"Delicacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who, though greatly troubled over things that did not matter, seemed oblivious to things that did; who could conjecture with admirable delicacy "where things might lead to," but apparently lost sight of the goal as she approached it. Now she was crouching in the corner trying to extract a circular note from a kind of linen nose-bag which hung in chaste ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... take the urine of a female patient suffering from ague (though from motives of delicacy I did not see the urine voided—still I believe that she did pass the urine, as I did not think it necessary to insult the patient), and you demonstrated to me beautiful specimens of Gemiasma rubra. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... Arjuna. The Indian never spoke unless he was spoken to, and the two others took good care not to address their lord. So silence reigned in the spacious room while the Indian undressed Caracalla. Caesar was wont to say that this man's hands were matchless for lightness and delicacy of touch, but to-day they trembled as he lifted the laurel wreath from Caesar's head and unbuckled the padded breast plate. The events of the day had shaken this man's soul to the foundations. In his Eastern ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... reorientation by the direct influence of the great Portuguese, Eca de Queiroz, and Emile Zola, was definitely steered toward naturalism. "In Aluizio Azevedo," says Benedicto Costa, "one finds neither the poetry of Jose de Alencar, nor the delicacy,—I should even say, archness—of Macedo, nor the sentimental preciosity of Taunay, nor the subtle irony of Machado de Assis. His phrase is brittle, lacking lyricism, tenderness, dreaminess, but it is dynamic, energetic, expressive, and, at times, sensual to the ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... room with the step of one who is at home. If he grew weary and dozed a moment, she would still be sitting there when he awoke. She was wearing home things. One morning when she had been busied in the kitchen preparing some little delicacy for him, she had left her task for a moment to see if he needed anything; and as she had bent over him, she had worn a household apron,—a wife's apron. Yes, she was at home, she would never leave him again, never ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... to find himself shut out. He is horrified and doleful, when up come a few of his friends. They laugh the matter off. "It's only a quarter lost! There's time for a pint before we go in." So the drinking is begun again, and the men have none of the delicacy and steadiness of hand that are needed. Is it not an old story? The loss of "quarters," half-days, and days goes on; then Saint Monday comes to be observed; then the spoiled young man and his merry crew begin to draw very short wages on ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... in the air of public rooms," said Lydgate. "Strong men can stand it, but it tells on people in proportion to the delicacy of their systems. It is often impossible to account for the precise moment of an attack—or rather, to say why the strength gives way at a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... solicitations of parents whom she had never been accustomed to withstand. But she quieted me with that singular earnestness of look and manner which had once before impressed me previous to our mutual explanation. Like vulgar thinkers generally, I was apt to confound weakness of frame and delicacy of organization with a want of courage and moral resources of ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... should forget how much I owe to one Gentleman in particular, whose exertions in my behalf, though I was a stranger to him, have been so marked, so generous, and indeed so unexampled, that it is a very painful task which his delicacy has imposed upon me, in not permitting me to mention his name. But such goodness cannot be concealed. The gratitude of my own heart has proclaimed it to my private friends; and the noble and honourable subscribers his zeal has procured, ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... change of drawing could perplex them. But to their deftness with their medium was now added the rich invention of the Italian artists of the Renaissance, at the period of perfection when restraint and delicacy ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... result of God's laws, not of man's, nor can the laws of man affect that character beyond a very slight degree. Whatever rights may be given to them, and whatever duties may be charged upon them by human laws, their general character will remain unchanged. Their modesty, their delicacy, and intuitive sense of propriety, will never desert them, into whatever new positions their added rights or duties may ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... equilibrium between the superiority of man and the delicacy of woman; it enables woman to insure thereby for herself, a supporter—a defender. And while man thus barters his protection for love, woman is a match for his power; and the weaker, to a great extent, governs ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... ANGELO, and HANDEL, belong to the same order of minds; the same imaginative powers, and the same sensibility, are only operating with different materials. LANZI, the delightful historian of the Storia Pittorica, is prodigal of his comparisons of the painters with the poets; his delicacy of perception discerned the refined analogies which for ever unite the two sisters, and he fondly dwelt on the transplanted flowers of the two arts: "Chi sente che sia Tibullo nel poetare sente chi sia Andrea (del Sarto) nel ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... women have had to undergo in the past, I cannot help but become deeply indignant. It seems as if all medical study had gone for naught, as if the teachings of nature had been forgotten, and most of all, as if no such thing as delicacy ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... him as a man of few and stern words, in appearance severe and dark, and yet a man in whom intellect is ever prominent, but intellect elevated by the grandeur of a soul of chivalry and by an exquisite delicacy of charity—this was the real character of St. Ignatius. This will be seen in the brief glimpse given of his life and his spirit of charity, his absorbing love for souls, in his work of founding missions, his greatness of mind and heart, in the work originated by him, ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... off to school. It was a longish walk across the moor and along a dusty road to the nearest village. Robbie, although seven years old, was exempted from going on account of the distance and his delicacy. Elsie bore in mind that Duncan had gone before he was that age, but Robbie was such a petted baby. He was not nearly so strong as Duncan had been at ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... office for young persons, but had never seen a more intelligent countenance, at the age of fifteen. Yet notwithstanding the indications of intellect, and of maturity of character, so much in advance of her tender age; her perfectly infantile features, and the extreme delicacy of their texture and complexion, bore witness to the truthfulness of the age, beneath her name on the little coffin: "six years and ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... all delicacy of feeling, sacrifice even your own sentiments. That is the one locality where you don't wish ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... accumulation—the sunny waters of joy, where alone she was thought to voyage, being the tide on which her heart embarked no venture, and which seemed to her triflingly garish and even profaning to the hallowed delicacy of the inner nature. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... home in a better frame of mind. The charm of the girl's personality had asserted its power again, and hopes that had almost been destroyed by his trip home were rekindled by her tasteful appearance, her delicacy of feeling, and by her beauty, which he had not overrated. He asked that his sister might meet him in Louisville after the wedding-whenever that should be. They two could decide then what should be done. His ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... feels the influence of that faint air of overwrought delicacy, almost of wantonness, which was so strong a characteristic of the poetry of the Troubadours. The Troubadours themselves were often men of great rank; they wrote for an exclusive audience, people of much leisure ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... is something within my knowledge, which I have been earnestly entreated by Doctor Strong to conceal, and have concealed until tonight. But, I believe the time has come when it would be mistaken faith and delicacy to conceal it any longer, and when your appeal absolves me from ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... firmness of this intimation, except the exggravating delicacy with which it was conveyed. I saw Levy clench and unclench his great fists, and his canine jaw working protuberantly as he ground his teeth. But not a word escaped him, and I was admiring the monster's self-control when of a sudden ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... occasions. She spoke of Madame de Stael's Delphine with detestation, of another new and fashionable novel, Amelie, with abhorrence, and kissed my forehead twice because I had not read it, "Vous autres Anglaises vous etes modestes!" Where was Madame de Genlis's sense of delicacy when she penned and published Les Chevaliers du Cygne? Forgive me, my dear Aunt Mary, you begged me to see her with favourable eyes, and I went to see her after seeing her Rosiere de Salency with the most favourable disposition, but I could not like her; there ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... be, after all, weak and inefficient. Doubtless great delicacy and caution are required. Heavenly truths are not to be administered to these as to the refined and willing. The land must be ploughed, or it is useless to sow the seed. Am I not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... alone, or in the company of four or five choice books, in a lofty hall with pointed roof; the points where the ribs intersect being covered with rosework of exquisite delicacy. This comprises my suite of apartments, for I never could understand why the little space that is given one in this world to dream, to sleep, to live, to die in, should be divided into a set of compartments like a dressing-case. I detest hedges, partitions ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... salad. In ordinary Celery the stem forms a mere basis to the leaves, but in Celeriac it is developed into a knob weighing from one to five pounds, and the root is more easily preserved than Celery. When cooked in the same manner as Sea Kale, Celery is well known as a delicacy at English tables, and the cooked Celeriac ranks in importance with it, though it affords quite a different dish. The stem or axis of the plant is used, and not the stalks. To grow fine Celeriac a long season is requisite; ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... adjusted chronometer,—one which would not vary a second in a year—do you think it would pay you to trifle with it, to open the case in the dust, to leave it out in the rain overnight, or to put in a drop of glue or a chemical which would ruin the delicacy of its adjustment so that it would no longer keep good time? Would you think it ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... women are capable of greatness; and if we do sometimes dream of what we cannot accomplish through lack of the physical force necessary for large achievements, that is not our fault but our misfortune. We did not create ourselves. We did not ask to be born with the over-sensitiveness, the fatal delicacy, the highly-strung nervousness of the feminine nature. Monsieur Heliobas, you are a learned and far-seeing man, I have no doubt; but you do not read me aright if you judge me as a mere woman who is perfectly contented ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... the subject of emancipating the slaves by proclamation in case the Rebels did not cease to persist in their war on the Government and the Union, of which he saw no evidence. He dwelt earnestly on the gravity, importance, and delicacy of the movement; said he had given it much thought, and had about come to the conclusion that it was a military necessity absolutely essential for the salvation of the Union; that we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued, etc.... This was, the President said, the first occasion ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... subject difficult to treat has been handled by Dr. Drake with delicacy, earnestness and straightforwardness. It is a practical ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... The very meagreness and minuteness of the physical witnesses to a former condition of things cease to discourage, and actually become an incitement more effective than bulkier relics might impart. The delicacy of suggestion lends a zest to your dream; and the sober streets open out before you into vistas of austere reminiscence. The first night that I passed in Salem, I heard a church-bell ringing loudly, and asked what it was. It was the nine-o'clock bell; and ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... do this it is earnestly inculcated. 'A real man of fashion,' he says, 'observes decency; at least neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy and secrecy.' He observes that an intrigue with a woman of fashion is an amusement which a man of sense and decency may pursue with a proper regard for his character; gallantry without debauchery being 'the elegant ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... lover with it; and he who expects to secure the affections of his wife by the force of his understanding only, will find himself miserably mistaken: indeed it is no wonder that women who are formed for tenderness, and whose highest excellence is delicacy, should pay no great reverence to a proud scholar, who considers the endearments of his wife, and the caresses of his children as pleasures unworthy of him. It is agreed by all the biographers of Milton, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... suddenly, "if you don't intend telling me anything, you must say so distinctly, and then, of course, it shall be final. But I won't play at delicacy. I ask you point-blank for all ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... choose to give. She probably took for granted what was the truth of the situation, that it rested with Imogen to make it a definite one. She did not treat him as an accepted lover, nor yet as a rejected one; she discriminated with the nicest delicacy. What she allowed herself to see, the ground she went upon, was his deep interest, his deep attachment. In that light he was admitted by degrees to an intimacy that he knew he could hardly have won so soon on his ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... last volume of the work:—"In particular, the editors would have felt happy in being permitted to enumerate the many original and beautiful verses that adorn their pages, for which they are indebted to the author of the much-admired song, 'The Land o' the Leal;' but they fear to wound a delicacy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... story of the kingdom of the Blue Fish. Above him is that pure golden canopy with its rare glimmering lustrousness—something like the soft, dewy effulgence that comes with sun-breaks through showery afternoons. The soft delicacy of that pure straw-yellow that prevails everywhere is crossed and lighted by tints and glimmering hues of accidental and complementary color indescribably elegant. The floor of the sea rises like a golden carpet in gentle incline to the surface; but this incline, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... further. He had little desire to, anyway. Without scruple himself, he still found little pleasure in probing the heart of this man, who was so powerful in his own destiny. That which he had witnessed had served only to show him the delicacy of his own position. He knew that the story had been told for one reason only. It was to convince him, for the sake of his own wellbeing in the Skandinavia, that he must make no mistake in the warfare he must wage against the people of Sachigo. It was for ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... conditions of human life; criticism, which is clever at analysis and dissection, but cannot construct a foundation on which the religious faculty may build and rest; and a fine literary taste, which has greatly developed of late, and is disposed to judge of power by force of words or by delicacy of expression. ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... head. Beyond the third bottle, he showed the plebeian in a larger print; the low, gross accent, the low, foul mirth, grew broader and commoner; he became less formidable, and infinitely more disgusting. Now, the boy had inherited from Jean Rutherford a shivering delicacy, unequally mated with potential violence. In the playing-fields, and amongst his own companions, he repaid a coarse expression with a blow; at his father's table (when the time came for him to join these revels) ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time it would appear that, so far from any coldness, and jealousies, and suspicions existing between the Prince and the members of his family, he was deemed the most fit person to negociate an affair of much delicacy between the council and his father and ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... born Be thankless for that refuge which their habits Of early delicacy render more 40 Needful than to the peasant, when the ebb Of fortune leaves them on the shoals ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... get new life from the touch of her small fingers, as though feeling the necessity of growing like her. Her beauty may not last. It is not of the imperious kind, nor even quite classic, but it has a wonderful fineness and delicacy. Her soft brown hair coils closely on her small, well-shaped head; her gentle, serious blue eyes look tenderly on all that lives and has being within the circle of her sight; her small mouth smiles graciously and readily, though sometimes ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... he was more than eighty, visiting it every night, of summer and winter alike, to be sure of keeping it alive; [74] and melting down, as his family said, many a good guinea, and all to find the philosopher's stone, the mysterious metal that should turn all to gold. From delicacy I never alluded to the subject with him, I am sorry now that I did not. And he never adverted to it with me but once, and that was in a way which showed that he had no mean or selfish aims in his patient ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... obedience of childhood! Recognition of it might well give pause to careless instructors of youth. The kiss meant torture to me, in anticipation and in fact. But I was bidden, and never dreamed of refusing to obey. No doubt, there was also at work in me some dim sort of infantile delicacy. This was an occasion upon which a gentleman could have ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... says, "a string of much delicacy—the political character of the Review. It appears to me that this should be of a liberal and enlarged nature, resting upon principles—indulgent and conciliatory as far as possible upon mere party questions, but stern in detecting and exposing all attempts ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... to be managed with great discreetness and delicacy, and accomplished by hook or by crook, if the means could be found. "You need not be scrupulous as to the form or law of protection, provided the name of protector can ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mademoiselle already that nothing of the sort will be required of her. There are models indeed who pose for figure, but these are a class apart, and I can assure mademoiselle that her feelings of delicacy will be ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... the goad of pain. The sensitive schedule of the Cerambyx-grub, therefore, is limited to taste and touch, both exceedingly obtuse. This almost brings us to Condillac's statue. The imaginary being of the philosopher had one sense only, that of smell, equal in delicacy to our own; the real being, the ravager of the oak, has two, inferior, even when put together, to the former, which so plainly perceived the scent of a rose and distinguished it so clearly from any other. The real case will bear comparison with ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... always bestowed with such delicacy that she managed, in some mysterious way, to make the recipients feel as though they had done her a favour in accepting them. And yet she was not a soft piece of indiscriminating amiability, whose chief delight in giving lay in the sensations which the act created within her own ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... dignified by the name of Augusta, were never associated to their personal honors; and a female reign would have appeared an inexplicable prodigy in the eyes of those primitive Romans, who married without love, or loved without delicacy or respect." ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... electric signs before the theaters, the gay crowds in the restaurants! It was all very fine to see Europe on a comfortable letter of credit, but to see it under such circumstances as these, that was a different matter. To live in this evil-smelling old tenement, with seldom any delicacy to eat, a strange jabber-jabber ringing in one's ears from morning till night, and to wait day after day for that letter from home, was not a situation such as would hearten one's love of romance. The men had it much easier; they always do. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... wondered what the boy meant by it, and at first, naturally connected the idea of coppers with Wikkey's devotion; but he soon came to see that it went deeper than that, for with a curious instinct of delicacy which the lad would probably have been quite unable to explain to himself, he would sometimes hang back as Lawrence reached the pavement, and nod his funny "Good night, guvner," from midway on his crossing, in a way that precluded ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... Ilusha, who was still fretting over the lost and probably dead Zhutchka. Ilusha, who had heard three days before that he was to be presented with a puppy, not an ordinary puppy, but a pedigree mastiff (a very important point, of course), tried from delicacy of feeling to pretend that he was pleased. But his father and the boys could not help seeing that the puppy only served to recall to his little heart the thought of the unhappy dog he had killed. The puppy lay beside him feebly ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the June woods has not the delicacy of tints which was so exquisite in May, nor the strength of color which will be so striking in September. But it has a beauty no less admirable. The chlorophyll in the leaf-cells is now at its prime and the leaves very closely approach ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... trusting implicitly to the discretion and daring of the singular being whose pleasure it was to bring their ship into so hazardous a proximity to a powerful enemy—qualities that had been known to avail them in circumstances of even greater delicacy than those in which they were now placed. With this air of audacious confidence, the dreaded Rover came gliding down upon her unsuspecting neighbour, until within a few hundred feet of her weather-beam, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... lines and yet sparred for safety, the sort of vessel that does well under plain sail, and when pressed can fly. The other, the Edelweiss, was a miniature fore and after of about twenty tons, a toy of delicacy and grace, betraying at a glance that she had been designed a yacht, and, in spite of fallen fortunes, was still sailed as one. The man that laid her lee rail under would get danger as well as speed for his pains, and in time would be likely to satisfy a taste for both by ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... you for your kindness in staying with Carrie, although your services really are not needed. I understand how matters stand between you and Walter, and as he is to be here to-morrow; you of course will feel some delicacy about remaining, consequently I release you from all ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... position, every muscle tense, his breast heaving and voice trembling from the effort, and the natural result is that before he is done praying his fingers begin to twitch involuntarily and thus cause the beads to move. As before stated, their motion is irregular; but the peculiar delicacy of touch acquired by long practice probably imparts more directness to their movements than would at ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... great moment which I have not enumerated in this brief letter, because I felt some little delicacy and timidity about appearing to be at all dictatorial or officious about a matter wherein the public might ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... frankness and courage, the delicacy and idealism which marked her life's work are here ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... standing in the pulpit pale with emotion, his eye gathering fire as he bears witness to the truth or testifies against sin. He likes to believe that his words and intonations have a thrilling quality, a fire or a delicacy, as the case may be, which scorch or penetrate the sin-burdened heart. It may be thought that this criticism is unduly severe; I do not for a moment say that the attitude is universal, but it is commoner, I am sure, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... whispering, glancing, dancing, tripping, sipping, and hand-squeezing, the ball goes gaily on till the stewards announce supper. At this—to the wall-flowers—welcome announcement, we adjourn from the heated ball-room to the cool arbour-like supper tent, where every delicacy that can charm the eye or tempt the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the real heroine of these pages. That Martha should marry Giles Hickbody, and Barty Burgess run away with Mrs. MacHugh, is of course evident to the meanest novel-expounding capacity; but the fate of Brooke Burgess and of Dorothy will require to be evolved with some delicacy and much detail. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... heaven to heaven by the eyes of Beatrice, so was Spenser lifted away from the actual by those of that ideal Beauty whereof his mind had conceived the lineaments in its solitary musings over Plato, but of whose haunting presence the delicacy of his senses had already premonished him. The intrusion of the real world upon this supersensual mood of his wrought an ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... utterly astonished at her vehemence, but felt, thus conjured, that it became my duty to lay aside scrupulous delicacy, and gave her briefly, but distinctly, the heads of the information which ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... (b. 1748, d.1788). A Scotch writer of note. His writings include dramas, poetry, history, and essays. 8. The ortolan is a small bird, abundant in southern Europe, Cyprus, and Japan. It is fattened for the table, and is considered a great delicacy. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... pursued the unabashed Marlow, "that we laugh from a sense of superiority. Therefore, observe, simplicity, honesty, warmth of feeling, delicacy of heart and of conduct, self-confidence, magnanimity are laughed at, because the presence of these traits in a man's character often puts him into difficult, cruel or absurd situations, and makes ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... through the spheres and stood in Paradise, welcomed by Adam. Eve hastened to set before their guest every delicacy that Eden knew, and while she was preparing these Adam ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... laughing at her, at such delicacy pleading for such toil. His amusement humiliated her and baffled her so ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the correspondence it requires. But now for a time their pens were forgotten and they sat looking at each other over the gatelegged table which served as desk. They were still both remarkably good-looking, though marked with that delicacy of material and workmanship—reminiscent of old china—which seems to indicate the perfect type of spinster-hood. Here and there in their hair gleamed touches of silver, and their cheeks might have reminded you of tinted apples which had lightly ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... pounds in his purse, and he handed them over to the Captain for the tickets; he would have been afraid to offer more lest he should offend the latter's delicacy. Costigan scrawled him an order for a box, lightly slipped the sovereigns into his waistcoat, and slapped his hand over the place where they lay. They seemed to warm his ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... delicacy was duff, his only comforts were rum and tobacco, and to explore some unknown island, and discover therein a goodly river of the famous Jamaica spirit, flowing deep and fragrant between towering mountains of "pig tail," is commonly ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... such as he had never before experienced, and turned away from a delicacy of feeling, lest Lord Reginald should be ashamed of the agitation he was exhibiting. He felt also very anxious to calm the mind of his patient, who in his weak state was ill able to undergo ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... love. Poor gallant fellow! He was, like many another, the victim of human weakness. He immediately believed that he and Emma had "found each other," and allowed himself to be flattered with refined delicacy into a liaison which became a fierce passion, and tested the loyalty of his closest friends to breaking-point. How infinitely pathetic is this piteous ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... that made action possible, that to him was accorded the unpleasant task of communicating what had been accomplished to Vergennes, the French Minister, and of requesting at the same time "a fresh loan of twenty million francs." Franklin, of course, presented his case with much "delicacy and kindliness of manner" and with a fair degree of success. "Vergennes thought that the signing of the articles was premature, but he made no inconvenient remonstrances, ill procured six millions of the twenty."* On September 3, 1783, the definite treaty of peace was signed in due ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... infinite variety. He could borrow with a breezy bluffness which made the thing practically a hold-up. And anon, when his victim had steeled himself against this method, he could extract another five-pound note from his little hoard with the delicacy of one playing spillikins. Mr Blatherwick had been a gold-mine to him for years. As a rule, the proprietor of Harrow House unbelted without complaint, for Bertie, as every good borrower should, had that knack of making his victim feel during the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... deal the elder of her sister, and was of a clear white pallor and an aged delicacy and shyness that were very captivating. She had judgment and a clear, dispassionate brain, and I presume she acted the part in the little firm of a sort of court of appeals and final adviser and referee. She talked little and had little to do with ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... saucepan, had not occupied her more than six minutes—at most. She had tossed it off as he might have tossed off a receipt for a week's rent. And the exquisite thought in his mind, the thought of penetrating sweetness, was that whence this delicacy had come, other and even rarer delicacies might have come. All his past life seemed to him to be a miserable waste of gloomy ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... Terence, undaunted. "One day she was telling father some old story about Mr. Desmond, a 'good thing' she called it, and she was laughing heartily; but he wasn't, and when she had finished, I remember, he said something to her about want of 'delicacy of feeling,' ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... not talk for half-an-hour with a bourgeoise without her alluding to her husband in one way or another," Blondet went on with unperturbed gravity; "whereas, even if you know that your lady is married, she will have the delicacy to conceal her husband so effectually that it will need the enterprise of Christopher Columbus to discover him. Often you will fail in the attempt single-handed. If you have had no opportunity of inquiring, towards the end of the evening you detect her gazing fixedly at a middle-aged ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... would probably have marveled at cars gray with dust, the unshaved men in fleece-lined duck coats, and the women wind-burnt beneath the boudoir caps they wore as motoring bonnets. But Claire knew now that filling grease-cups does not tend to delicacy of hands; that when you wash with a cake of petrified pink soap and half a pitcher of cold hard water, you never quite get the stain off—you merely get through the dust stratum to the Laurentian grease formation, and mutter, "a nice ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... Son concerning his Mother, is very fine, and shews great Delicacy in our Author; as has been observ'd by a great Writer of our Nation. The Ghost's Interrupting himself (but soft, methinks, I scent the Morning Air, &c.) has much Beauty in it, particularly, as it complys with the received Notions, that Spirits shun the ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... twenty francs of me to pay for the dejeuner, and his l'annee trente delicacy of soul compelled him to blot my ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... certainly had once or twice thought it must be much pleasanter to be operated upon by so pretty a young lady than by some bull-necked male mesmerist or aged spinster above-mentioned, but I could scarcely believe that such a mild sentiment could affect that colossal man. However, I recollected the delicacy of these psychological relations, and sat down ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... red in it; but he bided his time. It was one of the terrible things about Tommy that he could bide his time. Pym was the only person he called upon. He took Pym out to dinner and conducted him home again. His kindness to Pym, the delicacy with which he pretended not to see that poor old Pym was degraded and done for—they would have been pretty even in a woman, and we treat Tommy unfairly in passing them ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... nobleman," he said, "had confided it to him under the seal of secrecy, and he had pledged his word of honor to him." What really withheld him from giving her any further explanation was, in all probability, not so much any delicacy about his honor, as his hatred of the Inquisition, which he would not willingly do anything to advance. Soon after him, Count Egmont delivered to the regent a copy of the covenant, and also gave her the names of the conspirators, with some few exceptions. Nearly about the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... we must have the clear atmosphere of high barometer, when there is a minimum of moisture present. The action of the sun's rays upon this extensive area of slightly moist rarefied air is unconfined by clouds, and reaches far and wide, and produces a delicacy of color which from no other source ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... a statistical view: certain weeds mark poverty in the soil; fairies mark its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before cities does the fairy sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed victualer. A village is too much for her nervous delicacy; at most, she can tolerate a distant view of a hamlet. We may judge, therefore, by the uneasiness and extra trouble which they gave to the parson, in what strength the fairies mustered at Domremy, and, by a satisfactory ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... expression leans. But how difficult is it to make words express all the due shades and qualifications of meaning—how difficult especially for a mind that seems to be naturally distinguished by force rather than by exactness and delicacy of observation! We have all 'les defauts ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... The Long-lost was coming home, and Flipfield made an unfortunate calculation, based on the well-known regularity of the P. and O. Steamers, that matters might be so contrived as that the Long-lost should appear in the nick of time on his (Flipfield's) birthday. Delicacy commanded that I should repress the gloomy anticipations with which my soul became fraught when I heard of this plan. The fatal day arrived, and we assembled in force. Mrs. Flipfield senior formed an interesting feature ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Coast, and I no sooner remember one lovely creature whose soft eyes, perfect form and winning, pretty ways have captivated me than I think of another. The Nanny Po ladies have often a certain amount of Spanish blood in them, which gives a decidedly greater delicacy to their features— delicate little nostrils, mouths not too heavily lipped, a certain gloss on the hair, and a light in the eye. But it does not improve their colour, and I am assured that it has an awful effect on their tempers, so I think I will remain, for the present, the faithful ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... to be solved—those of buoyancy, delicacy of balance and many others—but the designers themselves have not been able to determine upon a precise formula for their solution. It is sufficient that the aeroplane has reached a degree of practicability in construction and use ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... psychological and not primarily as a pathological phenomenon. A comparison with Daudet suggests itself constantly in reading Kielland. Their methods of workmanship and their attitude toward life have many points in common. The charm of style, the delicacy of touch, and felicity of phrase, are in both cases pre-eminent. Daudet has, however, the advantage (or, as he himself asserts, the disadvantage) of working in a flexible and highly finished language, which bears the impress of the labors of a hundred masters; ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... to sheer neglect or to false notions of delicacy, delay seeking for proper medical relief until they are almost destroyed, and body and mind are ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... recover from the intense annoyance of the whole thing, he thought he would, before Venice, go in a little for the gaieties of Paris. Rupert was still young enough to believe that the things presented to him as gaiety must necessarily be gay. A certain delicacy prevented his telling Madeline this now; though formerly when he had been to Paris, especially when he had had no intention of accepting any Parisian opportunities of amusement, he had often rubbed it in to her about the ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... to depend on, he could not indulge a dream of marrying. From what I afterwards learned, I was right in this conjecture. Poor fellow! he had loved her well and deeply, but he had never told his love. She might have suspected his attachment, but with the tact and delicacy of a right-minded woman, she did not allow him to discover that she did so, but endeavoured, by the frank kindness of her words and manner, to take away the bitterness from the wound she was inflicting. I do not mean to say, however, that at the time I knew this, but I made ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... be in her to have drawn her to such a person, and to keep her, even now that she knew the worst, unwilling to relinquish the thought of him. His depravity loomed to her enormous; but was that all there was to be said of him? Did his delicacy, his insight, his tempered fineness, count for nothing beside it? Must their talks, their walking through the trees, the very memory of his ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... delicacy of her scruples and the anguish of remorse, induced her to abscond. This scheme was adopted in haste, but effected with consummate prudence. She fled, on the eve of her husband's arrival, in the disguise of a boy, and embarked ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... grand suites, on either side a central hall of Gothic structure, in white marble, with light, aerial staircases and gilded balconies. Each suite was a separate miracle: the height, the breadth, the columnal divisions; the wonderful delicacy of the arches, upon which rested ceilings frescoed with incomparable art. In one compartment the arches and caryatides were of black marble; in another, of snowy Parian; in a third, of wood, exquisitely carved, and joined like one piece, as if it were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... materials as plush, corduroys, and cheviots are too heavy to be manipulated under needle machinery by women and consequently employ only men operators. Where light weight materials are used, as in the manufacture of dresses and waists, delicacy in handling is required, and nearly ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... have done everything in my power to assist his passion there: your delicacy, my dearest girl, would be shocked at half the ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... gratification in relieving the pains and promoting the happiness of all around them. Conscious that the circumstances which have caused them to lead a single life would secure for them the sincere sympathy and the increased esteem of all who know them, if delicacy and propriety allowed them to be expressed, they feel a strong degree of self-respect, they live happily, and are a continual means of comfort and joy to all around them. This was not so, however, with Elizabeth. She was jealous, petulant, irritable. She envied others the love and the domestic ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... ice. She believed he was very rich, and singularly, in spite of her greediness, she did not care much for money. Noel would have won her easier by a brutal frankness that would have shown her clearly his situation. He lost her love by the delicacy of his dissimulation, that left her ignorant of the sacrifices he ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... in one better than even the finest player is supposed to do it. It's a mashie-shot, you know. You mustn't play too light, or you fall in the lake; and you mustn't play it too hard, or you go past the hole into the woods. It requires the nicest delicacy and judgment, such as I gave it. You might have to wait a year before seeing anyone do it in two again. I doubt if the 'pro.' often does it in two. Now, directly we came to this hole today, I made up my mind that there was going to be no mistake. The ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... Answer brought up the Officious old Lady herself; who, by all Means wou'd needs see her undress'd, for other Reasons more than a bare Compliment; which she perform'd with a great deal of Ceremony, and a Diligence that seem'd more than double. For she had then the Opportunity of observing the Delicacy of her Skin, the fine turn of her Limbs, and the richness of her Night-dress, part of the Furniture of her Trunk. As soon as she had cover'd herself, she kiss'd and wish'd her a good Repose. The dear Soul, as Innocent and White as her Linen, return'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... tap on the table roused him. It was Miss Keating laying down a match-box. He saw her hand poised yet in the delicacy ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... the above, for delicacy of detail rival the choicest Daguerreotypes, specimens of which may ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... majestic foreheads, brows strong and dark, but not frowning, eyes of which the calm full gaze, while it expresses nothing, seems to discern everything, cheeks pale with thought and sedentary habits, lips formed with feminine delicacy, but compressed with more than masculine decision, mark out men at once enterprising and timid, men equally skilled in detecting the purposes of others, and in concealing their own, men who must have been formidable enemies ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by the tone of his voice or by some slight movement cause the hypnotic to exhibit phenomena that at first could only be produced by explicit verbal suggestion, and that altogether the signs used by the hypnotizer to cause suggestions may go on increasing in delicacy. A dangerous source of error is provided by the hypnotic's endeavor to divine and obey the experimenter's intentions. This observation has also proved useful in non-hypnotic experiments. We certainly knew before the days of hypnotism that the signs by which A betrays his thoughts to B ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... But, as he did not choose to assert his right till he should receive more accurate information respecting the state of the kingdom, he gave Petrarch a commission for that purpose; and entrusted him with a negotiation of much importance and delicacy. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... With instinctive delicacy Mr. Bernard softly closed the door, and retired, feeling that the scene had become too sacred for a ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... 'H' in it had never fitted the dead man," said Quarles. "Oh, I remember perfectly what Watson said, and, moreover, I believe I heard a good many of his thoughts which were not put into words—you can hear thoughts, you know, only it is with such delicacy that the very idea of hearing seems too heavy and materialistic to describe the sensation. Watson said the hat was Henley's, he also said that Henley played these instruments; but the pierrots all wore hats that fitted, well-made hats, and for ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... the world and a gentleman, Mr. Effingham had looked forward to this passage with a good deal of concern, on account of his daughter, while he shrank with the sensitiveness of his habits from the necessity of exposing one of her delicacy and plastic simplicity to the intercourse of a ship. Accompanied by Mademoiselle Viefville, watched over by Nanny, and guarded by himself and his kinsman, he had lost some of his apprehensions on the subject during the three probationary days, and now took his stand in the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... is it anybody's duty—yours or mine—to go to the man and find him out; what he really thinks, what he really feels? I don't mean, make an appeal to him. That would be unworthy of her. But perhaps he's holding back from a mistaken feeling of delicacy, of remorse; when if he could be made to see that it was his right, his privilege, to be everything to her now that a man could be to a woman, and infinitely more than any man could hope to be to a happy or fortunate woman—What do you think? ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... his brown-eyed fair-haired fiancee, considered her the personification of feminine refinement and delicacy; and congratulated himself warmly on his great good fortune in winning her affection; but tender emotions found little scope for exercise in his intensely practical, busy life, which was devoted to the attainment ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... ignorance as to my presence. Had they been aware of it I am little doubtful now as to whether it would have very greatly disturbed their equanimity. Be that as it may, I felt a certain amount of delicacy about advancing, and so showing them that I had been an involuntary witness of their philandering, so I softly stepped aside off the pathway and ensconsed myself behind a coffee-bush, thinking that perhaps they would go on and enter the house, in which case I could follow them in at a respectful ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... a pause. Benjamin Wright was reminding himself that in handling a boy, one must be careful not to Say the wrong thing; one must express one's self with reserve and delicacy; one must weigh ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... to force an oyster open with his knife. I laughed at his vain endeavours, and putting some on the fire, showed him them open of themselves. I had no taste for oysters myself; but as they are everywhere accounted a delicacy, I advised my sons to try them. They all at first declined the unattractive repast, except Jack, who, with great courage, closed his eyes, and desperately swallowed one as if it had been medicine. The rest followed his example, and ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... however, lost a little money to Boodle, for Boodle liked to win, and engaged himself to dine at the same table with his friend. Their dinner they ate almost in silence—unless when they abused the cook, or made to each other some pithy suggestion as to the expediency of this or that delicacy—bearing always steadily in view the cost as well as desirability of the viands. Boodle had no shame in not having this or that because it was dear. To dine with the utmost luxury at the smallest expense was a proficiency belonging to him, and of ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... ways?—such want of frankness, of delicacy, of the commonest consideration for others? To be looking out for your own little schemes at a time like this!" Mrs. Bogardus saw now what must have been Paul's reason for doing what, with all her forced ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... involuntary respect. Happy the husbandman. Yes, so I should be in his place, if my arm should suddenly become strong and my chest powerful, so that they could thus fertilize nature and sing to her, without my eyes losing the power to see and my brain to understand the harmony of colors and sounds, the delicacy of tones, and the gracefulness of contours,—in a word, the mysterious beauty of things, and, above all, without my heart ceasing to be in relation with the divine sentiment that presided at the immortal and ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... their gaze. Under a jasmine-covered corner of the piazza, nestling in the depths of a great easy chair, lay Freshman Van Dyke. Senorita Dolores, in the role of ministering angel, was bending unnecessarily close. Dr. Mead, as near his patient as was consistent with delicacy, was lounging in a hammock, and smoking a good cigar. It is a tradition in Los Angeles clubdom that John Payson imports his cigars direct. In the middle-distance, Mrs. Payson was approaching with a cup ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... apprehensive, for, in doing for my family what your kindness urges you to do, your majesty will raise up enemies for us, and enemies for yourself too. Leave me in my mediocrity, sire; of all the feelings and sentiments I experience, leave me to enjoy that pleasing delicacy of disinterestedness." ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... extreme difficulty and delicacy. Sometimes Mister Masters came near her of his own accord, and remained in bashful silence; but more often she was obliged to have recourse to "accidents" in order to bring about propinquity. And even when propinquity had been established there was never any progress made that could ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... calmly. "But I honestly believed the woman who was my mother not to be my mother, and I had never heard of my father. I had to account for myself to you. Your delicacy, Miss Winwood, enabled me to invent as ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... that. I am commissioned to smite you in print. Torpenhow refuses from false delicacy. I've been overhauling the pot-boilers in your studio. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of its delicacy, is out of the question for rough land or water travel. We had with us a small- sized half-chronometer movement recently brought out by the Waltham Company as a yacht chronometer. It gave a surprisingly even rate under the most adverse conditions. I was sorry ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... honor was the big gobbler, brown as a berry and done to a turn. For those who preferred other meat there was a huge round of venison and an artistically ornamented ham. These formed the backbone of the feast, but with and around them were every vegetable and delicacy that a Southern garden could provide, and tasteful dishes which it took all the ingenuity of a trained mistress of the kitchen to prepare. This was the season to test the genius of the dusky Southern cooks, and they had exhausted their art ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and then the door opened, and the girl he had met at the stepping stones came in. She was dressed differently, in trailing garments which, it seemed to him, became her wonderfully, and he noticed now the shapely delicacy of her hands and the fine, ivory pallor of her skin. Then ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... chest yet unopened, and flung away the silk covering. Here were the gems of the craftsman's art. Stones of unparalleled color and size were in this chest; but their chief merit lay in their cunning settings, their consummate delicacy of workmanship. Here the art collector might find his El Dorado; in all the world such a collection could scarcely be found in one place. Here were shrines and temples, carved from single immense stones or pieces of jade; here was a woven thing of gold and silver, in which the warp ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle |
