociferously, that the noise reached the ears of the empress; and so long, that their shouts had not ceased ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... story. I am invited to a dinner where a rich New Yorker has asked some connoisseur friends to inspect his new purchase, a Raffaelle Madonna and child, for which he has just given a fabulous amount of dollars. I was asked for special judgment as an artistic Englishman. Well: the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... artist. Simply a connoisseur. Now that I look more closely, your eyebrows are slanted a full degree too much ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... by. Another glance at the 'Break of Day,' and another exclamation: 'Too much blue, you blockhead!' The insulted plasterer turned round to reconnoitre the speaker, and as if concluding, from his appearance, that he could be no very great connoisseur, he quietly set to work again, shrugging his shoulders in wonder how it could possibly be any business of his whether the sky was red, green, or blue. For the fourth time the unknown lounger repeated his unwelcome criticism: 'Too ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... on the ground tier, Mrs. Shiffney settled herself with Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and Jonson Ramer. Susan Fleet was next door with friends, a highly cultivated elderly man, famous as a lawyer and connoisseur, and his wife. Alston Lake's family and most of his many friends were in the stalls, where Armand Gillier had a seat close to a gangway, so that he could easily slip out to pay his homage to Enid Mardon. His head was soaked with eau-de-quinine. On ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Church of Wells. The Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire have kindly allowed me to reproduce a part of their plan of Birkenhead Priory. Illustrations were also kindly lent by the Clarendon Press, the Cambridge University Press, Mr. John Murray, Mr. Fisher Unwin, the Editor of The Connoisseur, and Mr. G. Coffey, of the Royal Irish Academy. A small portion of the first chapter has appeared in The Library, and is reprinted by kind permission of the editors. Mr. C. W. Sutton, M.A., City Librarian of Manchester, has been in every way kind ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... Mr. Cupples applied himself to the enjoyment of the view for a few minutes before ordering his meal. With a connoisseur's eye he explored the beauty of the rugged coast, where a great pierced rock rose from a glassy sea, and the ordered loveliness of the vast tilted levels of pasture and tillage and woodland that sloped gently up from the cliffs toward the distant ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... toward the room. Listlessness gave her an added dignity, a new charm. Karl's eyes flamed as he watched her. He was a connoisseur in women; he had known many who were perhaps more regularly beautiful, but none, he felt, so lovely. Her freshness and youth made Olga, beautifully dressed, superbly easy, look sophisticated and a trifle hard. Even her coldness appealed to him. He had a feeling that the coldness was only ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... you that book for one franc twenty-five centimes, Monsieur," replied Coccoz, whose face at once beamed with joy. "It is historical; and you will be pleased with it. I know now just what suits you. I see that you are a connoisseur. To-morrow I will bring you the Crimes des Papes. It is a good book. I will bring you the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... way of handling the glass, in his preliminary snuff at the aroma, in his first cautious sip of the wine, and the gustatory skill with which he gave his palate the full advantage of it, it was impossible not to recognize the connoisseur. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be a connoisseur of antiques," he said. "Your dagger is certainly a collector's gem, and your revolver is equally out of date. I recommend an automatic the next ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... poorer classes of natives; large quantities of it come from Yloilo. In Panay Island a kind of texture called Husi is made of a mixture of fine hemp (lupis) and pine-apple leaf fibre. Sometimes this fabric is palmed off on foreigners as pure pina stuff, but a connoisseur can easily detect the hemp filament by the touch of the material, there being in the hemp-fibre, as in horsehair, a certain amount of stiffness and a tendency to spring back which, when compressed into a ball ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... literary style—who worked epigram and antithesis. And the style of each is identical with the other. That Paine wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence needs no argument for the literary connoisseur—he simply says, "Read it." But while we know that both Paine and Jefferson fed on Rousseau for ten years, it is not so clear that they collaborated. They got their information from the same source—one in England and the other in America—and met ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... that there was something to say, after all, for this queer younger generation who dare everything! He supposed that Bubbles was going to entertain them with a clever exhibition of brilliant acting. Lionel Varick was no mean actor himself, and it was as connoisseur, as well as expert, that he admired the gift when it was practised ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... of sentiments the violence of which would only become manifest in after life. Her mouth, a trifle drawn in, expressed a haughty pride in keeping with her hand, her chin, her brows, and her beautiful figure. And—as a last diagnostic to guide the judgment of a connoisseur—Natalie's pure voice, a most seductive voice, had certain metallic tones. Softly as that brassy ring was managed, and in spite of the grace with which its sounds ran through the compass of the voice, that organ revealed ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... a connoisseur in bric-a-brac and mediaeval art, his studio being head-quarters for the students interested in such matters. He and his coterie had persuaded themselves that a certain lost Velasquez could be traced to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... few chapters afterwards—that of the Abbess and Novice of the Convent of Andouillets! The adult male person is not so much shocked at the coarseness of this story as astounded at the bathos of its introduction. It is as though some matchless connoisseur in wine, after having a hundred times demonstrated the unerring discrimination of his palate for the finest brands, should then produce some vile and loaded compound, and invite us to drink it with all the relish with which he seems to be swallowing it himself. This story of the Abbess ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... get" amused the crowd, but the Major, with the gravity of a connoisseur, walked around the beast, nipped his legs, ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... the taste of the period: "It was Mr. Western's custom every afternoon, as soon as he was drunk, to hear his daughter play on the harpsichord; for he was a great lover of music, and perhaps, had he lived in town, might have passed as a connoisseur, for he always excepted against the finest compositions ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... byway of the graphic art; and the images of the Chaldaeans, portrayed upon the wall, with vermilion, and other hues, formed the favorite adornment of palaces and public buildings, at once employing the artist, gratifying the taste of the native connoisseur, and attracting the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... two months. We have nothing new and excellent in your charming art of painting. In fact, I do not feel an interest in any pencil but that of David. But I must not hazard details on a subject wherein I am so ignorant, and you such a connoisseur. Adieu, my dear Madam; permit me always the honor of esteeming and being esteemed by you, and of tendering you the homage of that respectful attachment with which I am, and shall ever be, Dear Madam, your most ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... different from our own,—is displayed in the construction of gigantic edifices, quite as much as in jewellery and goldsmith's work, and in the manufacture of those costly trifles of which the east was beginning to be passionately fond. Like a wise man, Chardin takes a partner, as good a connoisseur as himself. At first Chardin only traversed Persia in order to reach Ormuz and to embark for the Indies. The following year he returns to Ispahan, and applies himself to learn the language of the country, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... traveller was adopting artificial means for drowning the pangs of separation. I glanced round the deck and took a running inventory of my compagnons de voyage. They presented the usual types met with upon these occasions. There was no striking face among them. I speak as a connoisseur, for faces are a specialty of mine. I pounce upon a characteristic feature as a botanist does on a flower, and bear it away with me to analyse at my leisure, and classify and label it in my little anthropological museum. There was nothing worthy of me here. Twenty types of young America ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Nevada, is proud of the world-famous Wingfield racing stables, and not without reason. Mr. George Wingfield is a great connoisseur of horseflesh and has spared neither pains nor expense in order to add the best thoroughbreds to his stock. Even as I write, the news reaches me that an expert has left for England to purchase for Mr. Wingfield four mares and a stud, Atheling, a ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... before relinquishing the loveliest hand in the world a connoisseur will naturally kiss each fingertip: this is merely a tribute to perfection, and has no personal application. Besides, a kiss, wherever deposited, as Jurgen pointed out, is, when you think of it, but a ceremonial, of no intrinsic wrongfulness. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... soil, rejoice. But the vowels, when they appear together, sometimes belong to separate syllables; as in Stoic, Stoicism. Oi unaccented, sometimes has the sound of close or curt i; as in avoirdupois, connoisseur, tortoise. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... and comfort. He has not yet ventured upon engaging a valet-de-chambre, it being agreed between him and J. J. that two travelling artists have no right to such an aristocratic appendage; but he has bought a snug little britzska at Frankfort (the youth has very polite tastes, is already a connoisseur in wine, and has no scruple in ordering the best at the hotels), and the britzska travels in company with Lady Anne's caravan, either in its wake so as to be out of reach of the dust, or more frequently ahead of that enormous vehicle and its tender, in which come the children and the governess ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and attacked him. Lampourde, on his side, was ready for him, and pleased with the baron's way of handling his weapon, said to himself, though in an audible tone, "Now for a little fun." Then began a contest that would have delighted and astonished a connoisseur in fencing—such swift, lightning-like flashing of the blades, as they gave and parried cut and thrust—the clashing of the steel, the blue sparks that leaped from the contending swords as the fight grew more furious—Lampourde ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... had reported what was in them. Her description, however, had fallen far short of the reality, and the ladies held their breath, as one after another of the beautiful gowns was taken out for exhibition. Few had ever seen anything just like them. Homer Smith had prided himself upon being a connoisseur in ladies' costumes and had directed all of Amy's, taking care that there was no sham about them. Everything was real, from the fabric itself to the lace which trimmed it, and which alone had cost him hundreds of dollars. And now they were at a Rummage Sale, and the managers ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... not to German literature," said Muller, quickly; "but every one knows your excellency to be a profound connoisseur of oriental languages; and it is well known, too, that you devote a great deal of attention to them, notwithstanding the immense burden of business constantly weighing ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... epic poem your lordship bade me look at, upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu's, 'tis out, my lord, in every one of its dimensions. Admirable connoisseur! —Sterne. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the Italian! First, because it abounds more than any other in trash; and secondly, because when any thing really good comes into it, the dealers take care to put their price upon it. The much prized and paraded object has in all probability already been in England, (whence, on the death of its connoisseur possessor, and the dispersion of his effects, it has again returned to its natal soil,) and is now, it may be, to be had for twice or three times as much, as you yourself might have procured it for in Christie's auction-rooms a few months before, unless you possess an accurate taste, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Immediately and rather spunkily she had borne him a son and, as if completely devitalized by the magnificence of this performance, she had thenceforth effaced herself within the shadowy dimensions of the nursery. The boy, Adam Ulysses Patch, became an inveterate joiner of clubs, connoisseur of good form, and driver of tandems—at the astonishing age of twenty-six he began his memoirs under the title "New York Society as I Have Seen It." On the rumor of its conception this work was eagerly bid for among publishers, but as it proved after ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and medical crusades even the most patient are weary, and we gladly turn to something real, in the suffrages of a by-gone great man of acknowledged fame—Ben Jonson. Ben Jonson loved the 'durne weed,' and describes its every accident with the gusto of a connoisseur. Hobbes smoked, after his early dinner, pipes innumerable. Milton never went to bed without a pipe and a glass of water, which I cannot ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... deep into the embers was a mongrel species of snub-nosed tea-pot, which fumed strongly of catnip-tea, a little of which gracious beverage Miss Roxy was preparing in an old-fashioned cracked India china tea-cup, tasting it as she did so with the air of a connoisseur. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... not only a true lover of art, but an excellent connoisseur. He did more to elevate the arts and sciences in France than all the monarchs together who had preceded him. It was a part of his policy to honor and reward every man of genius, no matter what his origin, and thus ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... that the canvass before me lived. I saw its eye all but glisten, its lips all but open to speak; the very marble of its cheek begin to glow; when I was awakened by a lively voice, saying, in French—"Ah, Mr Marston, I perceive that you are a connoisseur." I turned, and saw the speaker, a man somewhat above the middle size; a remarkably noble-looking personage; in full dress even at that hour, powdered and perfumed, and altogether a court figure; his hands loaded with jewels, and a diamond star ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... just as necessary," pursued the old connoisseur, when Peter was reseated, "it is just as necessary for a gentleman to have a delicate palate for the tints of the vine as it is for him to have a delicate eye for the tints of the palette. Nature bestowed a taste both in art and wine on man, which ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... comprehend dimly why Lady Throckmorton disliked her, and thought her unsuited to Denis Oglethorpe. There was an absence of anything girl-like in her fine, ivory-pale face, somehow, though it was a young face and a handsome face, at whose fine lines and clear contour even a connoisseur could not have caviled. Its long almond-shaped, agate-gray eyes, black-fringed and lustrous as they were, still were silent eyes—they did not ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... pertaining to nationality he was a true hidalgo. Indeed, there was a touch of vanity in the way he examined the sparkle of the champagne he now poured into Elsie's empty glass. He scrutinized the wine with the air of a connoisseur. He was looking for the gas to rise in three or four well-defined spirals. And he nodded doubtfully, before drinking it, ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... his voice. Varvara looked at him steadily, resting her elbows on the piano, with her white hands on a level with her lips. The song ended, "Charmant! Charmante idee," she said, with the quiet confidence of a connoisseur. "Tell me, have you written anything for a ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... connoisseur, and, reading, herself, added meditatively, "I should hate anyhow, for you to have that thing. The devil would ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... really mattered was a tall, gloomy, dyspeptic man, hard to approach, but once known he never failed to harp on his favorite string,—the old masters and the Barbizon school of painting. This man had all the ready veneer of the art connoisseur. He used to talk by the hour about the great pictures he had seen, and gave each artist a descriptive niche for what he thought him famous: such as, the expression of Rubens; the grace of Raphael; the purity of Domenichino; the correggiosity of Correggio; ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... Fritz, what stuff you can talk!" grumbled his father, sipping his Johannisberger with the air of a connoisseur. "When I was of your age, Fritz, I had—hush, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... what degree of skill he has attained, reverence that which surpasses it, and know the principles of right in what he has been able to accomplish. It is impossible to make every boy an artist or a connoisseur, but quite possible to make him understand the meaning of art in its rudiments, and to make him modest enough to forbear expressing, in after life, judgments which he has not knowledge ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... for his Catholic Majesty, Selim was satisfied to secure himself in the possession of the Isle of Venus, with its fruitful vineyards. "To shed the blood" of Cyprian vines, in which he was so enthusiastic a connoisseur, was to him a more exhilarating occupation than to pursue, amid carnage and hardships, the splendid dream ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of surprise Came to the "old man's" features; but he hid it By making of his hand a cylinder And looking through it, like a connoisseur. These were his exclamations: "Clever! Ay! Style somewhat new; landscape a shade too bright; The sky too blue, eh? Still a clever picture,— One of your best. Shall we say twenty dollars?" Taking the picture, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... He waited for Captain Plessy to speak. Captain Plessy, however, was in no hurry to begin. He had completely lost his air of contemptuous raillery, he was measuring Faversham warily with the eyes of a connoisseur. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... the banker sat on the piazza. Adah was near, with some light sewing, and the connoisseur was leisurely admiring her. Well he might, for in her neat morning gown she again seemed the embodiment of a June day. She rose to meet me, with a faint accession to her delicate color, ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... rank commanded compliment—found the courage to applaud Sandwich as a scholar and an antiquarian, on the strength of an account of some travels in the Mediterranean, which the world has long since willingly let die. But the few weeks or months of foreign travel that permitted Sandwich to pose as a connoisseur when he was not practising as a profligate could not inspire him with the humor or the appreciation of Wilkes, and a friendship only cemented by a common taste for common vices soon fell asunder. There is a story to the effect that the quarrel began with a practical joke which Wilkes ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... poet, who took a cut from some weekly of the day and touched it up with black, red, and green ink to represent the genial "Dock" seated in an arm-chair before a cheery fire, with the inevitable claret bottle on a stand within easy reach and a glass poised in his hand ready for the sip of a connoisseur, while the devotee of Kit North and Father Prout beamed graciously ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... raised her eyes upwards—it seemed to him no heaven could fail to open at such a look! Even the old man, Pantaleone, who with his shoulder propped against the doorpost, and his chin and mouth tucked into his capacious cravat, was listening solemnly with the air of a connoisseur—even he was admiring the girl's lovely face and marvelling at it, though one would have thought he must have been used to it! When she had finished the duet with her daughter, Frau Lenore observed that Emilio had a fine voice, like a silver bell, but that now he was at the age ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... she thought it prudent not to attempt to cut short the phase (she adopted that classification) prematurely—an imputation she should incur if, without more delay, she were to "shut down," as Verena said, on the young connoisseur. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... was long and black, but it was as fine as silk, and shone like the plumage of a blackbird. There was not that oily swarthiness in the complexion, which makes so many Indian women hideous in the eyes of a connoisseur of beauty; but the cheeks of these girls were a pale olive, and sometimes, when they were excited, a faint tinge of rose came out like the delicate pink flush that appears in the olive-grey of the morning. ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... and every "handling," and that no man could impose a copy upon me for an original. "And can it be possible," cried I aloud, "that while picture-dealers revel in fortune—fellows whose traffic goes no higher than coloured canvass—that I, the connoisseur of humanity, the moral toxicologist—I, who read men as I read a French comedy—that I should be obliged to deny myself the generous claret my doctor thinks essential to my system, and that repose and change of scene he deems of more consequence to ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... moving with the rhythm of the waltz she no longer merely followed the music. She and it were one now. And Hanson, a connoisseur, familiar with the best, at least in his part of the world, recognized the artist whose technique is so perfect that it is absorbed, assimilated and forgotten; but its essence remains, nevertheless, a sure foundation upon which to build ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... a connoisseur's due appreciation of a good old brand, sipped at his glass slowly, while Spruce, hastily swallowing his measure of the cordial, wiped his mouth furtively with the back of his hand, murmuring: "Your good 'elth, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... front. Suppose the Hermes Kriophorus lifted into one of those empty niches, and the archaeologist will inform you rightly, as at Auxerre or Wells, of Italian influence, perhaps of Italian workmen, and along with them indirect old Greek influence coming northwards; while the connoisseur assures us that all good art, at its respective stages of development, is in essential qualities everywhere alike. It is observed, as a note of imperfect skill, that in that carved block of stone the animal is insufficiently detached from the ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... sky—no less than a buyer for the Louvre. Those were the halcyon days of the Empire, and money was plenty. Poor Bastianini's bust was brought out with all due mystery, duly admired by the infallible French connoisseur, and eventually purchased by him for the imperial collection for, I think, five thousand francs—at all events, for a sum sufficiently large to give the man who had bought the bust from the poor artist the right to demand his supplementary payment. He did so. But the greed of the dealer prevailed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... To a connoisseur this medley of architecture was a great eye-sore, but to the world in general the very irregularity of the gray old pile added to its picturesque entirety, and somehow the ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... leave I'll put it to the test; Affect myself, for thy fair daughter, love— Make him my confidant—dilate to him Upon the graces of her heart and mind, Feature and form—that well may comment bear— Till—like the practised connoisseur, who finds A gem of heart out in a household picture The unskilled owner held so cheap he grudged Renewal of the chipped and tarnished frame, But values now as priceless—I arouse him Into a quick sense of the worth of that Whose ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... his heart, and my rising perfume assisted the noble sacrifice. Then he lifted the books from their places,—one, two, three,—the volumes he prized the most, ancient classical editions that must have been an El Dorado of themselves to such a student and connoisseur as he. For a moment he lingered over the open pages with a loving, tremulous tenderness of look and touch, as though they had been faces of dear and life-long friends; then he turned and looked at the picture in the ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... all good art. It is therefore not without a certain retributive malignity that I end these examples of the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion, and of the consequent bias to artistic appreciation, with that of the Nemesis dogging the steps of the connoisseur. We have all heard of some purchase, or all-but-purchase, of a wonderful masterpiece on the authority of some famous expert; and of the masterpiece proving to be a mere school imitation, and occasionally even a certified modern forgery. The foregoing remarks on the storage and transfer of ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... archway of the kitchen fireplace, where the very atmosphere seems to be redolent with aphorisms first uttered by ancient monks, and jokes derived from Master Slender's note-book, and gossip about the wrecks of the Spanish Armada. No connoisseur could pore more lovingly over an ancient black-letter volume, or the mellow hues of some old painter's masterpiece. He feels the charm of our historical continuity, where the immemorial past blends indistinguishably with the present, to the remotest recesses of his imagination. But then the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... illustrations by the Kokka Company, and written with as much charm as insight. Petrucci's knowledge of Chinese gave him an authority in interpreting Chinese art which writers on the subject have rarely combined with so much understanding of art in general, though as a connoisseur he was sometimes over-sanguine. His translation from a classic of Chinese art-criticism, originally published in a learned magazine, has lately appeared in book form. With his friend, Professor Chavannes, ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... avoid stultification he must also cultivate his tastes, for it now becomes incumbent on him to discriminate with some nicety between the noble and the ignoble in consumable goods. He becomes a connoisseur in creditable viands of various degrees of merit, in manly beverages and trinkets, in seemly apparel and architecture, in weapons, games, dancers, and the narcotics. This cultivation of aesthetic ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... arbitrator, arbiter, umpire, referee; connoisseur, critic; puisne; deemster (Isle of Man). Associated Words: judicial, judicially, judicable, judicatory, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... refusal, accompanied by some such gallant speech as, that he would drink to the ladies only with his eyes; but nothing of the kind happened. He searched the list for a moment with the absorption of a connoisseur, then unblushingly ordered a bottle of Romanee Conti, which wine, he carelessly announced, he preferred to champagne, as being "less obvious." The price, however, would be pretty obvious on Mrs. Kidder's bill, I reflected; ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... which appear to have been formed in drowned valleys, where the normal fluviatile conditions are modified by those characteristic of lakes. The occurrence of sapphires in Zanskar gives the State also an interest to the mineralogist and connoisseur ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... day I will tell you; but, whatever you do, let nobody help you, and don't confide your secret to any one in the world; do you see, a connoisseur by merely looking at the bulb would be able to distinguish its value; and so, my dearest Rosa, be careful in locking up the third sucker which ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... adding that Mr. X was an enlightened connoisseur of bronzes and china, and asking me to show ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... of the request the peddler held the platter to the keeper. The argument was good, and straightway, assuming the air of a connoisseur, the master of the house squeezed a medlar, and raising an orange to his nose smelt it, calculated its weight, and answered: "Why, yes—come right along to my sitting-room. I will get some knives; and when we are through, we will have a bowl of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... certain picture was said by a connoisseur to be 'very well painted for a gentleman!' a species of {324} negative praise which gave but little satisfaction to the artist. Should the amateur printer, however, meet with as much, he will be very well contented. All he can himself say for his work is 'that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... born in 1858, occupied the post of Minister of Public Instruction at the time of Count Witte's premiership. In 1907 he was a candidate for election to the Duma, as deputy from Petrograd. A distinguished archeologist and connoisseur of art, he was for many years the vice-president of the Imperial ...
— The Shield • Various
... she is in that pretty gown," thought he, a connoisseur in gowns. And "Who would take him for a draper now?" thought she, noting the vigorous frame and the perfect correctness of its garb. As a matter of fact, no one did take him for a draper, and no one cared what he was, since he was Mrs Simpson's ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... or lay on brackets and tables, but no books such as our modern time produces were to be seen; only tied- up bundles of papyri and curious little tablets of clay inscribed with mysterious hieroglyphs. Flowers adorned every corner—many of them strange blossoms which a connoisseur would have declared to be unknown in Egypt,—palms and ferns and foliage of every description were banked up against the walls in graceful profusion, and from the latticed windows the light filtered through colored ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... preparatory glance at the bottom of this article—as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which, while it reads, seems as though it read not,) never fails to consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollet—methinks I hear you exclaim, Reader, Who ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... you are a connoisseur in that. But, look here, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you said just now that we had given our word to behave properly. Remember it. I advise you to control yourself. But, if you begin to play the fool I don't intend to be associated ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... have heard of a connoisseur who was one day in an auction-room where there was an inimitable piece of painting of fruits and flowers. The connoisseur would not give his opinion of the picture till he had first examined the catalogue; and, finding it was done by an Englishman, he pulled out his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... purr of pleasure over the tools, handling them with the fingers of the artist and admiring them with the eyes of the connoisseur. "The best I could get. All made to order. Tested blue steel. I never kicked at the price, and you wouldn't believe me if I told you what this layout cost in cold cash. But they paid. Good stuff always pays in the long ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Mr. Linmere arrived. Margie met him with cold composure. He scanned her fair face and almost faultless form, with the eye of a connoisseur, and congratulated himself on the fortune which was to give him, such a bride without the perplexity of a wooing. She was beautiful and attractive, and he had feared she might be ugly, which would have been a dampener on his satisfaction. True, her wealth would have counter-balanced any ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... ensem rotare, that is, to cut off a human head with one whirl of the sword. Even this became insipid, as wanting one main element of misery to the sufferer, and an indispensable condiment to the jaded palate of the connoisseur, viz., a lingering duration. As a pleasant variety, therefore, the tormentors were introduced with their various instruments of torture; and many a dismal tragedy in that mode of human suffering was conducted ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... by the appellation of Mr. "Vagabond!" The "Adventurer" cannot be considered as a fortunate title; it is not appropriate to those pleasing miscellanies, for any writer is an adventurer. The "Lounger," the "Mirror," and even the "Connoisseur," if examined accurately, present nothing in the titles descriptive of the works. As for the "World," it could only have been given by the fashionable egotism of its authors, who considered the world as merely a circuit round St. James's Street. When the celebrated father of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... me—Mr. Clarence Hervey—an acquaintance, and great admirer of my Lady Delacour. He is really an uncommonly pleasant young man, is highly connected, and has a fine independent fortune. Besides, he is a man of wit and gallantry, quite a connoisseur in female grace and beauty—just the man to bring a new face into fashion: so, my dear Belinda, I make it a point—look well when he is introduced to you, and remember, what I have so often told you, that nobody can look well without ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... and is distinguished only by its intense repose of light." Benevenuto Cellini speaks of the mist of Italy. "Repose of light" is rather a novelty—he is fond of it. But then Turner paints with pure white—for ourselves we are with the generality of mankind who prefer the "repose" of shade. "Ask a connoisseur, who has scampered over all Europe, the shape of the leaf of an elm, and the chances are ninety to one that he cannot tell you; and yet he will be voluble of criticism on every painted landscape from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... deuse take that boy and his picture, Ned! What if we two fools have been playing too roughly with such plastic clay? I wish to-night were come and gone safely. I'll go see Dr. Thorne, and ask him to accompany us to-night. He claims to be something of a connoisseur, and the picture is really worth seeing, if the lad has not spoiled it with his 'final touches'. And anyhow, the boy will be a study for a psychological monomaniac ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... a tough business," observed the sorcerer, surveying the bell with the eye of a connoisseur. "It ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... with its colored print, inquiring eagerly and gravely which is Joseph, and which is Benjamin, is not more capable of receiving a strong, even a sublime, impression from the rude symbol which it invests with reality by its own effort, than the connoisseur who admires the grouping of the three figures in Raphael's "Telling of the Dreams;" and whether also, when the human mind is in right religious tone, it has not always this childish power—I speak advisedly, this power—a noble one, and possessed ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... over the table again and finished the glass of port. This time there was no lip-smacking, or other aping of the connoisseur. He was angry, almost alarmed. Resistance, even of this passive sort, raised the savage in him. Hitherto, Iris had been ready to obey his ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... attract him, and though he admires Elinor's drawings very much, it is not the admiration of a person who can understand their worth. It is evident, in spite of his frequent attention to her while she draws, that in fact he knows nothing of the matter. He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be united. I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both. Oh! mama, how spiritless, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... paintings when he was in the country in the summer, and he fancied he had a good deal of taste, and that if he had studied he might have made a good painter. When he was abroad he sometimes used to go to curio shops, examining the antiques with the air of a connoisseur and giving his opinion on them. When he bought any article he gave just what the shopkeeper liked to ask for it and his purchase remained afterwards in a box in the coach-house till it disappeared altogether. Or going into a print shop, he would slowly and attentively ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... either high-class or low-class. But he possessed a gift for languages and he had mixed a great deal with musicians in an informal manner. Wagner, at Venice, had once threatened Xavier with a stick, and also Xavier had twice run away with great exponents of the role of Isolde. His competence as a connoisseur of Wagner's music, and of the proper methods of rendering Wagner's music, could therefore not be questioned, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... she was struggling against the tears which already dimmed her eyes. He filled her glass himself. The professor set his own down empty with the satisfied smile of a connoisseur. ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... foot of the precipice, seeing it rise from the water on one side, reflected as in a broken mirror, and draped in young, golden foliage on the other, it really was an ideal castle for a fairy tale. A connoisseur in the best architecture of the Renaissance would perhaps have been ungracious enough to pick faults; for to a critical eye the turrets and arches might fall short of perfection; and there was little decoration on the time-darkened stone walls, save the thick curtain of old, old ivy; ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... succeeded. Her quiet and lady-like manner surprised Mr. Rennie; he had thought her masculine in the morning. She listened with patience and pleasure to Miss Rennie's playing and singing, and then looked over some books of engravings and prints with the old gentleman, who was a connoisseur. And when the advocate and the publisher, between whom there seemed to be a good understanding, entered into conversation on literary matters, and successful and unsuccessful works, she, thinking of her sister and her hopes, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... in a boor's head by Guido. What makes the difference between the two? The absence or presence of the Ideal! But every one can judge of the merit of the first, for it is of the Familiar school; it requires a connoisseur to see the merit of the last, for it ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... no period or movement of art excepting the Rococo. As for Donatello himself, he was but slightly influenced by classical motives. His sojourn in Rome was short, his time fully occupied; he was forty-seven years old and had long passed the most impressionable years of his life. He was a noted connoisseur, and on more than one occasion his opinion on a question of classical art was eagerly sought. But, so far as his own art was concerned, classical influences count for little. His architectural ideas were only classical through a Renaissance medium. When ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... disinterested spirit of inquiry, that influence his daily practice, to other subjects. He perceives form, he distinguishes character. He reads men and books with an intuitive eye. He is a critic as well as a connoisseur. The conclusions he draws are clear and convincing, because they are taken from the things themselves. He is not a fanatic, a dupe, or a slave; for the habit of seeing for himself also disposes him to judge for himself. The most sensible men I know (taken as a class) are painters; ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt |
