"Fascination" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... significance that the Word of God bids us not set our heart upon riches when they increase. [Ps. lxii. 10.] It is often observed, I fear, that a man's readiness to give diminishes in proportion to his power for giving. There is a subtle fascination for many minds, and among them for minds generous at first, in an access of possessions; the thirst for more sets in, however imperceptibly, and perhaps the Christian, perhaps the Pastor, has become—before he knows it—covetous; caring a good deal for money. Let ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... fascination her beauty had! I remember it with a shudder. Her face haunted me all night; I ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... leave of a subject which has always exercised a peculiar fascination over me, and I can truly say that those old theatrical days were amongst the ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... assume a deeper sternness, and he found it more and more difficult to withdraw his own. Suddenly, a thought darted through his mind, which made him shiver all over, and spring from his seat. The idea of fascination caused the start. He had more than once beheld the black snake extended on the ground, charming, with his glittering eyes the anguished bird which, with fainter and fainter screams, striving to delay a fate it could not escape, kept flying round and round in constantly diminishing ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... leaves, to vanish like ghosts. But they came back again, to push and crawl up nearer to that blazing wonder. Some of the back ones were skipping about but the front ones edged up in a sort of wild-eyed fascination. Closer and closer they got, then the first one was so near that reaching out to smell the lantern he burnt his nose, and at his alarm thump, all disappeared in the woods. But they soon returned to disport again in that amazing brightness; ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... same time, Horace had a subtle appreciation of the beauty and grace, the sweetness and the fascination, of womanhood. Poet as he was, he must have delighted to contemplate the ideal elevation and purity of woman, as occasionally depicted in the poetry of Greece, and of which he could scarcely fail to have had some glimpses in real life. Nay, he paints (Odes, III. 11) the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... and little by little new vision came to him. First of all, it was the fascination of the mines. They were old mines—veritable cities tunnelled out beneath the mountains, the main passages running for miles. One day Hal stole off from his job, and took a trip with a "rope-rider," and got through his physical senses a realisation of the vastness and strangeness ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... my arms until then, with upturned face and piteous, frightened eyes—like a bird that feels itself within the toils of a snake, yet whose horror is blent with a certain fascination. Now, as she spoke, her will seemed to reassert itself, and she struggled to break from me. But as her fierceness of hatred grew, so did my fierceness of resolve gain strength, and ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... as much as they underrated those of his enemies; or the exhortations of his preachers, who announced the effusions of their fanatical zeal as the immediate inspiration of heaven? The dreams of astrology filled his mind with visionary hopes; even love conspired, with its irresistible fascination, to complete the seduction. "Had you," demanded the Electress, "confidence enough in yourself to accept the hand of a king's daughter, and have you misgivings about taking a crown which is voluntarily offered you? I would rather eat bread at thy kingly table, than ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... looked curiously at the newcomer. Captain Muller had a peculiar fascination for him. It was not Mr. Snyder's habit to trust overmuch to appearances. But he could not help admitting that there was something about this man's aspect which brought Mrs. Pickett's charges out ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... light and joy of his home, yet his mother sometimes felt as if her heart was contracting with a spasm of agony, when she remembered that it was through that same geniality of disposition and wonderful fascination of manner, the tempter had woven his meshes for her husband, and that the qualities that made him so desirable at home, made him equally so to his jovial, careless, inexperienced companions. Fearful that the appetite for strong drink might have been ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... a heavy calamity. In one of his letters relating to an impression of some verses he remarks that he had, with regard to the correction of the proof, "a spell upon him;" and indeed the anxiety with which he dwelt upon the minutest and most trifling niceties, deserved no other name than that of fascination. That he sold so valuable a performance for so small a price was not to be imputed either to necessity, by which the learned and ingenious are often obliged to submit to very hard conditions, or to avarice, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... sighed momma. "Fancy dying like a baked potato in hot ashes! Somehow, Alexander, I don't seem able to get over it," and momma gazed with distressed fascination at the grim form of ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... sight of it made her heart grow sick and faint. Still, it held a strange fascination for her. She turned to look at it again—to study it closely, to see how it appeared in print, when, to her amazement, she caught the name "Jay Gardiner" in a column ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... genius and his accomplishments. They called Thomas Becket an adventurer in the time of Henry II., and Thomas Cromwell in the reign of Henry VIII. The young secretary to the Danish minister seems to have been a man of remarkable ability, insight, and powers of fascination, based on his intelligence and on knowledge acquired in the first instance in a mercantile house,—as was the success of Thomas Cromwell ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... which to menace the great beast before her. She knew that at best it could but enrage him and yet she meant to sell her life dearly, for she felt that she must die. No human succor could have availed her even had it been there to offer itself. For a moment she tore her gaze from the hypnotic fascination of that awful face and breathed a last prayer to her God. She did not ask for aid, for she felt that she was beyond even divine succor—she only asked that the end might come quickly and with ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... de Fascination Betwixt Peg Price and Dumby Dick— But Peg had sich a corporation, He dropp'd her like a red hot brick. The company was so enraptur'd, They buckets of vall flowers threw— But one chap flung a bunch of turnips, Which nearly split Dick's nut in ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... her; and now, straw hat in hand, he was coming up the brick walk that led to the veranda. His eyes were fixed upon Julia with an intensity that seemed to affect his breathing; there was a hushedness about him. And Florence, in fascination, watched Julia's expression and posture take on those little changes that always seemed demanded of her by the approach of a young or youngish man, or a nicely dressed old one. By almost imperceptible processes the commonplace moment ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... Mrs. Welcome beside her. The mother was speaking with anguished entreaty to Elsie. The girl had risen to her feet and was gazing with a dreadful fascination at Druce, writhing in the grasp of the officers who ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... Chartley Castle, Sidney became more and more in love with the little Penelope; but when he declared his passion, she held him off, like the coquette that she was, while she took pains to spin the web of her fascination ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... house against my will, as though summoned there by a conjurer, and no sooner am I there than I fall under the spell of her enchantment. I see clearly that I am in the power of an enchantress, whose fascination ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... personage. If, however, the tempter was the Devil, what chance had the poor woman against his seductive wiles? And even if he was only a serpent, he was very "subtil" as we are told, and able to talk like a book, and we know that these creatures have fatal powers of fascination. Surely Mother Eve was heavily handicapped. God might have given her fair play, and left her to fight the battle without furnishing auxiliaries to ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... of his services may perhaps be stated thus, that he discovered (for the modern English) the purely intellectual importance of humility. He had none of that hot humility which is the fascination of saints and good men. But he had a cold humility which he had discovered to be a mere ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... reaching Luxemburg, the youthful paladin stood confessed. His appearance was as romantic as his origin and his exploits. Every contemporary chronicler, French, Spanish, Italian, Flemish, Roman, have dwelt upon his personal beauty and the singular fascination of his manner. Symmetrical features, blue eyes of great vivacity, and a profusion of bright curling hair, were combined with a person not much above middle height; but perfectly well proportioned. Owing to a natural peculiarity of his head, the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... overtaken the Dutchman. The same unseen vengeance was very near Fenwick now; he had had his three warnings, and there was but one more to come before the final note of tragedy was struck. Most of them looked with dazed fascination at the mutilated ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... you what," says Mr. Bucket, instantaneously altering his manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary fascination to the forefinger, "I am damned if I am a-going to have my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half a second of time by any human being in creation. YOU want more painstaking and search-making! YOU do? Do you see this hand, and do you think that I don't ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the fact that books held an unaccountable fascination for him, he could not explain this predilection, for their influence over ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... moments, gazing with a sort of fascination on the dead body, unwilling to cover it up for ever from view. "It must be done!" he said at length, and he began to shovel in the sand, a task ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... that women were inherently wicked. That the Fathers of the Church believed this is exemplified by the statement of Chrysostom in which he said that women were a 'necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... her feet in terror at the first sign of the coming strife, but she did not cry out, nor call in the slaves or guards. She stood, holding the tent-pole with one hand, and gathering her mantle to her breast with the other, gazing in absolute fascination at the fearful life and death struggle, at the unspeakable and tremendous strength so silently exerted by ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... dropped her spoon on her plate with a clatter, leant back in her chair, and sighed with satisfaction. She possessed a horrid fascination for Uncle James. Almost everything she did was an offence to him, yet he could not keep his eyes off ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Half the bad matches in the world are caused either by the educated women marrying the man thoroughly beneath her in all moral qualities, or the man who has spent his life cultivating his mind, falling a slave to the petty fascination of a pretty woman who has only beauty ...
— How to Marry Well • Mrs. Hungerford
... gay, laughing, devil-may-care exterior there lay a whole world of dauntless courage and iron resolution; that six months after the brig was destroyed he would, by unwearying toil and the wonderful fascination he exercised over his fierce and ruffianly crew, find himself a wealthier man than when he trod his brig's deck with a full cargo of oil beneath his feet and ten ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... qualified for the contemplation of either." It would not be difficult to show that to this readiness in reflecting all hues, whether of the shadows or the lights of our variegated existence, Lord Byron owed not only the great range of his influence as a poet, but those powers of fascination which he possessed as a man. This susceptibility, indeed, of immediate impressions, which in him was so active, lent a charm, of all others the most attractive, to his social intercourse, by giving to those who were, at the moment, present, such ascendant ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... street-corner waved and shrieked to her deserting elder charges, and the Chief's quick eye noted that the small, sunburned, active, bare legs of the boy and girl in cool sailor-suits of blue-and-white linen twill, were scampering in his direction. He knew his fascination for children, and instinctively slackened his stride as they came up, abreast now, and shyly hand ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... than this Hungarian's on the dancing of the Mazurka by the Poles. It is a companion to his equally sensational description of the Polonaise. He gives a wild, whirling, highly-colored narrative of the Mazurka, with a coda of extravagant praise of the beauty and fascination of Polish women. "Angel through love, demon through fantasy," as Balzac called her. In none of the piano rhapsodies are there such striking passages to be met as in Liszt's overwrought, cadenced prose, prose modelled after Chateaubriand. Niema iak Polki— "nothing equals the Polish women" and ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... from lip to lip, or the deep speculation upon the mysterious and unravelled wonders of man, of Nature, and the world; the light maxim upon manners, or the sage inquiry into the mines of learning, all and each had possessed a link to bind my temper and my tastes to the graces and fascination of social life. Now a new spirit entered within me: the smile faded from my lip, and the jest departed from my tongue; memory seemed no less treacherous than fancy, and deserted me the instant I attempted to enter into ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... charwoman who has a fascination for the sexton of St. Nicodemus. When I'd got her it was all plain sailing. She lent me the church keys and Mr. Charles and I went up ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... to dance again. Of course all the dancing characters among our party were Clara's partners in succession; and both Gordon and Dawson, who came to ask what had put me into the sulks, were loud in their encomiums on her beauty and fascination; even Branling, no very devoted admirer of the sex, (he saw too much of them, he said, having four presentable sisters,) allowed that she was "the right sort of girl;" but it was not until I saw her stand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... stay long enough on the shore. The tang of the untainted, fresh and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought, and the shells and pebbles and the seaweed with tiny living creatures attached to it never lost their fascination for me. One day Miss Sullivan attracted my attention to a strange object which she had captured basking in the shallow water. It was a great horseshoe crab—the first one I had ever seen. I felt of him and thought it very ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... fruits were exciting and delicious to human senses. Yet the atmosphere of pestiferous fragrance had attracted, rather than repelled. The poisonous delights of the climate, added to the perpetual and various warfare for its productions, spread a strange fascination ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his review for the Quarterly of Scrope's Central France, and was also completing the 'first sketch' of the Principles. But it is evident that as the result of continued study of Lamarck's book, Lyell found it, in spite of its fascination, to embody a theory which he could not but regard as unsound and not calculated to prove a solution of the great mystery of evolution. Accordingly when the second volume of the Principles was issued in 1832, ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... worldly, hard to please. This sudden desertion placed me in a false position. People said that Gerome had never loved me—simply trifling. The friends of that other woman, a great brown-eyed beauty with the subtle charm and fatal fascination of a devil most lovely, made it appear that of course Gerome Meadows had never loved me—why should he? He cowardly held his peace and let them prattle; he was kneeling low before the shrine of his own selection; he was in open rebellion against his irate mother, who did not ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... unable to bear it. When she turned her miserable eyes toward them again, allured by some strange fascination she was powerless to analyse, Edith was in his arms, her mouth ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... fail to see these. Indeed he ought to feel that his visit to England is wasted unless he has seen them. I speak strongly on the point because I feel strongly on it. To my mind there is something about the grim fascination of the historic Tower, the cloistered quiet of the Museum and the majesty of the ancient Abbey, which will make it the regret of my life that I didn't see any one of the three. I fully meant to: but I failed: and I can ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... make you love me less?" I went on, dwelling on the subject with a dreadful fascination, as one looks over ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... the stream swept under the roots of two large trees. From this point I could look back into the sunlit fields where the cattle were grazing; beyond, all was gloom and mystery; the trout were black, and to my young imagination the silence and the shadows were blacker. But gradually I yielded to the fascination and penetrated the woods farther and farther on each expedition, till the heart of the mystery was fairly plucked out. During the second or third year of my piscatorial experience I went through them, and through the pasture and meadow beyond, ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... Count d'Estournel had made. He sat silent for a minute or two and then said: "I will talk it over with Katarina; but at present it does not seem to me that I can accept it. I am a restless spirit, and there is a fascination in this work; but I will ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... are concealed in every chapter of this completely engrossing detective story. The horrible fascination of the tragedy holds one in rapt attention to the end. And through it runs the thread of a curious ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... it, the same charmingly modulated intonation; and her father's voice was instinctively familiar to her. People had often said that it was hard to dislike a man with a voice like Caspar Brooke's; and Lesley was not insensible to its fascination. No, he could not be a mere insensate clod, with that pleasant and cultivated voice, she decided to herself; but he might be something worse—a heartless man of the world, who cared for nothing but himself and his own low ambitions: not a man ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... feels the fascination of the ferns though he may know little of their names and habits. Beholding them in their native haunts, adorning the rugged cliffs, gracefully fringing the water-courses, or waving their stately fronds on the borders of woodlands, ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... of fascination which Napoleon had at command, a still more striking testimony occurs in an anecdote, apparently well authenticated, of Lord Keith. When someone alluded in this old admiral's hearing to Buonaparte's repeated request of a personal interview ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... remembered how seldom he had seen her; she might have many more friends in London than he had dreamed of. Who could see her, and remain blind to her beauty? Who could know her, and remain insensible to the fascination of her enthusiasm, her faith in the right, her courage, her hope, her frank friendship ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... of Benedick and Beatrice, but the immortal fatuity of Dogberry, that the name of Much Ado About Nothing recalls. None of the verbal quips of Touchstone tickle us like his exquisite patronage of William and the fascination which he exercises over the melancholy Jaques. And it is the same throughout all Shakspeare. It is of the humours of Bottom, and Launce, and Shallow, and Sly, and Aguecheek; it is of the laughter that treads upon the heels ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... business in London, delighted in laughing, merry, giggling girls, and surely where could he find another to equal Matty in that respect. Whenever he looked at her she laughed, whenever he spoke to her she blushed and giggled. He began to consider himself a wonder of wit and fascination. Really it was no trouble at all to entertain a nice, little, soft, round thing like Matty Bell. He pronounced the shot silk a splendid robe, and asked Matty pointedly what place of amusement she would like best to see in London, and in whose ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... handling of great sums of money and the acquisition of wealth had grown something of the financier's fever. He had become a power, solidly and steadfastly he had hewn his way into a little circle whose fascination had begun to tell in his blood. Was he to fall without a struggle from amongst the high places, to be stripped of his wealth, shunned as a man who was morally, if not in fact, a murderer, to be looked upon with never-ending scorn by the ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... need not be," was the reply; "with the fascination which she exerts over men she is in reality ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... all others. There is many a man, now perchance hard and worldly, whom we love to pass in the street simply because in meeting him we meet spring flowers and autumn chestnuts, skates and cricket-balls, cherry-birds and pickerel. There is an indescribable fascination in the gradual transference of these childish companionships into maturer relations. We love to encounter in the contests of manhood those whom we first met at football, and to follow the profound thoughts of those who always dived deeper, even in the river, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... twenty-four, the conviction was strengthened that that which had so profoundly interested the writer, would not be altogether indifferent to others. For some inscrutable reason the deeds of sea-robbers have always possessed a fascination denied to those of their more numerous brethren of the land; and in the case of the Sea-wolves of the sixteenth century we are dealing with the very aristocrats of the profession. Circumstances over which they had no control flung the Moslem population of Southern Spain on to the shores of ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... Hard to say exactly what the manner was, any more than to hint it was a sort of magical; in a benign way, not wholly unlike the manner, fabled or otherwise, of certain creatures in nature, which have the power of persuasive fascination—the power of holding another creature by the button of the eye, as it were, despite the serious disinclination, and, indeed, earnest protest, of the victim. With this manner the conclusion of the matter was not out of keeping; for, in the end, all argument and expostulation proved ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... that Diabolical Sight, but could not; this doubtless was caused by some Inchantment. But to proceed to what I intend; the Eyes of Persons by reason of Inchanting Charms, may not only see what others do not, but be under such power of Fascination, as that things which are not, shall appear to them as real: The Apostle speaks of Bewitched Eyes, Gal. 3.1. and we know from Scripture, that the Imaginations of men have by Inchantments been imposed upon; and Histories ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... to be interested in a wretched old bit of scrap-iron. He is right. It would be as rash to suppose that he would find interest in an ancient sword in its rusted condition as it would be to expect the spectator at Rheims to find fascination in the nuts and screws. The true archaeologist would hide that corroded weapon in his workshop, where his fellow-workers alone could see it. For he recognises that it is only the sword which is as good as new that impresses the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... at—Gramarye. It's a very large estate—nearly all woods—and it's been entirely neglected for a number of years. He and some others, including the owner, are working to get it straight—re-making roads, building bridges, cutting down trees. It sounds Quixotic, but I can see the fascination. Besides, he took the work of necessity. He's ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... followed, during which I stared at him in mute fascination. Then an unaccountable impulse made me say abruptly: "Moeran, how old ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... and Flaypole, who was leaning over, narrowly escaped having his arm snapped off by one of them. I could not help regarding them as living sepulchers, which ere long might swallow up our miserable carcasses; yet, withal, I profess that my feelings were those of fascination ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... experiences, enlarged capacity, a different life, and new ambition had impressed her youthful face with a refined mobility; it was a weird fancy to imagine that the blood of those who had died for her had in some vague, mysterious way imparted an actual fascination to her, and he dismissed it. But even the most familiar spectator, like Sophy, could see that Miss Sally had the softest pink complexion, the silkiest hair, that looked as the floss of the Indian corn might look if curled, or golden spider threads if materialized, and ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of the sea, written with the simplicity of style and circumstantiality of detail that give such charm to the works of Defoe. In spite of the fact that Cooper and Marryat had created a taste for sea-tales, this story never became popular. It is superabundant in horrors—a vein that had a fatal fascination for the ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... the thing that was mighty. And I gazed at the immense columns and at the light and little figures all about me. Bird and Sphinx, delicate whimsicality, calm and terrific power! In Egypt the dead men have combined them, and the combination has an irresistible fascination, weaves a spell that entrances you in the sunshine and beneath the blinding blue. At Abydos I knew it. And I loved the columns that seemed blown out with exuberant strength, and I loved the delicate white walls that, like the lotus-flower, give to the world a youth that seems eternal—a ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... poor homes. The child, making, as it were, its first voyage in life, has here been introduced, not merely to a society conducted on principles of gentleness and kindness, but to a fairyland of marvels for the fascination of its intellectual faculties. From the ceiling to the dado—the wainscotted space at the base, for in Hungary this old arrangement is still maintained in its fullest form—the walls are covered with pictures of scripture scenes and objects ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... conclusion, a certain candor and frankness which were natural to her made the thought of divulging what she had already found out, and whatever he might confide to her in the future, exceedingly repugnant. And she acknowledged with a shiver of revolt that the creature's fascination for her was not altogether a matter of make-believe. She was going to find it very hard to keep a proper perspective and point of view; to continue to regard him as just another "case" and all in ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... weird fascination of Poe's strangely beautiful poem "The Raven"? Perhaps on some stormy evening you have read it until the "silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" has "thrilled you, filled you, with fantastic terrors never felt before." That poem is the ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... made him sit down, and then took up his own position on the pile of cushions opposite. His usually underdone complexion was of watery blueness; but his dull, abstracted glance appeared to exercise a certain dumb, narcotic fascination on his lodger. ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... to me, Ariadne. Until today I have seen only photographs of you; and no photograph can give the strange fascination of the daughters of that supernatural old man. There is some damnable quality in them that destroys men's moral sense, and carries them beyond honor and dishonor. You ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... but something restrained my enthusiasm.... 'You recognize him, I see,' she insinuated.... 'WHO is he?' I dodged.... She merely smiled.... She evidently realizes the wonderful power of that disarming smile and the fascination of good teeth in a shapely head.... 'You'll do!' she said with apparent reservation as she tapped a ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... There was a peculiar fascination in imagining what the emotions of a soul might be which could lead to such apathy, to such an annihilation of all sensibility; and while the very deeds and thoughts of the strange cave-dweller grew more and more vivid in my mind the figure of Paulus took form, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ever evaded her, and yet never ceased to call her with such a voice as he who reads on a magic page of the calling of elves hears stilly in his brain, yet somehow behind the seduction was another and a sterner voice. There was warning as well as fascination. Beyond that edge at which she strained on tiptoe, mingled with the jocund calls to Hasten, Hasten, were deeper calls that bade her Beware. They puzzled her. Beware of what? Of what ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... prominence in the courts of Europe. He was made a Grand Commander of the Bath, and the same year visited Paris and London, where he was received by Queen Victoria and welcomed by the lord mayor. In 1869 he again visited London. By his great power of fascination and lavish expenditure he was ever able to make a striking impression upon the foreign courts. During the opening of the canal, when Ismail gave and received royal honours, treating monarchs as equals, and being treated by them in like manner, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... recover her spirits, and when at last Raeburn, after a few words with a minister who had just arrived, disappeared suddenly behind the Speaker's chair, the spectacle below her seized her with the same fascination as before. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Fatal fascination! It was his last gaze. A bright flash shot up— something struck him through the heart, and he saw the shining object ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... loved the ranch life, but—you see—Grandfather had chosen the army for me, and when the appointment came, I knew what a disappointment it would be to him if I didn't make a try at it. It's all right though. I like it. There's a fascination about it. Think you don't want to ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... to the frightened eyes of the maidens there appeared a great chariot, drawn by four wild-looking, foam-flecked black steeds. Not long did the girls gaze at the horses or the chariot—all eyes were drawn in fascination to the driver of the car. He was handsome as only a god could be, and yet so gloomy that all knew instantly he could be none other than ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... soup to the watermelon, but one idea obsessed him: how was he to find something else to swear off? For instinct, which supplants reason in such sentimental voyages, warned him that to such a professional reformer as Miss Jennie Tupper his sole fascination lay in a lively ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... endowments, and equally magical hi their effects. Certain graces and harmonies of both may be acquired by diligent study and imitation, but only in a limited degree; whereas by their natural possessors they are exercised spontaneously, almost unconsciously, and with ever-varying fascination. Reynolds soon understood and appreciated the merits of Goldsmith, and a sincere and lasting friendship ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... said to myself, as with a kind of fascination I eagerly looked at the line which marked the gaping mouth showing plainly in an ugly smile; then at the dull creamy-brown and grey markings, and the scales which covered the skin, here and there looking worn and crumpled, and as if it was a trifle too big ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... sitting in the front kitchen, glancing askance at several rosy, curly-headed children who were shyly huddled together by the door. The fascination of new surroundings and possible new playmates had diverted their minds from their misfortunes, and the Captain heaved a sigh of relief as he passed into ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... happiness on earth. Close connection between his intellectual and moral character. Compared with Milton. His metaphors and comparisons. Little impression made by the forms of the external world upon him. Fascination revolting and nauseous images had for his mind. His use of ancient mythology in his poems. His idolatry of Virgil. Excellence of his style. Remarks upon the translations of the Divine Comedy. His veneration ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... motionless back with a sort of fascination. He moved uneasily, as if to break a spell of silence almost unbearable in its intensity. He went to the table and sat down. From mere habit he took up a quill pen. He looked at the point of it and at the inkstand. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Tamara that each one was endowed with natural fascination. They made no "frais" for her. There were no compliments or gushing welcomes. They were just casual and delightful and made her feel at home and happy ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... he had been lifted straight to the bosom of the Father to whom he had prayed! Slow through the dusk dawned his face. He had not then been taken bodily!—not the less was he gone!—that was a dead face! But as he gazed in a fascination of fear, his eyes grew abler to distinguish, and he saw that he breathed. He was astonished to find how weak was the revulsion: we know more about our feelings than about anything else, yet scarcely understand them at all; they play what seem to us the strangest pranks—moving ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the fascination it now exercised over him, that he began to rush headlong down the hill towards it, eager to be once more mingling in its throng, and to once more feel its hum ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... was despatched on both errands. Some strange fascination seemed to hold Sergeant Cuff to the bed. Some strange curiosity seemed to keep the rest of them waiting, to see what the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... aside his eyes from the window towards which he felt himself drawn by a fascination for which he could not account. Bastiano disappeared, and Nisida's brother, assisted by the waves, was drawing nearer and nearer to the shore, when, at all once, he uttered a terrible cry which sounded above the noise ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... dream? 'The picture presented to us of the Homeric heroes and their surroundings,' says Father Browne, 'is not merely vivid and complete; it is grand, though with a grandeur which is homely and simple. Hence the fascination which we find in the subject of the poems as distinct from the poems themselves. It may be that this effect is due to the art of the bards, which well knew how to efface itself in order to ravish the listener the more. But allowing much to the power of art, the mind was not yet satisfied. ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... from her as before. "There is a sort of fascination in it. I suppose that at the bottom of his heart every man would like at times to have his courage tested; to see ...
— Different Girls • Various
... conversation in itself was not at all brilliant, but it was the sound of her rich, calm, rather lazy voice, the different lights which glanced and gleamed in her eyes, the dimples about her mouth, the attitude she put herself in. Maggie had a way of changing color, too, which added to her fascination. Sometimes the beautiful oval of her face would he almost ivory white, but then again a rosy cloud would well up and up the cheeks and even slightly suffuse the broad, low forehead. Her face was never long the same, never more than a moment ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... would deny that the pantheistic theory, which identifies God with the universe and ourselves with God, has its fascination and {45} glamour—a fascination which is not ignoble on the face of it. The modern founder of Pantheism, Benedict Spinoza, was a man of pure and saintly character, a gentle recluse from the world, lovable and blameless. Nevertheless, we have no hesitation in avowing ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... see, to feast his eyes on her loveliness—and invariably, when alone, to berate himself for such a weakness. He had never dreamed that a man could feel that way about a woman. He did not see why he, of all men, should succumb to the fascination of a girl like ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Margaret to the forbidden river. She was not sure that he knew how to row, for he was prone to exaggerate his prowess at this and that, and she went because of the fine defiance of it, and because Aladdin exercised an irresistible fascination. He it was who could whistle the most engagingly through his front teeth; and he it was, when sad dogs of boys of the world were met behind the barn, who could blow the smoke of the fragrant grapevine through his nose, and swallow the same without alarm to himself or ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... excitement of feeling, all the details of visible objects presented themselves with a strange intensity and insistance, whether you would or no; urging themselves upon the mind, and thrust upon the eye, with a force of fascination which you could not refuse. Now, to a certain extent, the senses get into this state whenever the imagination is strongly excited. Things trivial at other times assume a dignity or significance which we cannot explain; ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... evident the author felt the fascination of the mountains and the wide plains of the west, and most of the best pages of the book are those in which she infuses the written word with their ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... cold horror ran through the unfortunate Fifth, the dramatic representatives of which listened with a kind of fascination to their own speeches, tripped off lightly and easily by their Seniors. It was more particularly galling as all realized that the whole thing was on a rather higher scale than theirs; it was better ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... effecting the purpose desired, is, in all cases, a source of pleasure; especially when, by the process, we bring to view or to operation, new powers, or powers heretofore hidden, whether they are our own powers, or those of objects upon which we act. Experimenting has a sort of magical fascination for all. Some do not like the trouble of making preparations, but all are eager to see the results. Contrive a new machine, and every body will be interested to witness, or to hear of its operation;—develope any heretofore unknown properties of matter, or secure ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... influence, and with very little pay. By talents? His were not splendid, and he had no genius. Cautious and slow, his only ambition was to be right. By eloquence? He spoke in calm, good taste, without any of the oratory that either terrifies or seduces. By any fascination of manner? His was only correct and agreeable. By what, then, was it? Merely by sense, industry, good principles, and a good heart— qualities which no well-constituted mind need ever despair of attaining. It was the force of his character that raised him; and this character not ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... charming scenes in the midst of landscapes bathed in the glowing rays of the sun and azure light." The vague Ossianic figures that raised their gigantic heads in the fog-wreaths of clouded mountain-tops and lonely lochs had a peculiar fascination for him, and acted like wine on his imagination. The "Hebrides" overture was the fruit of this tour, one of the most powerful and characteristic of his minor compositions. His sister Fanny (Mrs. Hensel) asked him to describe the gray scenery ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... It seemed to him as if some magician must have laid a spell upon his eyes, that he did not see even in that darkness how lovely a face Mercy had, did not feel even through all the embarrassment and strangeness the fascination of her personal presence. Then he dwelt lingeringly on the picture, which had never faded from his brain, of his next sight of her, as she sat on the old stone wall, with the gay maple-leaves and blackberry-vines in her lap. From that day to the present, he had seen ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of age, I became entangled in a net of dangerous fascination. One evening my brother was taken to the theatre, while I, on account of a cold, had to stay at home. To compensate for this, I was permitted to read the play to him; and that play was, "The Merchant of Venice." I will not dwell upon the effect. I had already become fond ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... have been fascination in the eager mystery of the gaze, for, strangely enough, he was not afraid of her. She always made much of him if he came in her way, and he was so fond of Trevor Lea that nothing made him so eager or happy as the thought ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... personal comeliness, but in compensation had seated a great heart and a graceful mind in a body low of stature, and marked by a slight deformity. His piercing eyes, luminous with intelligence and full of sympathy for everything noble and elevated, overpowered with their fascination the blemishes that a too curious scrutiny might discover upon his figure; while his mobile, handsome lips poured out the natural eloquence of clear thoughts and noble sentiments. The Count grew great while speaking: his listeners were carried away by the magic of his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... a few it seemed strange that, with her unquestioned powers of fascination, she had not yet married; but London is not the only place in which poverty is as repellent as beauty is attractive. At the same time it must be confessed there was something about her which made not a few men shy of her. Some found ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... his gallant compliments. She liked the gay-hearted young man, but she was not so much attracted towards him as towards Clarke and those more thoughtful spirits. Still, she was not proof against the fascination of his courtly address, and she listened with interest to his account of the game he had learned in Italy and had introduced to England, and which bears so close a resemblance to our modern game of football that it may well be regarded as ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... was getting darker; he was putting out the candles. It was too dark already to see his face. With fascination she began to watch his hand. How steady it was as it moved among the boughs, extinguishing the lights. Out they went one by one and back into their darkness returned the emblems of darker ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... little white enigma! you are tempting me to forget myself. I shall flee from the fascination of your mysterious face, for I am quite certain that Joshua's chariot is abroad, and the sun is ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... staring in dread fascination into the muzzle of the weapon, his face dead white, his eyes wide with fear, naked, cringing. Then he spoke, ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Illustrated Times and the Illustrated London News, those journals being posted to me regularly every week whilst I was still only a little chap at Eastbourne. Further, the career of my uncle, Frank Vizetelly, exercised a strange fascination over me. Born in Fleet Street in September, 1830, he was the youngest of my father's three brothers. Educated with Gustave Dore, he became an artist for the illustrated Press, and, in 1850, represented the Illustrated Times as war-artist in Italy, being a part of the time with ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... fascination for her. At all times and in nearly any position, she was somehow sensible of this vista; she knew the lights almost immediately, and the common small craft blinking about. To-night she had sat for a long time in nearly utter ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... of age. Shortly afterwards—that is, as soon as he was able to understand anything of public men, and public movements and events"—says G.B. Smith, "the name of Canning began to exercise that strange fascination over the mind of William Ewart Gladstone which has never wholly passed away," and Mr. Gladstone himself acknowledged that he was brought up "under the shadow of the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... separated, curving about in corners by themselves, but always coming together again in the centre of the rink; and when she left him thus Hibbert was conscious of—yes, of missing her. He found a peculiar satisfaction, almost a fascination, in skating by her side. It was quite an adventure—these two strangers with the ice and snow ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... London Magazine, struck by the young man's genius, or under the influence of the strange fascination that he exercised on every one who knew him, invited him to write a series of articles on artistic subjects, and under a series of fanciful pseudonym he began to contribute to the literature of ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... mend them. It is said in the Alps that "not all the vulgar people who come to Chamouny can ever make Chamouny vulgar." For similar reasons, not all the sordid people who drift overland can ever vulgarize California. Her fascination endures, whatever the ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... the whole miserable business. I wished, savagely, that she would let me tell it, if it must be told. How could she paint the fascination of the man who was my husband? She had never known the charm of him as I had known it in those few brief months before our marriage. She had never felt the caress of his voice, or the magnetism of his strange, smoldering ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... of the involved pile which crowned the graceful head. The yellow-and-black of the tiger appeared thus, from head to foot. It was afterward that he found out something of the secret of the peculiar fascination in the great dark eyes. One of them was gray, with that greenish tinge which has been regarded as the token of genius. The other was of a mottled golden-brown, with lights like those in the tiger's eye. In both, in any but strong light, the ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere of the arena have kept their deep fascination. ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... double form. It is in love with death and yet it hates death. So we come back to that singular sentence of Robert Louis Stevenson's, "The beauty and the terror of the world," which so adequately describes the double fascination of nature for man. Her spell is both sweet and terrible, and we would not have it otherwise The menace in summer's beauty, the frightful contrast between the laughing earth and the waiting death, are all felt in the prolonged and deep sense of gloom that broods over much of Fiona's work, and in ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... to the drama which so profoundly moved the whole of Europe and the greatest living musician. The adjectives of contumely are easily transmuted into epithets of adulation, when a prominent ecclesiastic succumbs, like King Herod, to the fascination of a dancer. ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... an ardent, almost reckless manner of attacking problems; she was as intense and yet as changeful as a flame. Blake watched her varying moods with the same fascination with which one regards a wind-blown blaze, recognizing, even in her moments of repression, that she was ready to burst forth anew at the slightest breath. She was the sort of woman to dominate men, to ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... stream had always held a great fascination for him. Johnny had seen other rivers but to him none of them quite came up to the old Chicago. In its silent, sullen depths lay power and mystery. The Charles River of Boston Johnny had seen, and called it a place of play for college boys. The Seine ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... embracing me, "and you will be the daughter of my choice, as well as my adoption. My blessing, and the blessing of approving God, will be yours. The woman, who limits her ambition to the triumphs of beauty and the influence of personal fascination, receives the retribution of her folly and her sin in the coldness and alienation of her husband, and the indifference, if not the contempt of the world. She, whose highest aim is intellectual power, will ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... hedge with Hallie Ferguson, who lived a block below us, I had come to accept this trick of the city as somewhat less extraordinary. It was developing other characteristics not so fearful to my mind and of far greater fascination; and I spent hours, when I could not be out of doors, watching it from the windows of my room. Father had built what was at the time one of the finest houses in San Francisco. It had a glass conservatory at the side, and a garden with a lawn and palm in ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... as a favourite. His stature is not tall, but handsome; his expressive countenance paints and reflects every emotion of his soul. His gestures are wonderfully graceful, like his delivery. There is a fascination in the soft gaze of his eyes, which none can but admire. Being a great reader, and endowed by nature with a good memory, he supplies himself with the most complicated dates and historical events. Nothing can equal the variety ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... one else in that company probably did a single word penetrate. Merely stricken dumb by the vibrant power of the voice, vaguely uneasy, vaguely saddened, group after group of hoydenish youngsters huddled in speechless fascination around the dark edges ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... foresee the bitter and crushing disillusion that awaits you on leaving it. The history of wars and the artistic trappings of the uniform have seduced your youth. Afterwards, warlike tales of an irresistible fascination—Bonaparte with his little band crossing the bridge at Arcola amid showers of bullets. And then our own generals, not to go further—Espartero at Luchana, O'Donnel in Africa, and, above all, Prim, that almost legendary leader, directing the battalion at Castillejos with ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... future as I expected to arrange that of my kind doctor, John Archer. However, I should never have troubled myself about visiting them just then, had it not been, as I say, that the music of the tinkling hammer had for me this strong fascination. I would sit for hours, listening and listening, and when a stray sunbeam struck the inlaid steel, the sensation it gave me was almost too keen to endure. My eyes would become fixed, dilating with a pleasure that stretched every nerve ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... wide short sleeves of pale yellow and, crossed on the breast, a strip of black Spanish lace that fell to the hem of the skirt. It wasn't, of course, the clothes that attracted him—he only grew conscious of them perhaps a month later—but the wilful charm, the enigmatic fascination, of the still face. The eyes were long and half closed under finely arched brows, there was a minute patch at the right corner of a pale scarlet, smiling mouth; a pointed chin marked an elusive oval beneath black hair drawn down upon a long slim neck, hair to which was pinned an odd headdress of ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... these—yet the thing had its irresistible fascination, and now and then came reflective moments like the one on February 25, when the doctor, encamped on the way from the Roosevelt to Cape ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... mad who look upon her long, She is so ripe with dangers. Yet meanwhile I find no fascination in her smile, Although I make her theme ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... streets and watched the strange combat with rapt interest. Although the raiders had come before, the spectacle had not lost its fascination. Even though the authorities issued strict orders and troops tried to drive the throngs indoors, Parisians persisted in risking life and limb to see the Zeppelins battle in the night skies. Upon this occasion the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the head with silver eyes. She started forward and again applied her eyes to the knothole. Even with the din resounding from the orchard, from up the road and down the road, from the heavens and from the deep earth, the central fascination was this mystic head. There, to her, was the ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... satisfaction. Nicolas did not take his eyes off his sister's face, and only breathed when she took breath. Sonia was under the spell of that exquisite voice and thinking of the gulf of difference that lay between her and her friend, full conscious that she could never exercise such fascination. The old countess had paused in her "patience,"—a sad, fond smile played on her lips, her eyes were full of tears, and she shook her head, remembering her own youth, looking forward to her daughter's future and reflecting on her ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... to liberate any of the smaller insects; every fly, removed from the leaf upon which it had been feeding, returned immediately it was at liberty to do so, and walked down the fatal cup as though drawn to it by a species of irresistible fascination. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... while all those strange expressions began to flit over his face, and at last he fairly cried over it so much, that he was obliged to fly out of the room. How often he has read it I cannot tell; I believe he has bought one for himself, and it is as if the engraving had a fascination for him; he stands looking at it as if he was in ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... enough to know my own mind. The smart clerks, who generally came and asked, 'Well, young man, what can I do for you?' I regarded with fear and suspicion. I clung the tighter to my coin always, and said nothing, although I saw many a trinket whose glitter went to my soul with a mighty fascination. We both stood staring silently at the show cases, our tongues helpless with awe and wonder. Finally, after a whispered conference, Hope asked for a 'silver no nothing', and provoked so much laughter that ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... to call it) cannot be finally beaten by any failure, and will even supersede humanity by evolving a higher species if we cannot master the problems raised by the multiplication of our own numbers, have always known that Jesus had a real message, and have felt the fascination of his character and doctrine. Not that we should nowadays dream of claiming any supernatural authority for him, much less the technical authority which attaches to an educated modern philosopher and jurist. But when, having entirely got rid of Salvationist Christianity, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... death of her mother, created in her the painful impression of which I have just spoken to you. During this evening, I remarked a circumstance which will, perhaps, appear to you puerile, but which has been to me a new proof of the fascination this young girl inspires in all. Her bandeau of pearls being a little deranged, the Archduchess Sophia, who was leaning upon her arm, was kind enough to be willing herself to replace the bijou upon her brow. Now, to one who knows the proverbial hauteur of the archduchess, such an act ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... a pupil, a beautiful girl entrusted to him by her uncle, a simpleminded old canon of the Cathedral of Paris, under whose roof he ensconced himself by false pretences and with the full intention of gaining the niece for himself. Abelard seems to have exercised an irresistible fascination for men and women alike, and his plot succeeded to admiration. Stricken by a belated remorse, he finally married Heloise against her unselfish protests and partly to legitimatize his unborn child, and shortly after he was surprised and overpowered ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... There is strange fascination in looking at familiar scenes in unfamiliar aspect. Even little children know this when, from some swinging branch, they turn their heads downwards, and see, not ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... very different faces in feature and expression, and till that night he had never thought of comparing them. Indeed, the fascination which beamed from Amabel Page's far from regular features had put all others out of his mind, but now, as he surveyed the two girls, the candour and purity which marked Agnes's countenance came out so strongly under his glance that Amabel lost all attraction for him, and he ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... proud honor, accepted seriously, but gladly. To Botticelli, on the other hand, it brings a profound melancholy. This is so marked that at first sight almost every one is repelled by Botticelli, and yields only after long familiarity to the mysterious fascination of the sad-eyed Madonna, who holds her babe almost listlessly, as her head droops with the weight of her sorrow. Her expression is the same whatever her attitude, when she presses her babe to her bosom ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... the enduring popularity of his "Lives," and the seal of approval set upon them by critics of the most opposite schools. What a long array of names might be presented of those who have given their testimony to the wondrous fascination of this undying Greek!—names of the great and wise through many long centuries, men differing in age, country, religion, language, and occupation. For ages he has charmed youth, instructed manhood, and solaced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... from being one, Have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men; Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. Books are not seldom talismans and spells, By which the magic art of shrewder wits Holds an unthinking multitude enthrall'd. Some to the fascination of a name Surrender judgment hood-wink'd. Some the style Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds Of error leads them, by a tune entranc'd. While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear The insupportable ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt |
