"Elegant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Associations. He then called on Messrs Garry & Curtis to solicit a presentation to Christ's Hospital for Captain Anderson's boy. Attended the Irish Bank, and in the evening was present, together with Mrs Montefiore, at a dinner given by Mr Fairlie of York Terrace. They found there "a most splendid party and elegant entertainment." They met Lord Fife, Sir Herbert and Lady Taylor, Sir Thomas Clark, Sir John Ogleby, Mr Towncan, Mr P. and his wife, Mr J. Pearce, bank director, Colonel Blackburn and his wife, Sir James Shaw, and Sir Thomas, an Indian ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... necessary. He may, if such is his inclination,—as I am sure it would have been Adam's,—get his new suit all finished and ready-to-wear. Charley Wax, the sartorially Perfect Gentleman, smiles invitation and encouragement from many a window; an army of elegant and expeditious employees, each as much like Charley Wax as is humanly possible, waits to conduct him to a million ready-to-wear suits. His intellect is appealed to by the plausible argument that we live in a busy time, in which the leaders of men simply cannot afford to waste ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... senator, who frankly said, "If the vast body of the empire could be kept standing in equilibrium without a head, I were worthy of the chief place in the state." Otho and Vitellius were two epicures, both indolent and debauched, the former after an elegant, and the latter after a beastly fashion. Galba was raised to the purple by the Lyonnese and Narbonnese provinces, Vitellius by the legions cantoned in the Belgic province: to such an extent did Gaul already influence the destinies of Rome. All three met disgrace and death ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... peephole in the curtain. What she saw held her tranced. Like Mark, her standards suffered from a limited experience. That the effective pose was studied, the handsome face hard and withered, the evening dress too showily elegant, escaped her. She had never—except on the covers of ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... sufficient for the wants of the oxen and horses, would be found. Scarcely half an hour passed, that a herd of grotesque gnus, with the heads of bisons and horns of oxen, or of graceful quaggas, swift blesbocs, or light and elegant springbocs, did not pass in sight, in hundreds, or rather in thousands, across the plain. Although it was no easy matter to get up with them, still Hendricks was too experienced a hunter to be baffled, and he never failed, when he went ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... fire, his cup of coffee sent up in the rare old china that had belonged to the Hall for generations; his dress finished, as dress of Osborne's could hardly fail to be. One could hardly have thought that this elegant young man, standing there in the midst of comfort that verged on luxury, should have been turning over that one great problem in his mind; but so it was. 'What can I do to be sure of a present income? Things cannot go on as they are. I should need support for two or three years, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... surf, roused by the tornado of the night, beat with a particular fury and made a fringe of snow. Close at my feet, I saw a haven, set in precipitous and palm- crowned bluffs of rock. Just outside, a ship was heaving on the surge, so trimly sparred, so glossily painted, so elegant and point-device in every feature, that my heart was seized with admiration. The English colours blew from her masthead; and from my high station, I caught glimpses of her snowy planking, as she rolled on the uneven deep, and saw the sun glitter on the brass of her deck furniture. There, then, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... price of grain was, in the same manner, much lower in the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, than in the two centuries preceding, has been observed both by Mr Dupr de St Maur, and by the elegant author of the Essay on the Policy of Grain. Its price, during the same period, had probably sunk in the same manner through the greater part ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... found several visitors of the better class in the room devoted to the aquarium. Among these was a young lady, apparently about nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of black velvet, which showed her elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt of garnet silk, looped up over a pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest imaginable pair of kid walking-boots. Her height was a trifle over the medium; her eyes a soft, expressive brown, shaded by masses of hair which ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... scene than Cowes presented on that day? But to begin with the splendid patrons of the festival, we must turn our eyes to the elegant Club House, built at the expense of George Ward, Esq. Before it are arranged the numerous and efficient band of the Irish Fusileers, and behind them, standing in graceful groups, are many of the illustrious members of the club. That elderly personage, arrayed in ship habiliments, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... every one who will look at some venomous snakes, at some fishes, and at certain hideous bats with a distorted resemblance to the human face. Sexual selection has given the most brilliant colours, elegant patterns, and other ornaments to the males, and sometimes to both sexes of many birds, butterflies and other animals. With birds it has often rendered the voice of the male musical to the female, as well as to our ears. Flowers and fruit have been rendered conspicuous ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... place is, the way in which those live who visit it. The rises of the hills which surround the valley are covered with little cottages, log-houses, and other picturesque buildings, sometimes in rows, and ornamented with verandahs, without a second storey above; or kitchen below. Some are very elegant and more commodious than the rest, having been built by gentlemen who have the right given to them by the company to whom the springs belong, of occupying themselves when there, but not of preventing others from ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... much, but was in a satisfied frame of mind. He had taken a look at Paulsberg's great portrait which was now exhibited in the Arrow, in the large window which everybody had to pass; people crowded in front of it continually. The painting was elegant and obtrusive; Paulsberg's well-groomed form looked very distinguished in the plain cane-bottomed chair, and people wondered if that was the chair in which he had written his books. All the newspapers had mentioned ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... fashion in the puffings and trimmings of her alpaca skirt; and there was evidence of a struggle with poverty in the tight-fitting lavender gloves, whose streaky lines bore witness to the imperfection of the cleaner's art. Elegant Parisians and the select of Brussels glanced at the military Englishman and his handsome daughter with some slight touch of supercilious surprise—one has no right to find shabbily-dressed young women in the golden temple—and it ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... and had a diamond bracelet forced upon her. She sold it as soon as the donor's back was turned, together with every article of jewellery in her possession, every bit of silver plate, and all her furniture. The breakfast was very elegant, and served in a private room at one of the best hotels; the bride's handsome luggage had also been brought thither, and it was the meeting-place of the family which so seldom met. There, also, when she had parted from Frances, Deb parted from ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... self-indulgence. Why should they, just they of all men, condemn themselves to dwell so much in the most dreary climate of the moral world, when they could perhaps have taken their almost constant abode in a little elysium of elegant knowledge, taste, and refined society? Then was the time to revert to the example of Him "who, though he was rich, for our ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... found rooms decently furnished, and a maid-servant immediately spread the table with a genteel cold collation; but what he looked upon as the most elegant part of the entertainment, was the agreeable chit-chat during the time of supper, and a song the lady who had so much attracted him, gave him, at her friend's request, after ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... was no little apprehension of a visit from these sovereigns of the road. The passengers had noticed my unmistakable Anglo-Saxon name, as it was called at the stage-door, and, when I had taken my seat, an elegant, long Colt's revolver was passed to me by a passenger in full uniform. Such is one of the advantages that a traveler enjoys who belongs to a race of men of acknowledged courage—an advantage that enabled we to travel ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... of Chester, near the Bay of Chesapeake, lived an elegant man, with the softest manners in the world and a shadow forever on his countenance. He bore a blameless character and an honored name. He had one son of the same name as his own, Perry Whaley. This son was forever with him, for use or for pleasure; they could not be ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... beauty of form and colour, there is one manifestation of it for which no one can pretend that sexual selection can possibly account. The instance referred to is that presented by bivalve shell-fish.[44] Here we meet with charming tints and elegant forms and markings of no direct use to their possessors[45] in the struggle for {55} life, and of no indirect utility as regards sexual selection, for fertilization takes place by the mere action of currents ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... upon them and entered his tent. Constant and Roustan had taken pains to give it as comfortable and elegant an appearance as possible. A beautiful Turkish carpet covered the floor. On the table in the middle of the tent were placed the emperor's supper, consisting of some cold viands on silver plates and dishes. On another table was an inkstand, papers, books, and maps; and in ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... are favoured; a red skirt with green stars was considered at one time the height of fashion, until an inventive woman discovered that yellow dots could also be worked in. In addition to these dresses, the women will squander money on elegant patent-leather French slippers (with which they generally neglect to wear stockings), and use silk handkerchiefs perfumed with the finest Parisian eau de Cologne, bought at a cost of from fourteen to ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... before her—with a nose so absurdly aquiline that it would have done for a caricature—coarse-skinned cheeks, and a stare of military impudence that shocked and nearly frightened the high-bred, elegant-looking beauty on whom it was fixed. And yet this individual, such as we have described, had been fixed on by the higher powers for her husband—was this night to be treated as her accepted lover, and, in short, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... "This elegant species," writes Wilson, "is known throughout North America. Its favourite places of resort are high mountains, covered with the balsam-pine and hemlock." It prefers the woods—being seldom or never found in open plains. They are solitary birds; generally being ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... was decorated was sure to be thrown into the flames as a superstitious one. Red letters and embellished figures were sure marks of being papistical and diabolical. We still find such volumes mutilated of their gilt letters and elegant initials. Many have been found underground, having been forgotten; what escaped the flames were obliterated by the damp: such is the deplorable fate of books during ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... pleas'd most largely to expatiate upon this point", & with all my "altum silentium" my "interrogations follow'd one another with such amazing rapidity, that he (poor man) was almost out of breath in repeating them." - Here, gentle reader, is presented to you a group of ideas in the chaste, the elegant style of CURONUS, which required much more skill in the English language than I am a master of, to reduce to the level of common sense. Thus I have given you a short specimen of the taste of Chronus, who is said to be the top hand on the side of the ministry: For want of leisure ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... man of unusual power," was his summing up. "He is elegant, fascinating, unscrupulous. Although apparently out of his natural element in this neighbourhood, he has some purpose in putting in an appearance in such a place as this at a late hour. Perhaps he is one of mademoiselle's ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... elegant speech, delivered with quite an air, and stood huddled together at a respectful distance, except two stout porters, who came up and began ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... got no good from them, had withdrawn into his parish-work, to eat his own heart, like Bellerophon of old. For Frank was a gentleman and a Christian, if ever one there was. Delicate in person, all but consumptive; graceful and refined in all his works and ways; a scholar, elegant rather than deep, yet a scholar still; full of all love for painting, architecture, and poetry, he had come down to bury himself in this remote curacy, in the honest desire of doing good. He had been a curate in a fashionable ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the inelegance of his compounds, and makes the just remark that the old writers attempted to reproduce Greek analogies without sufficient regard for the capacities of their language; thus while the word kyrtauchaen is elegant and natural, its Latin equivalent incurvicervicus, borders on the ludicrous. [17] Some of his fragments show the same sceptical tendencies that are prominent in Ennius. One of them contains a comprehensive survey of the different philosophic systems, and decides in favour ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... The elegant figure of Webster interrupted his reverie. Sam had never seen Webster before, and it was with no pleasure that he saw him now. He had come to regard this lane as his own private property, and he resented trespassers. He tucked his legs under him, and scowled ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... is excellent in the two last points, but has a redundancy in the first; the opening excites the attention very strongly; the conduct of the story is artful and judicious; the characters are admirably drawn and supported; the diction polished and elegant; yet, with all these brilliant advantages, it palls upon the mind (though it does not upon the ear); and the reason is obvious, the machinery is so violent, that it destroys the effect it is intended to excite. Had the story been kept within the ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... out here," announced Brother Lu, with an air of importance that must have further awed both Matilda and Andrew. "There's my friend Billings, coming over to see who we are. I told him I wanted to show you all around this elegant place, and he agreed to pilot us about. Now, to look at him, managing this property, you'd never think that Malcolm Billings was once down and out, and the worst-looking tramp that ever took to the road; but it's true. I remember him well. We first met riding on the rods of a freight ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... Remarks upon the History of the Landed and Commercial Policy of England was written by the Rev. Joseph Hudson, Prebendary of Carlisle, 1782, "a judicious and elegant writer, who could not be prevailed on to give his name with it to the public."—See Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. viii. p. 160, note. {92} Mr. N. characterises it as "a valuable work, richly deserving to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... elaborate papers which he wrote for learned societies on subjects connected with natural history. For sixty years previous to the conclusion of his long life in 1850, he had devoted the leisure of a parsonage to that delightful study, and being a diligent and accurate observer, and an elegant and entertaining writer, he had attained the highest rank amongst the British naturalists of his day. It appears, from a memoir just published,[2] that Mr Kirby was born in 1759, and settled in 1782 in the cure of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... "restricted to the few wealthy collectors of proscribed books and what booksellers' catalogues describe as facetiae'" (p. 179); for "when an Arabic word is unknown to the literary language" (what utter imbecility!), "and belongs only to the low vocabulary of the gutter" (which the most "elegant" writers most freely employ), "Mr. Payne laboriously searches out a corresponding term in English 'Billingsgate,' and prides himself upon an accurate reproduction of the tone of the original" (p. 178). This is a remarkable twisting ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... brought home, and compelled to wear iron clogs on his ankles for one or two months. I saw him with those irons on one day when I was at the house. This man was, when young, remarkable in the fashionable world for his elegant and fascinating manners, but the exercise of the slaveholder's power has thrown the fierce air ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... tombs of Etruscans buried long prior to the foundation of Rome, or the birth of the fine arts in Greece, have been found unmistakable evidence of the advanced condition of this people. The exquisite coloring and grouping of the figures on their elegant vases, one of which, on exhibition in the British Museum, portrays the birth of Minerva, or Wisdom, show the delicacy of their taste, the purity of their conceptions, and their ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... Jeremiah, the elder brother, lived in a house of his own on the other side of the water. It was a low, comfortable room, with great beams running across the ceiling, and papered with the same paper as the walls—a piece of elegant luxury which took Molly's fancy mightily! This parlour looked out on the dark courtyard in which there grew two or three poplars, straining upwards to the light; and through an open door between the backs of two houses could be seen a glimpse of the dancing, heaving river, with ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... works in Sussex. In the North the feudal tie between landlord and tenant, and the sentiment of the past, preserve much of their force, and the great power in those parts is the Marquis of Newcastle, at once great territorial lord of the Middle Ages and elegant grand seigneur of the Renaissance, who brings into the field a famous regiment of his own retainers. In certain towns, such as Bradford and Manchester, there are germs of manufacturing industry, and these form the sinews of the Parliamentarian ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... of leaving your friends on my account this evening," and Curtis, without looking around, showed that he had noticed the befurred elderly lady and two very pretty daughters who were taking Howard Devar under their elegant wings. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Lawrence, or Chantrey, may be indicated afar-off in the barbarous ballads, drawings, or carvings, of an early nation. Coarse nature and crude simplicity are the commencement, as elevated nature and elegant simplicity are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... Hawkins, who has, with unusual vivacity, described a day spent with him in the country. As I have mentioned the fictitious physician in "Peregrine Pickle," let the same page show the real one. I shall transcribe Sir John's forgotten words—omitting his "neat and elegant dinner:"—"Akenside's conversation was of the most delightful kind, learned, instructive, and, without any affectation of wit, cheerful and entertaining. One of the pleasantest days of my life I passed with him, Mr. Dyson, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... not going too far when we say that Mr. Marsh's book is the best treatise of the kind in the language. It abounds in nice criticism and elegant discussion on matters of taste, showing in the author a happy capacity for esthetic discrimination as well as for linguistic attainment. He does not profess to deal with some of the deeper problems of language, but nevertheless makes us feel that they have been subjects of thoughtful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the woman always is to blame If a man ventures to commit himself In a proposal unacceptable. The rule has its exceptions; for I gave No word, no inkling of encouragement To Captain Dudley; yet I had an offer From Captain Dudley. Young, and elegant, Though of a stock somewhat attenuate; Rich, though a younger son; a gentleman, A scholar,—what good reason could I give For saying Nay to such an applicant? 'Explain!' my mother cried, with brow severe; 'Is not his character without a flaw?' 'So far as known ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... the gouty man was rich enough to have himself carried in a litter through the mountains and valleys; and when we compare his enjoyments with those of the popes who succeeded him, Pius, whose chief delight was in nature, antiquity, and simple but noble architecture, appears almost a saint. In the elegant and flowing Latin of his Commentaries he freely tells us of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... his minstrelsy and habits with more or less fulness, I need give him only this passing reference here. A little bird with which I here first made acquaintance was an elegant species known as Audubon's warbler, which may be regarded as the western representative of the myrtle warbler of the East. The two birds are almost counterparts. Indeed, at first I mistook the Audubon for the myrtle. The former has a yellow ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... Volney, and get drunk: weaving commenced gradually on Wednesday. Then were little children pirn- fillers, and such were taught to steal warily past the gate-keeper, concealing the bottle. These wee smugglers had a drop for their services, over and above their chances of profiting by the elegant and edifying discussions uttered in their hearing. Infidelity was then getting fashionable." But by the time Thom enters on his seventeen years' weaving, in 1814, the Nemesis has come. "Wages are six ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... all might vote. It was responded to by the whole assembly's rising. After the benediction, the various rooms were visited and admired. The beauty and convenience of the rooms, the fine pictures on the walls, the beautiful desks and chairs for the teachers, the elegant Steinway piano, the bell, and the handsome stoves, were all noted and ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... meeting came off, at which the usual bargain was quickly struck, the soul of Eustace being bartered for the coveted body of the beautiful young lady. The compact, it was arranged, should close at her death, but the Evil One was to remain meanwhile by the side of Dauntesey in the form of an elegant "self," or genteel companion. In due course the eventful day arrived when Eustace stood before the altar. But the marriage ceremony was no sooner over than, on leaving the sacred edifice, the elements were found to be the reverse of favourable to them. The flowers strewed before ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... cotton shirts, as the country abounds in this sort of stuff. Cadamosto describes in great detail the native manufacture of garments, and the habits of the women; barefoot and bare-headed they go always, dressed in linen, elegant enough in apparel, vile in life and diet, always chattering, great liars, treacherous and deceitful to the last degree. Bloody and remorseless are the wars the princes of these barbarians carry on against one another. They have no horsemen ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... testify that they are of great beauty, and excellent quality, made by Tiffany & Co., a firm of the first standing in the city.' He proceeded to describe the colors as being made of the best silk, and decorated in the most elegant manner. He further objected to the price proposed to be given for the colors. He declared that, from his connection with the militia, he had become acquainted with the value of such articles, and he could procure colors of the best ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the snow-white, unpainted floor, but various mats and rugs, of all the kinds into which ingenuity has transformed woollen rags, were disposed about it. The bed was the pride and glory of the room, however; for on it was spread a silk patchwork quilt, made of pieces of the brocade and damask and elegant silks, of which the ladies belonging to the grand old Tory families had their gowns and cardinals, and other paraphernalia, made. Aunt Molly had been a mantuamaker to the old "quality," and she could show us a piece of Madam Vassall's ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... in this, my dear Smith, I will willingly yield to your better judgment—I think Iago was intended for the hero of the play. He is the mainspring of the whole plot; he pulls all the wires; and, to use an elegant expression of your own, he twists them all round his thumb. Critically, if superiority in mere intellect and strong self-will, or even success in the object he designs, constitute a hero, the clear-witted, audacious, subtle Ancient has entirely the upper hand of the trusting, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... everybody says so; but his umbrella was only gingham, and mine has a silver handle." Or, "Yes, his force of mind was gigantic; but just here he left the beaten track. If I had been in his place at that moment I should have kept it; I always do." Or, "His morality looks elegant, but it hasn't got any fibre to it. Now my morality is all fibre; you never met with such fibrous morality. What did he do with the fibre out of his? Did he pawn it? did he sell it? did he give it away? We should like to know all about it—is it in his autobiography? Did he write an autobiography? ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... I pass my days racking my brain over books.... I shall never know very much, that's certain; and perhaps that's the reason why I'm ever striving to learn a little more. You must at all events grant that work, like idleness, is a means of passing life, though of course it is a less elegant and aesthetic one." ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Dante: but it was eminently distinguished by general intellectual activity. The study of the Latin writers had never been wholly neglected in Italy. But Petrarch introduced a more profound, liberal, and elegant scholarship, and communicated to his countrymen that enthusiasm for the literature, the history, and the antiquities of Rome, which divided his own heart with a frigid mistress and a more frigid Muse. Boccaccio turned their attention to the more sublime ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... grateful to worms, as they protect and preserve for an indefinitely long period every object, not liable to decay, which is dropped on the surface of the land, by burying it beneath their castings. Thus, also, many elegant and curious tesselated pavements and other ancient remains have been preserved; though no doubt the worms have in these cases been largely aided by earth washed and blown from the adjoining land, especially when cultivated. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... vie de l'homme, composes a l'imitation de Phocylides, Epicharmus, et autres poetes grecs, and which number he afterwards increased to 126, are the best known. These quatrains, or couplets of four verses, have been translated into nearly all European and several Eastern languages. A most elegant reprint has been published of them, in 1874, by M. A. Lemetre, ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... you, at all events. And perhaps she may be lonely, though I rather doubt it; not that I wish to discourage you, my dear. I haven't seen her in a long time, for we have missed each other's calls. She never went into society much; but she used to be a very elegant woman, and is ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... in his "Traditions of Edinburgh" (p. 191), gives an interesting account of the elegant Susanna, Countess of Eglintoun, who was in her eighty-fifth year when Johnson and Boswell visited her. She died in 1780, at the age of ninety-one, having preserved to the last her stately mien and fine complexion. She is said to have washed her face periodically ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... letters. Abi-milki of Tyre had carried this practice farthest, and he was also admirably skilful in lodging complaints by the way. We owe to this worthy one of the choicest pieces in the whole collection, the elegant paean of a place-hunter of more than three thousand years ago. It will be noticed that some of his rhetorical expressions repeatedly recall those of the Hebrew Psalter in the same way as do phrases in the letter of Tagi already quoted. In fact, the Bible critic ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... suppose that they were equally capable of building ships to answer all their requirements, either for war or commerce. They were probably thus not only of great size, but well built, and were certainly finished and ornamented in an elegant and even a magnificent manner, far superior to that of many ages later. The mistaken notion as to the size of the ships of the ancients arises from the supposition that because merchantmen of the present day are smaller than men-of-war, that they were so ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... abbey proper is not a great deal. At the entrance of the court-yard, a monumental gateway; a wing of the building, dating from the twelfth century, in which dwell the family of the miller of whom I am the guest; the chapter-hall, remarkable for some elegant arches and a few remnants of mural painting; finally, two or three cells, one of which seems to have been used for the purposes of correction, if I may judge from the solidity of the door and the strength of the bolts. The rest has been torn down, and may be found ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... misappreciated the spirit of the ancient ballad, preferring the dross to the fine gold, and tricking out the 'terrific old Scottish tale,' as Sir Walter Scott calls it, in meretricious ornament, may be seen by comparing the original copies with that 'elegant' composition of David Mallet, William and Margaret, so praised and popular in its day, in which every change made is a disfigurement of the nature of an outrage. Read the summons of the ghost, still 'naked of ornament ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... priest weighed and pondered the thoughts that sought admission to his reawakened mind. He was not interrupted until sundown; and then Carmen entered the room with a bowl of chocolate and some small wheaten loaves. Behind her, with an amusing show of dignity, stalked a large heron, an elegant bird, with long, scarlet legs, gray plumage, and a gracefully curved neck. When the bird reached the threshold it stopped, and without warning gave vent to a prolonged series of shrill, unmusical sounds. The startled priest sat up in his bed ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... satin, velvet, and lined with delicate surah. They are trimmed with real and imitation lace, and are of the most delicate shades of pink, blue, lavender, and pearl-color; cascades of lace extend down the front. In these, made loose to the figure, but still very elegant and most becoming, do the English princess, the duchess, and the Continental coroneted or royal dame, or the queen of fashion, receive their guests at afternoon tea. No wonder that in each bridal trousseau ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... committing him to their charge. Then he took leave of the youth, who journeyed with his friends the merchants till they reached Baghdad, the House of Peace, where he entered the market and hired him a house, so handsome and delectable and spacious and elegant that on seeing it he well nigh lost his wits for admiration; for therein were pavilions facing one another, with floors of coloured marbles and ceilings inlaid with gold and lapis lazuli, and its gardens were full ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... there, and did not look up when Raisky entered. Tiet Nikonich embraced him. He received an elegant bow from Paulina Karpovna, an elaborately got-up person of forty-five in a low cut muslin gown, with a fine lace handkerchief and a fan, which she kept constantly in motion although there was ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... the best also of the several variations of the theme of which, at one time, the sculptor apparently could not tire, familiarizes Americans with the talent of Cain. In this association Rouillard, whose horse in the Trocadero Gardens is an animated and elegant work, ought to be mentioned, but it is hardly as good as the neighboring elephant of Fremiet as mere animal representation (the genre exists and has excellences and defects of its own), while in more ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... do not include lodgings, and none of them include ladies. It remains for America to give us the club complete in both. There is every reason why women should secure elegant and economical homes in this way. Indeed, in the present state of things, there seems no other way to secure them. There is no remedy but in a system of judicious clubbing. Since this phase of the world seems made up for the family relation, then ladies must make themselves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... in the eyes of the few shabby people in the free seats. The organ peals forth, the hired singers commence a short hymn, and the congregation condescendingly rise, stare about them, and converse in whispers. The clergyman enters the reading-desk,—a young man of noble family and elegant demeanour, notorious at Cambridge for his knowledge of horse-flesh and dancers, and celebrated at Eton for his hopeless stupidity. The service commences. Mark the soft voice in which he reads, and the impressive manner in which he applies his white hand, studded ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... from talk between the two sisters that she learned all about this story. She said she never saw a more beautiful woman than Madam Winthrop, nor heard a sweeter voice. But how Hannah had to hush the unmannerly surprise of her brood of quick-witted youngsters when they found out that elegant Aunt Ann Mary did not know her letters, and had never heard of Julius Caesar or Oliver Cromwell! For marriage did not change Ann Mary very much; but as her husband was perfectly satisfied with her, I dare say it was ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... exposure to the cold draught of the atmosphere through the interstices of extremely thin laminations of copper plates. The entire machinery, placed under the bottom of the carriage, was borne on springs; the whole being of an elegant form. This model steam-carriage ascended with perfect ease the steepest roads. Its success was so complete that Dr. Harland designed a full-sized carriage; but the demands upon his professional skill were so great that he was prevented going further than constructing the pair of engines, the ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... butter." To me the penance turned out interesting after a period of natural repulsion. A most unpleasant addition to sepulchral sentiment is here the fashion: photographs of the departed set into the stone. You see an elegant and genteel marble cross: there on the pedestal above the name is the photo:—a smug man with bourgeois whiskers,—a militiaman with waxed mustaches well turned up,—a woman well attired and conscious of it: you cannot think how indecent ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... to the wine we shall drink from it together, a flavor which the choicest vintage could never impart. Take it from my hand,—filled to the brim and running over with truth and earnestness. I have just taken one parting look at it, and it seems the most elegant thing in the world to me, for I lose sight of the vase in the crowd of welcome associations that are clustering and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... work, contains Selections from the greatest master-pieces of rhetorical and poetical composition, both ancient and modern. Many of these selections are taken from the most elegant and classical American authors—writers whose noble productions have already shed an unfading lustre, and stamped immortality upon the literature of our country.—In the select part of the work, rhetorical marks are also employed to point out the ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... Duke of Ferrara, Ercole, son of the famous Lucrezia Borgia, in honour of some distinguished grandees who had arrived from Paris on the invitation of the Duchess, the daughter of Louis XII, King of France. Side by side with her mother sat Valeria in the centre of an elegant tribune, erected after drawings by Palladius on the principal square of Ferrara for the most honourable ladies of the city. Both Fabio and Muzio fell passionately in love with her that day; and as they concealed nothing ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... prison and death of Bajazet are affirmed by the marshal's servant and historian, within the distance of seven years. [49] 2. The name of Poggius the Italian [50] is deservedly famous among the revivers of learning in the fifteenth century. His elegant dialogue on the vicissitudes of fortune [51] was composed in his fiftieth year, twenty-eight years after the Turkish victory of Tamerlane; [52] whom he celebrates as not inferior to the illustrious Barbarians of antiquity. Of his exploits and discipline Poggius was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... As an elegant writer, indeed, of Latin verse, he is justly numbered amongst the most successful of the accomplished poets of our nation—Ben Jonson, Cowley, Milton, Marvell, Crashaw, Addison, Gray, Smart, T. Warton, Sir W. Jones, &c.—who have devoted their leisure to this species ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... No. 3127, etc., as he circled by in the last turn of the office. There was an apothecary store on the floor below, where the patient could sit in an easy-chair and read the papers while the prescription called for by his number was being fetched by an elegant young woman. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... The country which the sons of Saint Bernard choose for their abode is in fact but a patch of scanty pasture-land in the midst of a heady wine-district. Like its majestic Cluniac rivals, the church has its western portico, elegant in structure but of comparatively humble [127] proportions, under a plain roof of tiles, pent-wise. Within, a heavy coat of white-wash seems befitting to the simple forms of the "Transition," or quite earliest "Pointed," style, to its remarkable continence of spirit, its uniformity, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... dignified and elegant composure until they reached the end of the line where Miss Wilson stood. Nancy's appearance distracted her attention from ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... live to complete it, his friend Sir William Young superintended the publication of the work, and added a short preface; in which, speaking of Mr. Edwards's literary merits, he mentioned "the judicious compilation and elegant recital of the travels of Mungo Park". This produced a letter of expostulation from Park to Sir William Young, of which either no copy was kept, or it has been since lost or mislaid; but the nature of its contents will be seen from ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... of its inhabitants in the last reign but one. No one would look there for epoch-making crises, but many will find a longed-for relief from the speeding-up tendencies of modern romance. Lastly, but for a tendency at times to affectation, the style of the writer is as graceful and elegant as her themes are homely and serene, and that, I think, is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... only the most elegant but most politic way of writing that a poet can use, for I know no defence like it to preserve a poem from the torture of those that lisp and stammer. He that wants teeth may as well venture upon a piece of tough horny brawn as such ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... It delighted me to imagine myself presenting her with whatever she most admired, like some Eastern potentate or fairy godmother. But I could not connect her in my mind with the saddlery business. I felt that to possess so dainty and elegant a little lady as a sister was incompatible with an apprenticeship to ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... lilies, roses—damask, blush, and cinnamon,—larkspurs, lupines, and royal hollyhocks. Then there were the vegetables growing with the flowers,—"beets, with their handsome dark-red leaves, carrots, with their elegant filagree foliage, parsley, that clung to the earth like mandrakes, radishes, illustrations of total depravity, a prey to every evil underground emissary of the ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... in the old house of Maam would Nan come in the mornings, and the beauty of Dhu Loch would quell the song upon her lips. It touched her with some melancholy influence. Grown tall and elegant, her hair in waves about her ears, in a rich restrained tumult about her head, her eyes brimming and full of fire, her lips rich, her bosom generous—she was not the Nan who swung upon a gate and wished that hers was a soldier's fortune. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... appertain to those taken fresh and cooked immediately, and have proved both at the same table, and the truth may rest here, that a Shad 36 or 48 hours out of water, may not cook so hard and solid, and be esteemed so elegant, yet give a higher relished flavor ...
— American Cookery - The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables • Amelia Simmons
... THOUGH elegant your form, and smart your dress, Your air, your language, ev'ry warmth express Yet, if a banker, or a financier, With handsome presents happen to appear, At once is blessed the wealthy paramour, While you a year may languish at ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... a table that I can put my legs under," she said when he argued that the trunks alone would make an "elegant" table. "We can sit on the boxes. Here, dad, you and Jack get the boxes up. The boys will be here with supper in a minute or two. Oh, I say, isn't it going to be fun? Just like a supper party in Delmonico's—only I've never been ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... fortification and ship building. Having observed that he particularly admired a brass globe, which, by means of internal wheelwork, imitated the diurnal motion of the heavens, the rising and setting of the sun, and the phases of the moon, Tycho made him a present of it, and received in return an elegant gold chain, with his Majesty's picture, with an assurance of his unalterable attachment ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... and called by name another specter, which came lightly forward; it was an elegant ghost, faultless ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... sort of reckless joviality in the air of ABANDON, with which he presented me and spoke. A natural curiosity moved me to examine Cleveland more closely. He was what we should call, in common speech, a very elegant young man. He was probably thirty or thirty-five years of age, tall, graceful, rather slenderish, and of particular nicety in his dress. All his clothes were disposed with the happiest precision. White kid-gloves covered his taper fingers. Withdrawn, a rich diamond blazed upon one hand, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... folds of plaited ruffs; the cuirasses softened into jackets of velvet or silk; the stiff broad beards in imperial style changed to sharp goatees and to pointed mustaches, which, with the soft locks falling over the temples, served as a frame for the face. Among the rude men of war and the elegant caballeros, a few ecclesiastics with mustaches and small beards, wearing tasseled clerical hats, stood out conspicuously. Some were religious dignitaries of Malta, to judge by the white insignia adorning their breasts; others, venerable inquisitors of Majorca, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... clear as crystal. Around the basin were gathered companies of such wood-flowers as love the water, conspicuous among which, both for number and beauty, were the yellow and orange blossoms of the elegant "jewels," as boys call them. Advancing to this little mirror, the female took a seat on one of the rocks, on the edge of the water, and bending over, appeared to contemplate, with no little satisfaction, what she beheld there; and to tell the truth, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... this is just the character of the platted ornaments so prevalent on the sculptured stones.[84] But, however these may have been suggested, they show the work of the undoubted artist, and furnish, as the advertisements say, "a varied assortment of the most elegant and attractive patterns." ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Grecian drama from its first weak and imperfect efforts, and has carefully observed its tardy progress to perfection, will scarcely, I think, without astonishment, contemplate a poem produced so many ages before, so elegant in its design, so regular in its structure, so animated, so affecting, so near to the true dramatic model; while, on the contrary, the united wisdom of Greece, after ages of study, was not able to produce anything approaching to perfection ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... It is all wrong, except in the single quality of speed. You enter the town as you would a farmer's house, if you first passed through the pig-stye into the kitchen. Every respectable house in the city turns its back upon you; and often a very brick and dirty back too, though it may show an elegant front of Bath or Portland stone to the street it faces. All the respectable streets run over or under you with an audible shudder of disgust or dread. None but a shabby lane of low shops for the sale of junk, beer, onions, shrimps, and cabbages, will run a third of a mile by your side for the ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... had seen hitherto. They wore over their shoulders a cloak, made of cottons of different degrees of fineness, according to the condition of the wearer. These and the ample sashes worn round the loins were wrought in rich and elegant figures, and edged with a deep ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... Charleston alone there were at one time as many as 16,000 Huguenots. They added whole streets to the city. Their severe morality, marked charity, elegant manners and thrifty habits, made them a most desirable acquisition. They brought the mulberry and olive, and established magnificent plantations on the banks of the Cooper. They also introduced many choice varieties of pears, which ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... a personage: I incline to stipulate for handsome as well. On my word of honour as a man and a gentleman, I pity the margravine—my poor good Frau Feldmarschall! Now, here, Richie,'—my father opened a side-door out of an elegant little room into a spacious dark place, 'here is her cabinet-theatre, where we act German and French comediettas in Spring and Autumn. I have superintended it during the two or more years of my stay at the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and of a most uncommon type. There could not have been a greater contrast between brother and sister, for Stapleton was neutral tinted, with light hair and gray eyes, while she was darker than any brunette whom I have seen in England—slim, elegant, and tall. She had a proud, finely cut face, so regular that it might have seemed impassive were it not for the sensitive mouth and the beautiful dark, eager eyes. With her perfect figure and elegant dress ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... Irish: from England and Cornwall there was a very rich gathering of nobles; for from Wales to Anjou, in Maine and in Poitou, there was no knight of importance, nor lady of quality, but the best and the most elegant were at the court at Nantes, as the King had bidden them. Now hear, if you will, the great joy and grandeur, the display and the wealth, that was exhibited at the court. Before the hour of nones had sounded, King Arthur dubbed four hundred knights or more all sons ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... brushed himself up; with which, catching his stricken image a bit spectrally in an old dim toilet-glass, he knew again, in a flash, the glow of righteous resentment. Who should be assured against coarse usage if a man of his really elegant, perhaps in fact a trifle over-refined or "effete" appearance, his absolutely gentlemanlike type, couldn't be? He never went so far as to rate himself, with exaggeration, a gentleman; but he would have maintained against all comers, with perfect candour and as claiming a high advantage, that ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... usage when buildings having magnificent interiors are provided with elegant entrance-courts to correspond; for there will be no propriety in the spectacle of an elegant interior approached by a low, mean entrance. Or, if dentils be carved in the cornice of the Doric entablature or triglyphs represented in the Ionic entablature over the cushion-shaped ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... and realization of all the heroes of all those darling, greasy volumes which the young girl had devoured. Mr. Pen, we have seen, was rather a dandy about shirts and haberdashery in general. Fanny had looked with delight at the fineness of his linen, at the brilliancy of his shirt studs, at his elegant cambric pocket-handkerchief and white gloves, and at the jetty brightness of his charming boots. The prince had appeared and subjugated the poor little handmaid. His image traversed constantly her restless slumbers; the tone of his voice, the blue light ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Plainton came to see Mrs. Cliff. No matter how she returned,—as a purse-proud bondholder, as a lady of elegant wealth with her attendants, as an old friend suddenly grown jolly and prosperous,—it would be all right for her neighbors to go in and see her in the evening. There they might suit themselves to her new deportment whatever it might be, and there would be no danger of any of them getting ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... one; for she is urged by two of the strongest passions that can agitate the human breast—cupidity and vengeance. While depriving her of her ghastly necklace, Gaspar had taken the occasion to possess himself of the more elegant and valuable ornaments stripped from the person of Nacena; not with any thought to appropriate them to himself, but the intention of restoring them to their rightful owner, when the latter should re-appear to claim them. Coming back, and bringing ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... in the manufacture of muskets at the works on the hill, and about the same number occupied as residences by the various officers and head-clerks of the armory. Some of the buildings are spacious and elegant in their construction, particularly the quarters of the commanding officer, and the arsenal, and are arranged in a picturesque and symmetrical manner within the square. The grounds are shaded by ornamental trees, and the dwellings are adorned with gardens and shrubbery. Broad ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... is dark as jet, ladye, Thy cheek is sharp and high, And there's a cruel leer, love, Within thy rolling eye: These tangled ebon tresses No comb hath e'er gone through; And thy forehead, it is furrowed by The elegant tattoo! ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... that Valodimir Mavrovitch, the fratricide, was the second son of Count Baileskow, the representative of one of the oldest and most renowned families in Poland. In his youth, Valodimir was the most elegant boy almost ever seen, and scarcely less remarkable for talent than beauty; but he had a peculiar enthusiasm about him, in which, as his tutor, Father Theophilus, often said, lay his destiny. "In all other respects, he is only," said ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... means have been known of expelling the air from the interior without letting air from the exterior enter at the same time. The arrangement devised by Mr. Falconetti gets over the difficulty in a very elegant manner. It seems as if it would be called upon to render great services in the industries, and it well merits the attention of engineers of roads and bridges, and of contractors on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... of their own head-lights two glowing discs on either side of the long, black-muzzled snout of a high-power car, and above the masked face and menacing figure of its solitary driver. In the golden circle thrown by the rover there stood an elegant, open-topped, twenty-horse Humber, with an undersized and very astonished chauffeur blinking from under his peaked cap. From behind the wind-screen the veil-bound hats and wondering faces of two very pretty ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... so little progress in the world. You have heard of a Profession to which the luxury of modern times has given birth, that of Landscape-Gardeners, or Improvers of Pleasure-grounds. A competent Practitioner in this elegant art begins by considering every object, that he finds in the place where he is called to exercise his skill, as having a right to remain, till the contrary be proved. If it be a deformity he asks whether a slight alteration may not convert ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... marble pure, but also marble cold."[27] Lowell, however, thinks that Collins "was the first to bring back into poetry something of the antique flavor, and found again the long-lost secret of being classically elegant ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... half-hour over the stile. It may seem strange that the British Embassy should have chosen so uncouth a host as Nicolai Leontievitch for their innocent secretaries, but it was only the more enterprising of the young men who preferred to live in a Russian family; most of them inhabited elegant flats of their own, ornamented with coloured stuffs and gaily decorated cups and bright trays from the Jews' Market, together with English comforts and luxuries dragged all the way from London. Moreover, Markovitch ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... two-horse mails in England. Those who have not seen the starting of the mail-coaches from the General Post-Office can never understand the magnificence and excitement of that scene. The coaches were clean, trim, elegant, and glittering; the blood-horses were the finest that could be procured, groomed to perfection, and full of fire; the drivers and guards were tried and trusty men of mettle, in bright scarlet costume—some of the former being lords, baronets, and even parsons! ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... best. The subjoined version in the Spenserian stanza, by Anna C. Brackett, follows its model closely in its directness and fervor of expression, and has moreover in itself genuine poetic merit. The translation of a fragment of 'Hesperos' is that of J.A. Symonds. Bion's fluent and elegant versification invites study, and his few idyls and fragments have at various times been turned into English by Fawkes (to be found in Chalmers's 'Works of English Poets'), ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... ease, or by events of a terrific and supernatural kind, is plainly indicated. In daylight, the Marquis audaciously pressed his unholy suit, and even offered marriage, a hollow mockery, for he was well known to be already a married man. The scenes of Adeline's flight, capture, retention in an elegant villa of the licentious noble, renewed flight, rescue by Theodore, with Theodore's arrest, and wounding of the tyrannical Marquis, are all of breathless interest. Mrs. Radcliffe excels in narratives of romantic escapes, a topic always thrilling when well handled. Adeline herself is carried ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Maybe Her bookkeeper was a drunken guy who didn't know a ledger from a scrap book. Now if She'd engaged you an' me to keep tab of things for Her, we'd have done a deal better. Those poor blamed sea-gulls, or whatever they are, would have been squatting around on elegant beds of moulted feathers, laid out on steam-heat radiators, feeding on oyster cocktails and things, and handing out the instructive dope of a highbrow politician working up a press reputation, and learning their kids the decent habits of folk who're yearning to keep out ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... I owed him a letter, and this, I thought, would do instead. For a month I meant to pack the table up and send it to him; but I always put off doing it, and at last I thought the best plan would be to give it to Scrymgeour, who liked elegant furniture. As a smoker, Scrymgeour seemed the very man to appreciate a pretty, useful little table. Besides, all I had to do was to send William John down with it. Scrymgeour was out at the time; but we left it at the side of his fireplace as a pleasant surprise. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... its practice—delicate things of art, which beauty had handled or might handle, the pictured faces on the walls, in their frames of reeded ebony or jewelled filigree. There was the Minerva, decreed him at a conference of the elegant, pedantic "Jeux Floraux," which had proclaimed [64] Pierre de Ronsard "Prince of Poets." The massive silver image Ronsard had promptly offered to his patron King Charles; but in vain, for, though so greatly ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... the romance of his Basque grandmother and the audacity of his Irish grandfather immediately thought of what a strange and wonderful thing it would be if he could by hook or crook become a rich man all in the twinkling of an eye, and marry this superior, elegant ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... to preach the contempt of all that can make life lovable and wholesomely pleasant. I love nothing better than to see a woman nice, neat, elegant, looking her best in the prettiest dress that her taste and purse can afford, or your bright, fresh young girls fearlessly and perfectly sitting their horses, or adorning their houses as pretty [sic; it is not quite grammar, but it is better than if it were;] as care, trouble, and refinement ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... most important edifice of a class which in later periods numbered many interesting structures. The town hall of Beaugency (1527) is one of the best of minor public buildings in France, and in its elegant treatment of a simple two-storied faade may be classed with the Maison FranoisI., at Paris. This stood formerly at Moret, whence it was transported to Paris and re-erected about 1830 in somewhat ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... despair because he had no gorilla, than because it was a bad financial operation, which left him without that for which he had spent so much money. He was wretched in his disappointment, and postponed indefinitely the opening of his menagerie, though my elegant advertisements were in all the papers, and our flaming posters covered the walls of the city from one end to the other. Gloom reigned in ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... whatever may be the true antiquity of this nation, whether their mythology be a corruption of the pure deism we find in their books, or their deism a refinement from gross idolatry; whether their religious and moral precepts have been engrafted on the elegant philosophy of the Nyya and Mimns, or this philosophy been refined on the plainer text of the Veda; the Hindu is the most ancient nation of which we have valuable remains, and has been surpassed by none in refinement and civilization; though the ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... and vari-coloured stones that might or might not be gems; and articles of clothing, including sandals of all kinds, from the perfectly plain piece of board, secured by a single strap, to articles of the most elegant ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Mrs. MacDonald's great pleasure and they were everywhere, making up for the plainness of the furnishings, for Mrs. MacDonald did not believe in showiness. Her house was thoroughly comfortable but not elegant. ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard |
